From LEAP staff member Charmie Gholson:
That's Captain Terry of the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office, lamenting about how stretched thin his staff is, regarding both registered sexual offenders and those that haven't yet been caught. He needs more money, I'd bet, and manpower to really police the situation.
Where-oh-where might they get more money?
The trillion dollars spent on the "war on drugs" since 1970 has brought us 35 million arrests and done nothing to eliminate drugs from society. We need to be using that money in better ways, and the horrific nightmare that has been the last 18 years of Jaycee Dugard's life illustrates how we could better use police resources.
The speakers at LEAP want to restore the publics faith in police and also be allowed to do real police work instead of constant, resource sucking drug interdiction. I can't help but wonder if the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office would have been able to recognize this man for the insane, dangerous monster he is if they had been fully present.
This article in the Mercury News offers more details of how ill prepared the county is when dealing with registered sex offenders. From the news article:
The Megan's Law (registered offenders) database has grown by about three percent since December, to more than 65,000 names of those living in California communities. For law enforcement, the numbers are overwhelming, said Contra Costa County sheriff's Capt. Daniel Terry. He said about 1,700 registered sex offenders now live in the county — up nearly 50 percent in a decade. About 350 live in unincorporated pockets countywide.
"That's 349 more than detectives I have to monitor these people," said Terry. "And as dangerous as these people are, for every one of them that's been through the criminal justice system, there's a handful that are just as dangerous and haven't been caught yet. We're inundated with sexual assault cases."
A task force including the sheriff's office and local police visited Garrido's house during a July 2008 sweep to check on compliance — that he lived where he said he did, said Terry. They entered the house and walked through, noticed nothing unusual and left.
"There was no evidence to support any type of foul pay or illicit activity that would violate his position as a (Megan's Law) registrant," he said. "Did we go into his backyard and climb the 8-foot wall into the compound that for 17 years nobody knew he was using? No, we did not."
Contra Costa County sheriff's Capt. Daniel Terry appears to be incorrect when he says that no one knew Garrido was using the backyard. A neighbor called 911 and reported "suspicious circumstances involving young children in the backyard" in 2006. Sheriff Warren Rupf has since apologized for the department's response to that call and the missed opportunity to rescue Jaycee Dugard.
That same year, the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office assisted the feds in conducting a four month wiretap surveillance of suspected drug-dealers. They conducted subsequent raids in March of 2006. How much time and money did this raid consume? Could those resources have been better used in this community? Some may think not. Some folks may think arresting drug dealers will keep us safer.
The article reports the arrest of prominent gang suspects, subordinates and street-level drug-dealing suspects. And do you know what those arrests created? Job openings. In the next 12 or 18 months you'll read about another fantastical drug bust that's really cleaned up the place.
"All of the violence we've seen in North Richmond lately, we want it to end," said Contra Costa sheriff's Lt. Kitty Parker of the investigation and raid. "The violence is there because of the drugs. Everything stems from the drugs."
No it doesn't, Lt. Parker. Drugs aren’t the problem. Our drug policy is.
Sure, sometimes addicts do violent things, but a majority of our community violence is due to petty thugs fighting over the unregulated drug market. Just like during alcohol prohibition. When the St. Valentines day massacre went down, nobody said, “lets keep chasing these guys.” They said, this is crazy. Kids are dying from bath tub gin, we’re spending too much money fighting these criminals and this whole idea of keeping folks from drinking isn’t working.
They re-legalized and regulated alcohol. They took back their streets. Now those guys selling alcohol settle differences in court, not on the streets with guns. The Budweiser driver and Petron delivery driver never shoot at each other to gain control of a neighborhood.
It's too late for Jaycee to have been saved sooner than later. But we can refocus our (limited) law enforcement resources into area's that will actually keep communities safer.
Legalize and regulate drugs. All of them.
Showing posts with label Jaycee Dugard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jaycee Dugard. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Would Jaycee Dugard have been saved earlier if there had been marijuana growing in that back yard?
Charmie Gholson, a LEAP staff member, was kind enough to share the following post:
Police continue to seek answers to how a convicted sexual predator was able to kidnap a young girl and keep her, along with the two children she bore him, in captivity for nearly two decades.
I honestly have compassion for Sheriff Warren Rupf and the department he oversees. This Contra Costa sheriffs department in the San Francisco Bay area is going to have some tough questions to answer in the upcoming weeks.
In the past few years, authorities had several chances to uncover the ramshackle backyard compound where Dugard and her children were kept, a missed opportunity that Sheriff Warren Rupf said was unacceptable. He also promised changes.
In 2006 a neighbor called 911 to report "suspicious circumstances involving young children” in the home's backyard, and had said Garrido was psychotic and had a sex addiction. The deputy spent about 30 minutes interviewing Garrido on the front porch and left after warning him that people living outdoors on the property could be a code violation. From the Contra Costa Times:
"We missed an opportunity to bring earlier closure to this situation," Rupf said. "I cannot change the course of events but we are beating ourselves up over this." Rupf added, "I offer my apologies to the victims and accept responsibility for having missed a chance to rescue Jaycee."
Sheriff Warren attributed the shortcoming to the deputy's lack of ready access to a database containing information about sex offenders in the county:
"We should have been inquisitive, more curious, and turned over a rock or two," Rupf said. "There are no excuses."
If I lived in California, I would want to know why the Costa County Sherifs department hasn’t allocated funding to ensure police had access to the sexual offender database. I might also ask why they didn’t use their new armored vehicle, that can rescue hostages and withstand snipers' bullets, to help rescue Jaycee Dugard. From the article in the Oakland Tribune:
The Lenco BearCat -- purchased with a federal Homeland Security grant of $243,000 -- can detect poisonous gases, travels as fast as 85 mph and has gunports for 10 rifles. While the intent of the BearCat purchase is to better prepare deputies for response to a terrorist attack, the county reports that the vehicle will probably be used more for protecting hostages, driving through gunfire and raiding drug houses.
Retired Police Chief Joseph McNamara commented on the acquisition:
"When the funny money comes in from the federal government, it's presented in a way that a sheriff would be anti-patriotic not to take it," said former San Jose police Chief Joseph McNamara, a criminal justice expert at Stanford's Hoover Institution. "If we were talking about getting this armored car versus after-school programs for kids, the armored car wouldn't compete well."
But let's get back to Jaycee Dugard, who was able to attend school after being kidnapped in 1991, but was instead raped repeatedly by Garrido and held captive for 18 years.
Miss Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped. She was waiting at a bus stop near her stepfather who watched in horror as she was snatched up and driven away in a car. He chased on a bicycle but was unable to catch up. Authorities have been unable to locate her until August 26, when 58 year old Phillip Garrido came into his parole agent's office in the San Francisco Bay area and turned himself in.
Why did Garrido turn himself in?
Two members of the UC Berkeley police force, Lisa Campbell and Ally Jacobs interacted with Garrido and both of his “daughters” when he came to inquire about holding a campus event related to a group called "God's Desire." His insane rantings and the fearful demeanor of the girls alarmed the two women, so Jacobs ran a background check and discovered he was a registered sex offender on federal parole for kidnapping and rape. After a second meeting with Garrido the next day, she called his parole officer in Concord, who seemed surprised to hear about the girls. He asserted Garrido didn’t have any daughters.
From what I can glean from news reports, that parole officer did nothing more than request Garrido come into his office. That’s when this lunatic showed up with his wife, Miss. Dugard and her daughters, and turned himself in.
Jacobs called her ability to assess the situation a combination of police intuition combined with mothers intuition.
Garrido confessed to the kidnapping and was arrested along with his wife. Authorities allege Miss. Dugard was held as a prisoner in the backyard encampment all these years and gave birth to two daughters, ages 11 and 15, who were fathered by Phillip Garrido. Both Garrido and his wife have entered not guilty pleas.
In addition to the 911 call in 2006, July 2008 a task force composed of East Contra County police agencies, spearheaded by the Sheriff's Office, conducted a sweep of registered sex offenders to confirm they were living at the address they gave authorities. The visits included a stop at Garrido's home but the responding officer wasn’t aware that he was a registered sex offender. He left after talking with Garrido in front of the house.
Garrido's parole agent also made visits to the Antioch home but never saw Dugard or her children.
Let me state something clearly here: Law Enforcers aren't to blame for this. Our laws are.
Until we reprioritze our laws, until we end the drug war legalizing and regulating drugs as we do tobacco and alcohol, our police will have to continue to enforce the laws as they are written. And we will continue to have funding and resources diverted to a war that we cannot, and are not, winning.
Our law enforcers will continue to be distracted.
A quick internet search produces an article reporting that on Mar. 15 of 2006--the same year the neighbors reported children living in Garridos backyard--authorities "completed a four-month wiretap surveillance of prominent North Richmond drug-dealing suspects with a massive raid of at least 12 homes in Contra Costa and Solano counties. " Some may argue that eliminating drugs and drug dealers from community is as important as apprehending monsters like Garrido. But do you really think that March 15 drug bust will do that? Is the drug problem solved? No. Investigations, arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations will not put eliminate drugs from Costa County or anywhere else in the U.S.
The longer we execute the “War on Drugs,” the more we see proof of how this policy has failed. The trillion dollars spent since 1970 has brought us 35 million arrests and done nothing to eliminate drugs from society.
Legalizing and regulating drugs will eliminate the ongoing meth problem that takes up so much time and resources of Costa County law enforcers. California accounts for 85 percent of total U.S. methamphetamine production and Contra Costa County has become a hotbed of meth production in Northern California, with more than 100 labs seized each year since 1998.
LEAP - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition - works to educate the public about the failure of our $69 billion-a-year War on Drugs. They also say that law enforcers want to be able to do their sworn duty of keeping society safe instead of enforcing this failed policy.
Phillip Garrido is clearly a menace to society:
In 1977 Garrido was sentenced for a sex attack on a 25-year-old casino worker and 50 years for kidnapping her. He was granted parole in 1988, three years before Miss Dugard vanished.
What do you think that Costa County officer would have done, what actions do you think the county sheriffs department or the parole officer would have taken if the Garridos neighbor had reported to say that a convicted sex offender was growing marijuana in his back yard?
The FBI reports in its Uniform Crime Reporting Program that Contra Costa county completed 6,436 total drug violation arrests out of 34, 377 arrests in 2000. The number for sex offenses? 265. Offenses against family and child: eight.
California citizens should all be asking these questions of the Contra Costa sheriff's department: What's the ratio of narcotics officers compared to those assigned to the sexual assault unit -- and what hours do they work? Or the child abuse unit? Is there a child abuse unit? What are the budgets for these units? What is the budget for the narcotics unit? How many narcotics raids did the department conduct while Miss Dugan was being raped and help prisoner by Phillip Garrido?
I can assure you of this—had that neighbor called the Sheriffs department to report Garrido was growing marijuana or cooking meth, those officers would have gone further than the front porch.
Police continue to seek answers to how a convicted sexual predator was able to kidnap a young girl and keep her, along with the two children she bore him, in captivity for nearly two decades.
I honestly have compassion for Sheriff Warren Rupf and the department he oversees. This Contra Costa sheriffs department in the San Francisco Bay area is going to have some tough questions to answer in the upcoming weeks.
In the past few years, authorities had several chances to uncover the ramshackle backyard compound where Dugard and her children were kept, a missed opportunity that Sheriff Warren Rupf said was unacceptable. He also promised changes.
In 2006 a neighbor called 911 to report "suspicious circumstances involving young children” in the home's backyard, and had said Garrido was psychotic and had a sex addiction. The deputy spent about 30 minutes interviewing Garrido on the front porch and left after warning him that people living outdoors on the property could be a code violation. From the Contra Costa Times:
"We missed an opportunity to bring earlier closure to this situation," Rupf said. "I cannot change the course of events but we are beating ourselves up over this." Rupf added, "I offer my apologies to the victims and accept responsibility for having missed a chance to rescue Jaycee."
Sheriff Warren attributed the shortcoming to the deputy's lack of ready access to a database containing information about sex offenders in the county:
"We should have been inquisitive, more curious, and turned over a rock or two," Rupf said. "There are no excuses."
If I lived in California, I would want to know why the Costa County Sherifs department hasn’t allocated funding to ensure police had access to the sexual offender database. I might also ask why they didn’t use their new armored vehicle, that can rescue hostages and withstand snipers' bullets, to help rescue Jaycee Dugard. From the article in the Oakland Tribune:
The Lenco BearCat -- purchased with a federal Homeland Security grant of $243,000 -- can detect poisonous gases, travels as fast as 85 mph and has gunports for 10 rifles. While the intent of the BearCat purchase is to better prepare deputies for response to a terrorist attack, the county reports that the vehicle will probably be used more for protecting hostages, driving through gunfire and raiding drug houses.
Retired Police Chief Joseph McNamara commented on the acquisition:
"When the funny money comes in from the federal government, it's presented in a way that a sheriff would be anti-patriotic not to take it," said former San Jose police Chief Joseph McNamara, a criminal justice expert at Stanford's Hoover Institution. "If we were talking about getting this armored car versus after-school programs for kids, the armored car wouldn't compete well."
But let's get back to Jaycee Dugard, who was able to attend school after being kidnapped in 1991, but was instead raped repeatedly by Garrido and held captive for 18 years.
Miss Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped. She was waiting at a bus stop near her stepfather who watched in horror as she was snatched up and driven away in a car. He chased on a bicycle but was unable to catch up. Authorities have been unable to locate her until August 26, when 58 year old Phillip Garrido came into his parole agent's office in the San Francisco Bay area and turned himself in.
Why did Garrido turn himself in?
Two members of the UC Berkeley police force, Lisa Campbell and Ally Jacobs interacted with Garrido and both of his “daughters” when he came to inquire about holding a campus event related to a group called "God's Desire." His insane rantings and the fearful demeanor of the girls alarmed the two women, so Jacobs ran a background check and discovered he was a registered sex offender on federal parole for kidnapping and rape. After a second meeting with Garrido the next day, she called his parole officer in Concord, who seemed surprised to hear about the girls. He asserted Garrido didn’t have any daughters.
From what I can glean from news reports, that parole officer did nothing more than request Garrido come into his office. That’s when this lunatic showed up with his wife, Miss. Dugard and her daughters, and turned himself in.
Jacobs called her ability to assess the situation a combination of police intuition combined with mothers intuition.
Garrido confessed to the kidnapping and was arrested along with his wife. Authorities allege Miss. Dugard was held as a prisoner in the backyard encampment all these years and gave birth to two daughters, ages 11 and 15, who were fathered by Phillip Garrido. Both Garrido and his wife have entered not guilty pleas.
In addition to the 911 call in 2006, July 2008 a task force composed of East Contra County police agencies, spearheaded by the Sheriff's Office, conducted a sweep of registered sex offenders to confirm they were living at the address they gave authorities. The visits included a stop at Garrido's home but the responding officer wasn’t aware that he was a registered sex offender. He left after talking with Garrido in front of the house.
Garrido's parole agent also made visits to the Antioch home but never saw Dugard or her children.
Let me state something clearly here: Law Enforcers aren't to blame for this. Our laws are.
Until we reprioritze our laws, until we end the drug war legalizing and regulating drugs as we do tobacco and alcohol, our police will have to continue to enforce the laws as they are written. And we will continue to have funding and resources diverted to a war that we cannot, and are not, winning.
Our law enforcers will continue to be distracted.
A quick internet search produces an article reporting that on Mar. 15 of 2006--the same year the neighbors reported children living in Garridos backyard--authorities "completed a four-month wiretap surveillance of prominent North Richmond drug-dealing suspects with a massive raid of at least 12 homes in Contra Costa and Solano counties. " Some may argue that eliminating drugs and drug dealers from community is as important as apprehending monsters like Garrido. But do you really think that March 15 drug bust will do that? Is the drug problem solved? No. Investigations, arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations will not put eliminate drugs from Costa County or anywhere else in the U.S.
The longer we execute the “War on Drugs,” the more we see proof of how this policy has failed. The trillion dollars spent since 1970 has brought us 35 million arrests and done nothing to eliminate drugs from society.
Legalizing and regulating drugs will eliminate the ongoing meth problem that takes up so much time and resources of Costa County law enforcers. California accounts for 85 percent of total U.S. methamphetamine production and Contra Costa County has become a hotbed of meth production in Northern California, with more than 100 labs seized each year since 1998.
LEAP - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition - works to educate the public about the failure of our $69 billion-a-year War on Drugs. They also say that law enforcers want to be able to do their sworn duty of keeping society safe instead of enforcing this failed policy.
Phillip Garrido is clearly a menace to society:
In 1977 Garrido was sentenced for a sex attack on a 25-year-old casino worker and 50 years for kidnapping her. He was granted parole in 1988, three years before Miss Dugard vanished.
What do you think that Costa County officer would have done, what actions do you think the county sheriffs department or the parole officer would have taken if the Garridos neighbor had reported to say that a convicted sex offender was growing marijuana in his back yard?
The FBI reports in its Uniform Crime Reporting Program that Contra Costa county completed 6,436 total drug violation arrests out of 34, 377 arrests in 2000. The number for sex offenses? 265. Offenses against family and child: eight.
California citizens should all be asking these questions of the Contra Costa sheriff's department: What's the ratio of narcotics officers compared to those assigned to the sexual assault unit -- and what hours do they work? Or the child abuse unit? Is there a child abuse unit? What are the budgets for these units? What is the budget for the narcotics unit? How many narcotics raids did the department conduct while Miss Dugan was being raped and help prisoner by Phillip Garrido?
I can assure you of this—had that neighbor called the Sheriffs department to report Garrido was growing marijuana or cooking meth, those officers would have gone further than the front porch.
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