By Lily Bixler [ lily@hmbreview.com ]
Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, Jul 21, 2010 - 11:51:23 am PDT
Following a review of sexual offenses in San Mateo County, the county civil grand jury last week said there is insufficient coordination of information about offenders among county law enforcement agencies.
The report found 10 registered offenders and 10 Megan’s Law registrants in Half Moon Bay; two Megan’s Law registrants in both Montara and Pescadero, one in El Granada and three in Moss Beach. There are 750 registered sex offenders in San Mateo County and 63,000 in the entire state.
Megan’s Law registration is required of those who have committed high-risk offenses; it’s a subset of the larger local sexual offenders registry. The report found 76 percent of sex offenses in the county are committed against children, with the median age reported for sexual abuse at 9 years old.
The grand jury report recommended that the county reinstate a sexual offenses task force and an investigation unit, teams that were reportedly cut back dramatically since 2007. The grand jury also recommended that the county and the cities work with the San Mateo County Police Chiefs’ Association to organize countywide levels of enforcement. The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office released a statement saying the Sexual Habitual Offender Program wasn’t entirely eliminated because that unit was incorporated into the Sheriff’s Investigations Bureau.
The Sheriff’s Office also reported that sex crimes are currently, “part of the workload shared by four detectives and one sergeant in the General Crimes Unit of the Investigations Bureau.”
“So while the Sheriff’s Office moves ahead in greatly constricted budget times and faces the daunting challenges of jail overcrowding and significant staffing reductions, core services remain the priority,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a prepared statement.
The report can be found at: www.sanmateocourt.org/director.php?filename=./grandjury/2009/index.php.
http://www.hmbreview.com/articles/2010/07/21/news/doc4c47404bbe2e2751462105.txt
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