State, county maintain disparate offender lists

In Boone County, it’s anyone’s guess where a significant number of registered sex offenders really live.

Almost 12 years after Missouri passed Megan’s Law, which implemented a mandatory registry to protect minors from rape and molestation, a sampling of the addresses of Boone County’s 255 registered sex offenders indicates that one in three do not live where they’ve told state authorities they live.

Meanwhile, one in four offenders do not live at the address listed in the county registry.

“(The state registry’s) inaccuracy is very frustrating to the public, and I’ve had the same frustration,” Boone County Sheriff’s Department Detective Andrea Luntsford said. “I get calls from people saying ‘I live at this address, and (the registry) says there is a sex offender here.’”

A Missourian investigation has found:

The Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Boone County Sheriff’s Department have different methods for maintaining their offender registries, resulting in discrepancies.

Sex offenders who are exempt from registering continue to be punished publicly for crimes that occurred more than a decade ago, the constitutionality of which is being challenged in a lawsuit by a prominent Kansas City attorney.

Spot checks and phone calls reveal that offenders listed homeless shelters, motels and friends’ homes as places of residence even though they never lived there or stayed there for only a short time and then moved.

Of the incorrect addresses in the state registry, many were old. Some apartments listed had been vacant for months, neighbors said. Some mobile homes were abandoned with doors swinging open, discarded beer cans littered throughout.

One example among the numerous inaccuracies in the state and county registries is the case of David Blount. Deemed an offender for the attempted sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl in 2001, Blount listed St. Francis House of Hospitality shelter, located at 913 Rangeline St., as his address. A St. Francis House volunteer, however, said Blount has never stayed there, because the staff consider him dangerous. If Blount had lived at St. Francis House, which is located near Field Elementary School, it would have violated the Missouri law stating that offenders cannot live with 1,000 feet of a school or day care. Blount is listed as noncompliant in the state registry, but is not listed as such by the county.

Boone County’s system

The county has maintained its online sex offender registry since 2003 and is one of 26 counties in the state with an online registry. As of the second week of December, more than 25,000 people this year had visited the site, which includes the name, address, offense type, victim type, map and photo of registered sexual offenders living in the county.

Luntsford is the offender registration coordinator for Boone County. She gathers from callers tips on noncompliant sex offenders, writes warrants for those who haven’t registered properly, checks on the whereabouts of offenders and listens to parents who are worried about their children’s safety.

She checks to see if certain addresses will infringe on restricted areas. When Luntsford receives information on someone who is noncompliant or is exempt from registering, she can update the registry immediately.

The county has made more than 20 arrests this year and more than 30 last year for registry noncompliance, Luntsford said.

When she started as coordinator, she discovered that a few offenders included in the county registry were dead and some offenders who were incarcerated for parole or probation violations were still listed.

In the case of offenders who are living on the street, law enforcement’s efforts are fruitless.

Earlier this fall, seven offenders’ addresses were listed as “unknown” or “homeless.” All but one has been removed from the state registry.

“How do I register a homeless person? I can’t find them, so I can’t check them,” Luntsford said.

As part of an investigation, sheriff’s deputies visit listed addresses of offenders, but Luntsford concedes more needs to be done.

“We don’t have manpower to do spot checks all the time, but we want to,” she said. “We are working on being proactive, and we try to do spot checks on these folks when they move in.”

State and county out of sync

The Missouri registry, which is maintained by the Highway Patrol, lists more than twice as many offenders as the county does. That’s partly due to a state Supreme Court decision handed down on June 30 that no longer requires registration by people who pleaded guilty to or were convicted of a sex crime before Jan. 1, 1995, when the registry was created.

The Boone County Sheriff’s Department has removed those old names and addresses from its registry. However, the names, county of residence and offense information remain on the Highway Patrol’s Web site.

The Highway Patrol and the Sheriff’s Department maintain their registries differently, though. For example:

When offenders serve jail time for noncompliance or another offense, the county immediately removes their names. The state doesn’t because “that is the last place they are registered,” Luntsford said. However, an offender’s address eventually will be changed to “incarcerated” by the state.

When offenders inform Boone County law enforcement they are moving to another county, they are removed from the Boone County registry. But the state will not do so until the offender registers in a new county, leaving old addresses on the state’s Web site for months at a time.

There is a one-week delay after counties update information to the state and when the Highway Patrol registry reflects it. Once a week, Luntsford compiles the updates to Boone County’s database and sends the information by standard mail to the Highway Patrol in Jefferson City.

Sex offender law changes

After the state Supreme Court’s ruling in June, the Highway Patrol decided to leave those offenders’ names on the state registry after state Attorney General Jay Nixon’s office issued an opinion in July that said the ruling did not mandate that the names be removed.

In the fall, the Highway Patrol decided to remove address information about noncompliant offenders who were convicted before 1995, but it left their names, county of residence and offense details.

Tammy Byrd, a Highway Patrol fingerprint technician supervisor, said about 4,500 of the state’s 10,742 listed offenders — about 42 percent — pleaded guilty or were convicted before 1995.

Byrd said the Highway Patrol has updated the registry, so offenders’ addresses should be current. She acknowledges the discrepancy between the number of offenders the state says are living in Boone County and the county’s number. “But eventually we are trying to get them to sync up,” she said.

Still, each of the state’s 115 counties has the discretion to decide how it will maintain its database.

“We decided to take them off because they are not required to register,” Luntsford said. “It seems silly to have their name up there if we can’t produce an address anymore, and they may or may not still live there.”

Highway Patrol Capt. Tim McGrail, who is in charge of the criminal records and identification division, said the state’s registry is an information tool for the public, “not necessarily a tracking or monitoring device.”

He said: “It’s more accurate today than it was several years ago, because there are more checks and balances in place. The onus and responsibility falls on the offender, and anytime they make an address change they are supposed to notify the sheriff in that jurisdiction. The counties do a very good job with the limitations that they do have.”

Legal Action

Kansas City attorney Arthur Benson filed the lawsuit challenging the sex offender law’s applicability that made its way to the Missouri Supreme Court in June.

Benson’s firm also filed a motion in Jackson County Court seeking that photographs of offenders convicted before 1995 no longer be displayed on the Highway Patrol’s Web registry. He is also preparing another lawsuit in Jackson County, in which he will challenge the retroactive application of the sex offender laws for all 50 states.

“Other counties are risking a lawsuit if they don’t (remove the retroactive offender information),” Benson said. “We are trying to enforce the law. If law enforcement doesn’t obey the law, then who must?”

Benson’s lawsuit poses the question: Is it constitutional to perpetually list sex offenders in a state registry who have already received punishment for a crime, even if state law says they are not required to register?

It’s a question McGrail has heard many times, but there is no easy answer, he said.

“I try to follow state law, policy, rules and regulations,” McGrail said. “If you look at it as far as general public, they don’t understand why (some sex offenders) are exempt. And then you have family members of offenders, and they don’t understand why we are leaving them up there.”

He has fielded calls from victims and their families about why the state’s Web site doesn’t have accurate addresses.

“It’s still very much a topic that concerns the general public,” he said.

One way to increase accuracy is to boost compliance among offenders. The state statute now requires them to bring a driver’s license and proof of their address, such as a utility bill or rental lease. Securing grants to hire additional officers or to pay overtime to track offenders can also increase the registry’s accuracy.

“It’s hard for these sheriffs to go to their county commissioners and say I need two more officers to work on this,” McGrail said.

McGrail foresees cooperation among county agencies similar to the Missouri Drug Task Force, in which two or more counties could share resources to track noncompliant offenders.