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View Full Version : Victims to be told when attackers slip out of tracking devices


Chief
04-30-2008, 06:54 PM
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004383649_webgps30m.html

By Jennifer Sullivan

Seattle Times staff reporter

The head of the state Department of Corrections has ordered that victims of sex crimes must be notified when those convicted of the attack remove their state-issued GPS tracking device.

DOC Secretary Eldon Vail's mandate comes about a week after David Torrence, a Level 3 offender, apparently sliced off his ankle bracelet and vanished from the Snohomish area. The Monroe woman who was assaulted by Torrence is angry with the DOC because she had no idea that the offender was permitted to live near her home.

Anna Aylward, DOC's program administrator, said that since late last year, when the DOC started using global positioning systems to track its most dangerous sex offenders, four of the nearly 90 offenders in the program have managed to remove their ankle bracelets. Of those four, Torrence and James Murphy remain on the loose, she said.

Murphy, 55, who was convicted of third-degree child molestation, is believed to have fled to Mexico, Aylward said.

Snohomish County sheriff's deputies and DOC officials have launched a nationwide search for Torrence, Aylward said. The sheriff's office said that Torrence's ankle bracelet was found last Wednesday at an apartment complex near Lynnwood.

Torrence, 43, had been released from prison April 20 after serving a one-year sentence for failing to register as a sex offender. DOC officials were unable to find Torrence adequate housing so he was permitted to live beneath a bridge in Snohomish — only a few miles from the woman he attacked, Aylward said.

The Monroe woman said in an e-mail that she is angry with DOC for not telling her that Torrence was living "within walking distance of my home."

Aylward said the DOC "made an error" in not telling the woman where Torrence had been permitted to live. She said the department also made a records error by telling the woman that Torrence was checking in with DOC officials in Everett, not Monroe.

Aylward said that DOC is investigating.

**SCHNIPP**

These guys would not be a problem if we would finally get around to building the Federal Pen of North Dakota that we've talked about here before....wall off ND ala "Escape from New York", and park all of these reprobates there. They could do whatever the want, inside the wall...

But what are these victims supposed to do between the time the perp cuts the ankle bracelet off, and the Police get around to letting the victim know; hell, the victims didn't know the perp was out of jail much less living in the immediate area....

Maybe we need to go back to public flogging...especially for some of these sex offenders...

8)