Local Sex Offender List Dwindles

By Elizabeth Schneider

March 11 -- Santa Monica lost six registered serious sex offenders during the past six months and briefly gained one high-risk offender, according an updated list of sex offenders obtained by The Lookout.

Until January, Santa Monica had only one registered "high risk" sex offender, Ashley Curtis Clark, who has been living in the city since 1999, according to police. He was briefly joined on the list of high-risk offenders by 43-year-old Arthur Akouris.

But after residents of the 1140 block of Chelsea Avenue were notified last December that the convicted sex offender would be moving into his family's home on their street in the beginning of January, his stay as cut short.

According to the SMPD, the family received too much negative attention from the surrounding community, and Akouris was forced to leave.

Convicted of several offences, including oral copulation with an individual under 14 years of age and sexual battery, Akouris was originally classified as a "serious" sex offender, but after SMPD detectives launched an investigation into Akouris' background, he was upgraded to "high risk" by the department of Justice.

In September The Lookout posted a story naming Santa Monica as one of the 400 California cities with a population of less than 200,000 that by federal law has the option to make the list of the state's registered sex offenders available for public viewing.

Like most cities in the state -- including such Westside municipalities as Beverly Hills and Culver City -- Santa Monica has chosen not to equip its station with a computer to access the names on the Megan's law CD-ROM.

Burbank, Glendale, Newport Beach and Pasadena are among the 108 cities surveyed by the State Department of Justice that provide the information. There could be more that were not surveyed, state officials said.

As previously reported, police Chief James T. Butts, Jr. made the decision not to make the information available because the police station lacks the space and resources, said Lt. Frank Fabrega, the department's spokesman.

"We don't have the space," Fabrega said recently. "What we would have to do is get someone to monitor the system, it has to be updated everyday and there is no indication that we are going to provide that service here."

"There are several logistics that need to be determined before you can just put up a computer," Fabrega said.

Fabrega indicated recently that it was not likely the service would be provided at the new $63 million public safety facility that is nearing completion.

"Not only is it space and room, it's additional things such as personnel because that information has to be updated on a daily basis to capture accurate information" Fabrega said. If the list is not constantly updated, he added, "it may be stale and out of date when someone researches that."

According to Fabrega, Redondo Beach is the only agency in the South Bay equipped with a viewing station. "We refer everyone out to sheriff stations or LAPD offices," he said.

Since the 1997 passage of Megan's Law, California residents have been able to access information on sex offenders registered in their communities from computer terminals located at certain Sheriff's offices and police departments throughout the state.

According to the California Attorney General's Office, the state has required dangerous sex offenders to register with their local law enforcement agencies for more than 50 years. But specific information regarding the whereabouts of these offenders was not made available to the public until July 1995 with the implementation of the Child Molester Identification Line.

In 1996 the federal government took a further step with Megan's Law, named after seven-year-old New Jersey resident Megan Kanka, who was raped and murdered by a twice-convicted sex offender living across the street.

The law requires released sex offenders to register their names as well as their addresses with their local law enforcement agencies. The federal law required all states to enact their own Megan's Laws by September 1997.

By law, California's 15 cities with populations of more than 200,000 must provide computer stations for public use, said California Department of Justice information officer Mike Van Winkle.

However Federal law stipulates that police departments serving less than 200,000 residents can opt out of providing this service, as is the case in Santa Monica.