A Sex Offender Ordinance for San Angelo May Invite Lawsuits

A city ordinance restricting where sex offenders may live is not a slam-dunk in reducing the number of registered sex offenders (RSOs) residing in the area. It may cost the city a lawsuit as well. At least two mid-sized cities in Texas are facing legal challenges to their city ordinances that restrict where RSOs can reside.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Conroe lawyer Scott Pawgan sued the City of Pasadena near Houston over its ordinance that he argues effectively prevents his client from living in that city, even with his own mother. Lewisville, in the Dallas Metroplex, faces a similar court challenge. There, an IT professional convicted for online solicitation of a minor in 2006 was unable to move himself and his wife and kids out of his motel room where they were living because of Lewisville’s restrictions after he was released from prison in 2012. He has since moved away from Lewisville, but the federal courts have ruled that he has legal standing to pursue a lawsuit.

Both of these cases are challenging the constitutionality of the ordinances.

San Angelo Police Chief Tim Vasquez does not advocate for or against the law, but wants the city council to consider all of the factors, pro and con, before moving forward.

“That’s what we’ll present to council Tuesday,” he said Sunday afternoon.

State of Texas law dictates general guidelines on when and how sex offenders must register their residency. Tuesday’s presentation from Vasquez will examine how some cities in Texas have imposed more strict restrictions on the lifestyles of sex offenders.

Assistant Chief of Police Jeff Fant summarized the SAPD’s current procedures regarding RSOs in place today in a letter to council.

“The San Angelo Police Department implemented a Sex Offender Accountability Program (SOAP) 10 years ago,” Fant wrote. The program requires the police to conduct quarterly no-notice checks on registered sex offenders living within the city limits. State law only requires annual checks.

Fant reports that the city has the option to benchmark other cities like Lewisville, League City, or Pasadena by enacting via ordinance more restrictions. Among them:

• Make it unlawful for a registered sex offender to establish residency within a certain distance from a place where children gather, such as schools and parks.
• The distance is generally 1,000 to 2,000 feet.
• The creation of prohibited zones where sex offenders aren’t allowed to gather or live. In many cities, these are called “child safety zones”.
• There are “grandfathering” options for RSOs who have already established a residence in a to-be-determined prohibited zone.

Fant’s report suggests making a violation a misdemeanor offense punishable with a fine, should the council move forward enacting an ordinance.

Councilwoman Charlotte Farmer requested Tuesday’s agenda item as a fact-finding exercise. Her request was encouraged after receiving the results of an online petition.

The catalyst for the petition was investigative reporting published on this website.

In two previous stories by Simone Brooks (here and here), we reported that San Angelo’s lack of having a sex offender ordinance correlates to a high number of RSOs living among us. Brooks compared the number of sex offenders living in similar-sized Texas cities having an ordinance to San Angelo. The numbers are striking.

• San Angelo, with no ordinance, has 347 registered sex offenders living here.
• League City, a suburb of the Houston metro region, has an ordinance and just 27.
• Lewisville, the defendant in a lawsuit in the Dallas Metroplex, has 39 RSOs.
• Not mentioned in the previous articles is the City of Pasadena, another suburb of Houston. It has 97. We mention Pasadena now because it is facing a legal challenge to its ordinance.

Vasquez said that three years ago the city decided to hold further action on a sex offender ordinance pending the outcome of the lawsuit against Lewisville.

“That was the case we were watching,” he said. In the meantime, Vasquez is confident that SOAP is working.

“We’ve had one case of recidivism in the 10 years since SOAP has been enacted,” he said. That case happened about two years ago. It involved a male registered sex offender that coaxed a minor runaway girl to come live with him at the RSOs residence inside the city limits. San Angelo police investigated that case and turned it over to the federal courts, Vasquez said.

“We know who they are, where they live, what they look like and what kind of car they drive,” Vasquez said. SOAP assigns pools of registered sex offenders to each officer. The challenge today is that instead of 120 RSOs that police monitored 10 years ago when the program started, police now monitor 347.

“It’s increased the load because we have just about the same total number of police officers in the department today as we did when the program began,” he said.

Vasquez said that despite the uptick in RSOs to be monitored by the same number of officers, the department has been able to leverage data—better computers and software systems—for tracking them.

Vasquez isn’t convinced that a lack of an ordinance is the only reason for higher number of RSOs residing in the city. There are other factors, he said.

“Both League City and Lewisville are suburbs of a larger metro area, in the case of those two cities, it’s Houston or Dallas (or Fort Worth). RSOs have lots of options as far as where to live, and the MHMR facility serving those cities is probably in the adjacent larger cities. Out here, San Angelo is the hub for a multi-county region. Because of that, we have a very large MHMR for our city’s size,” he said. MHMR Services for the Concho Valley serves Coke, Concho, Crockett, Irion, Reagan, Tom Green, and Sterling Counties.

Vasquez also cites what he calls the “alumni” growth of sex offenders across the nation. Texas passed its first statewide sex offender registration law in 1991, so the population of sex offenders (the “alumni”) is relatively young, and the numbers of RSOs are still rapidly rising everywhere. It will not level until registrants begin dying at an equal rate as the new ones are added to the DPS roles. This is a demographics issue.

San Angelo is also the location of a growing number of halfway houses, Vasquez said. These aren’t just non-profit entities reaching out to help inmates adjust to society. It’s a business, Vasquez said. A landlord can get their real estate certified as a halfway house (instructions here) and house former inmates on their way to reintegration into society. Many of the more recently released inmates have sex offender registration requirements, Vasquez said.

David Nowlin, who served on the San Angelo Zoning Board of Adjustments until December said that in his six years as chairman,  he cannot recall a zoning request to operate a halfway house. City certification may not be required. Section 311 of the current city code is vague on regulating “group homes”.

Vasquez said that an ordinance restricting RSOs from living in various areas of the city will likely reduce the workload on his force over time, as more RSOs move away from San Angelo and the number of SOAP inspections are reduced.

It will not completely solve the problem, he warned. RSOs will likely move into the county where there are no ordinances and continue to have a presence in the area, he said.

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Correction: David Nowlin served as chairman of the Zoning Board of Adjustments for six years, his entire tenure as a member. The article has been corrected to reflect this.