Janice’s Journal: Hand-to-Hand Combat in California Cities

Today we are conducting hand-to-hand combat with cities throughout the state of California in order to challenge their residency restrictions. There are more than 100 cities that have such restrictions and thusfar we have filed nine lawsuits.

The series of lawsuits began last year when we challenged residency restriction in the City of Grover Beach that prohibited registered citizens from moving into most of that small city. It also prohibited registered citizens already living in that city from moving into a new home within the same city…..including Frank Lindsay who was viciously attacked in his home by a stranger who vowed to kill him solely because Frank is on the registry.

We chose the City of Grover Beach as the first challenge because we testified there when the City considered whether to expand its residency restrictions from 1,000 feet to 2,000 feet. Despite our testimony as well as verification of the facts we presented by the city’s Chief of Police, the City Council agreed to the expansion.

It took a federal lawsuit to get the attention of the City of Grover Beach. Once that lawsuit was filed, however, the City Council corrected its mistake in 30 days by repealing not just the expansion it had approved, but all of the residency restrictions in that city.

Not all of the cities we have sued have been as smart as Grover Beach. In fact, the dumbest city we have sued so far is the City of Murrieta. Not only did the City of Murrieta fail to repeal its residency restrictions, it filed an unsuccessful motion to dismiss the case just a few months later.

In addition, the City of Murrieta is the only city known to have enforced its residency restrictions following a California Supreme Court case that declared similar restrictions to be unconstitutional in some circumstances. The City, in fact, enforced its restrictions only 10 days ago after a registrant moved in with his sister, a move approved by the CA Department of Corrections under an interstate compact.

In its decision to enforce its residency restrictions, the City of Murrieta did not take into account that the registrant has a low risk of re-offense (Static-99 score of 0), is destitute and has significant health conditions that require in-home care. The City of Murrieta did not take into account that the registrant’s sister is the only person willing and able to care for him and that if he is not allowed to live with her, he will be homeless and possibly die on the streets of Murrieta.

What will it take for the cities of California to abide by the Constitution? Will it take 100 lawsuits? Will it take registrants dying on their streets?

Please stay tuned for the answer as we continue to file lawsuits as well as an application for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that prevents the City of Murrieta from evicting a registered citizen from his sister’s home.

Read all Janice’s Journals

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lake county good to see you are still active on this site and in our fight for our rights.

On a related matter concerning residency near parks, and also related to previous forum threads about Los Angeles in particular, I want to inform CA RSOL that Los Angeles is moving more strongly than was already condemned by Janice and others here to have “parks” all over everywhere — the consequence of which in the finality would be to bar registrants from living in Los Angeles.

The city is now moving strongly under Mayor Eric Garcetti (who I call a fake, especially a fake liberal — well, pretty much everything about him, if you look into it, is fake), to put in “parklets,” which are being done as parks and under the city Recreation and Parks Department, everywhere.

While the impetus for this appears to be to attack use of cars in particular, but also to roust and/or jail the homeless (the city bars “camping” in city parks, and uses that law to roust and jail the homeless), it clearly will have dramatic impact on registrants, and just as clearly, that surely is why at least some city officials like it — think of the previous thread here about the councilman representing the San Pedro neighborhood urging a parklet be put in at a certain location there because he wanted to run out registrants living on that block. All that is different with this major citywide push now as compared to the San Pedro news is that they aren’t saying that, they are keeping quiet about that.

There is now a major, formal city plan to put these in all over. They will put them in on any small piece of dirt they find, and already are, and all of a sudden something 5-feet x 5-feet is a “park.” They also are already starting to eliminate parking on streets and use that space to put in a tiny parklet, a park — the first permanent one (previous ones were demonstration) just went in in the Highland Park neighborhood, and more are on the way sooner than later. (Insane that someone should be stupid enough to want to sit there out at the traffic lanes, rather than on the sidewalk with a safe buffer. So no one will, but it will be there and bar registrants for several blocks around.)

Even a ballot measure this November to raise the sales tax in Los Angeles County for “transportation” will include substantial money in it for these parklets along and in the streets.

I don’t know what to do about it, but we all at least need to know of it. This is likely to catch on all over the state.

There is NO legitimacy in barring registrants from living near a park (or anything else that anyone else can live near). And all that restriction is doing is to provide the tool to bar registration from living (or being homeless) anywhere.

Is there a copy of the agreement Cypress made in writing available for download? My wife and I are looking to move there and I would like to have that letter “in my back pocket.”