A convicted sex offender is accused of driving by a Tri-Cities middle school more than two dozen times over the course of a week and allegedly exposing himself to at least two children.
And parents are furious that they weren’t notified until after he was arrested.
Javier _____, 29, of Benton City, was arrested by the Benton County Sheriff’s Office last week and charged with indecent exposure and failure to register as a sex offender.
On Feb. 22, a detective with a unit that specializes in violent crime prevention was called to Enterprise Middle School regarding an open West Richland police investigation.
The incident involved a student who reported a naked man in a black Subaru Impreza tried to lure her close to his car by asking for directions.
West Richland police were notified by the school and increased patrols in the area after the first report was made to them on Feb. 20. At one point they found the car and attempted to pull Ayala-Colin over, but he fled and they were unable to chase him because of state law restrictions on pursuits, according to a news release from the West Richland Police Department.
A student first reported the man asking for directions more than a week before, but it appears the school did not make a report about the initial encounter to WRPD, according to information released by the department.
After the sheriff’s detective got involved, the man was quickly arrested and only then did the school notify other parents of what had happened.
When detectives searched his car they reported finding a plastic grocery bag with stuffed animals, a plastic dinosaur, cameras and rope.
Now parents are demanding answers from the school district on why officials remained silent for a week before West Richland police were asked to investigated.
Before everyone gets in a twist about how this one registrant makes life harder on everyone else, I think we should look at it as a demonstration of the registry’s uselessness as a public safety tool.
Assuming the allegations in the article are true for the sake of argument, I don’t see what difference the registry made in this case, despite the reporter’s stressing that the accused is a registrant and that FTR was added to his charges. Are we to believe that had he registered as required he wouldn’t have been in front of that school?
Did the registry have anything to do with identification when the first incident was reported? Not that I could see. They traced his car first and his record followed. Despite not staying at the registered address, they found him anyway. I can’t believe anything in this story from identification to arrest would have been different if there were no registry. Adding that his bail was set at a mere $10k suggests that his offenses, while concerning, were not as serious as the article suggests. I’ve seen higher bail for FTR alone.
I really think we need to start confronting these reporters and their sensationalism. Perhaps flooding their inboxes would suggest that they start looking at and reporting the registry’s futility rather than just mentioning and leaving it to the reader to assume it works as intended, especially in cases like this (few and far between they are).
Separately, the lady complaining that it is the school board’s responsibility to protect their kids is grossly misguided, in my view. The safety of children is a parental responsibility. It takes a special kind of idiocy to entrust that to the government at any level, considering how they routinely screw up anything else they ever address.
These are exactly the kind of things that are going to “justify” universal GPS. It “solves everything”!!!
FTR? GPS.
School Drive-by? GPS.
Need to terrorize people into voting for you? GPS!
Need more Cops? GPS!
Need a way to make your fabricated Boogeymen seem scarier? GPS!
Yes, through the magic of GPS now the Boogeyman is everywhere… Everywhere…EVERYWHERE! There’s one behind you right now!!!
Just one of the many, many, many ways the “Justice system” finds ways to be rewarded for failure. Never forget, crime is out of control… so we need more cops! Funny how that always seems to be true…always…everywhere…forever!