Riverside County Law Puts More Limits on Paroled Sex Offenders

After weeks of protests from Mead Valley residents living near a high-risk paroled sex offender, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed an ordinance Tuesday that tightens restrictions on where paroled offenders can live.

The ordinance was written by Supervisor Jeff Stone this month after convicted rapist David Allyn Dokich, 52, was placed in a Mead Valley neighborhood, near Perris in western Riverside County.

Dokich was convicted of the 1982 rape of a 15-year-old girl in his Dana Point apartment and of the kidnapping and rape of a 16-year-old Riverside County girl in 1985 while he was on parole.

The ordinance requires that the state provide Riverside County 60 days’ notice before the release of any felony sex offenders in the county.

It prohibits registered sex offenders from living within 1 1/2 miles of schools, libraries, parks or recreational centers where minors gather. The ordinance also requires offenders to wear a tamper-proof satellite tracking device at all times.

California law mandates that the state give counties 45 days’ notice when violent felons are paroled and prohibits sex offender parolees from living within a quarter-mile of elementary and junior high schools.

County Counsel William Katzenstein expressed reservations about the county ordinance, arguing that Riverside County had no jurisdiction over California’s parole guidelines.

State legislators “control this area of the law 100%,” he told the supervisors Tuesday.

The ordinance went into effect immediately but was adopted “conditional to and subject to review by the California state attorney general,” Katzenstein said.

State parole officials will not alter their monitoring or housing of Dokich without direction from state corrections officials, said Jeff Fagot, an acting regional parole administrator.

Despite community outrage, state parole officials believe that Dokich’s residence on Old Elsinore Road is the best location for him.

“This is a sparsely populated community,” Fagot said. There are no immediate plans to transfer Dokich, he said.

Dokich is classified as a high-risk sex offender, because he has two or more convictions for certain sex crimes.

The ordinance was passed after angry comments from several of the nearly 30 Mead Valley residents at the board meeting.

Dokich is “just a threat and a danger to our children,” Deanna Pina, mother of four, told the board.

“We will do whatever we have to do to get him removed,” said Cindy Ramirez, a Mead Valley mother of three.

Dokich is restricted to the house 24 hours a day and must wear an electronic monitoring device, Fagot said. He lives with five other parolees, two of whom are also sex offenders.