Michelle Montoya
Michelle Montoya was an 18-year-old senior at Rio Linda High School in California. She was murdered, her body found in the high school's wood shop. The main suspect: Alex Del Thomas, 34, the schools temporary janitor, is an ex-con with a gang tattoo and a history of violent robberies and domestic abuse behind him. The burning question: How did Thomas, with his criminal record and background -- including two strikes for voluntary manslaughter and armed robbery -- ever land a job that put him around children every day?
"California already has a law on the books requiring school officials to run fingerprint background checks on teachers and other help before they can start to work, but for some reason the law doesn't include part-time janitorial help," said Rob Stutzman, public information officer with the California Department of Justice (DOJ). That law also wouldn't have necessarily prevented Thomas' hiring, because it only bars employment on the grounds of sex- or drug-related offenses. Still, some people have pointed out that had his background been known, it is unlikely school officials would have employed Thomas, either because of his background or because he omitted it from his application. A standard fingerprint check, which costs $45, is done with the traditional ink-and-roll system and takes 16 to 30 days to complete. The department can also run an expedited fingerprint check in six to seven days, if the requesting agency needs information in a hurry.
According to Stutzman, a fingerprint check was in process when Montoya's murder occurred. "In this case, the district actually printed this guy, but held the prints for 30 days before ever asking DOJ to run the $45 check," said Stutzman. School officials could not be reached for comment, but state legislators, prompted by an outraged public, have jumped into the fray and new laws are already on the way to require all school employees be printed and checked before starting their first day on the job. Montoya's murder occurred on May 16, 1997, and by May 22nd, California Assembly members Barbara Alby (R-Folsom) and Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) had introduced two related bills.
Alby's bill would add "conviction for any serious or violent felonies" to the list of crimes that will bar an individual from school employment, even in non-teaching positions. That bill would also provide $5 million in funding for the state DOJ to develop a new "live scan" fingerprint check system, which could eventually provide background checks in as little as 72 hours. While extremely expensive and still in its preliminary stages, the system could eliminate the cumbersome paper trail required with the ink-and-roll system, scanning fingerprints directly into a computer at the school district's main offices and digitally transmitting them to DOJ. Ortiz's complementary bill will prohibit school districts from employing a job applicant until the criminal background checks are completed, and would close the loophole Thomas slipped through, which exempted substitute and temporary employees from the background checks. Both bills recently were passed by the State Senate Public Safety Committee and are expected to be passed into law by the end of the year.
Megan's Law
Seven-year-old Megan Kanka's parents didn't know that a resident in their New Jersey neighborhood was a convicted sex offender. The neighbor kidnapped and murdered Megan, and that ugly crime has led not just to the attacker's conviction and a sentence of death, but also to new national legislation relaxing confidentiality laws in relation to convicted sex offenders. While all 50 states are now required to make available information necessary to let residents know if a convicted sex offender has moved into their midst, California's version of the law took it one step further -- requiring DOJ to disseminate the information in an easy-to-access CD-ROM format.
Already, the CD-ROM database -- which was released July 1, 1997, and contains a listing of over 63,000 registered sex offenders -- has produced dividends in child safety. Warren A. Milton, 30, was convicted of a sex crime with a child under the age of 16 just two years ago, an offense that put him on the California DOJ database. After his release, a neighbor that had scanned the new database a few days before, recognized Milton from his mug shot. The ex-con was playing in a community swimming pool with a 12-year-old girl. The neighbor passed the information on to her other neighbors and eventually told the girl's father. He called the cops, who found Milton living as a tenant with a Rancho Cordova, Calif., woman and her three young children, a clear violation of his probation, which prohibits him from interacting with anyone under the age of 16. It appears that one of the woman's children may have already been molested by Milton, but neighbors and law enforcement officials are relieved that he is now back behind bars. "It is a success story. It is what the law was designed to do, and the kids in the neighborhood are safer tonight," said the DOJ's Stutzman when asked about the case.
A Line of Attack
Despite recent successes in preventing crimes against children, there will always be a crack in the wall of defense. That is where TRAK -- a custom, user-friendly software system developed by the nonprofit corporation SocialTech -- comes into play. Following the abduction and murder of Polly Klass, a group of Northern Californians analyzed what went wrong and right in the investigation. What they concluded was that America's 17,600 law enforcement agencies are ill-equipped to take advantage of the technology available that can help recover abducted kids quickly and safely, bringing their abductors to justice. They set out to change the way abductions are handled.
By 1996, SocialTech, with help from private business supporters like Hewlett-Packard and AT&T, launched the TRAK software system, which is already credited with recovering several missing kids. "In the past, it took hours or even days to get pictures and information out in a usable format for law enforcement, and everything was done on photocopiers and fax machines. It was manual, slow and often of rather poor quality," said Todd Bower, president of SocialTech. "With TRAK, that is no longer the case." Under the TRAK system, if a child is missing, an officer can scan the child's photo, adjust its size and clarity, and drop the photo onto a templated notification form. That form also walks the officer quickly through a step-by-step construction of an informational flyer that can then be rapidly delivered -- via fax or the Internet -- to police agencies, schools or anybody else that might have information on the missing child. SocialTech believes high-quality information disseminated to law enforcement agencies within a few hours of an abduction can turn the tide on child abductions, putting the power back in the hands of law enforcement.
For more information, contact Beth Dutton of SocialTech at 800/PC-4-TRAK or e-mail at
Ray Dussault is a Sacramento, Calif.-based freelance writer. E-mail:
