Diego Superior Court judge to release John Phillips, a designated Sexually Violent Predator, into the community of Borrego Springs.
Phillips was convicted of lewd and lascivious acts on a child and of sexual battery. The Sexually Violent Predator designation is not handed out lightly. It applies only to offenders the state's own evaluators have determined are likely to commit these crimes again. These are not people who made one mistake. They are the small handful the system itself identifies as the most dangerous.
And San Diego County keeps getting them.
Seven conditionally released SVPs are currently living in this county. Four have been sent to Jacumba Hot Springs. Two are already in Borrego Springs. One is transient, which means no one can say tonight exactly where he is. Phillips would make three in Borrego Springs alone.
None of these placements land in dense urban neighborhoods with a patrol car on the next block. They land in small, remote towns at the end of long roads, where the nearest Sheriff's substation is miles away and response times are measured in tens of minutes. Rural San Diego County has become the state's release valve, and residents here are being asked to absorb a risk the state created and refuses to manage.
There is an obvious alternative, and the state will not take it.
If a man is dangerous enough that his release requires a court order, GPS monitoring, a paid contractor to supervise him and a public notification campaign, then he is dangerous enough to be housed on secure state property. California owns thousands of acres around its prisons and state hospitals. Placing conditionally released SVPs in supervised housing on that state land would provide better monitoring, faster response, and lower cost, and it would not require a single family to learn by mail that a predator is moving in down the street.
The state has that option today. It has chosen not to use it.
By signing, you are calling on the court and on the State of California to:
- Deny the placement of John Phillips at the proposed location in Borrego Springs.
- Stop concentrating sexually violent predators in small rural communities in San Diego County.
- Establish secure, supervised housing for conditionally released SVPs on state prison and state hospital grounds, where security and staffing already exist.
- Give affected communities real notice and a real voice before any placement decision is made, not after.
Borrego Springs is a community, not a storage unit for the state's most dangerous offenders.
Sign the petition. Then take two more minutes and submit a public comment directly to the court record before the September 7 deadline.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (858) 583-7238
The hearing is Wednesday, September 24 at 9:00 a.m. in Department 1702, San Diego Superior Court, 1100 Union Street. I will be there. I hope you will be too.