I was shocked to see this article in Saturday's Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Despite the fact that it has been almost 11 weeks since Hurricane Katrina, FEMA and the Louisiana government continue to fail to provide Texas with a list of Louisiana sex offenders. When I posted about this weeks ago, I thought Governor Perry's plea to FEMA would be heeded. Now we find out from the Star-Telegram that there have been 4 reported sex crimes committed by Louisiana evacuees. As if that isn't disturbing enough, the most recent of the reported assaults, which involved an 11 year old, occurred in a room at an EconoLodge paid for by......you guessed it....FEMA.
Governor Perry is quoted in the article: "I think there are some deep problems in that agency," Perry said Friday. "For some reason or other they are not being able to function in an efficient way to serve the people of this country. I'm really disappointed and frustrated."
FEMA's pathetic response: it will look into Perry's complaints about possible evictions.
While it is incredible that this level of incompetence continues to pervade FEMA, it is unacceptable that these deviants are unaccounted for due to that incompetence.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/13151333.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Sat, Nov. 12, 2005
STAR-TELEGRAM AUSTIN BUREAU
AUSTIN - Lurking among the hundreds of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees who fled to Texas are dozens, maybe even hundreds, of sexual predators, state authorities believe.
But weeks after the state first complained, and even after four evacuees were accused of sexual attacks and arrested, the federal government won't or can't give Texas a list of Louisiana sex offenders who came here and applied for emergency assistance, state officials say.
Now the Federal Emergency Management Agency is promising to help provide names sometime next week, but Gov. Rick Perry said FEMA's "ineptitude" and "bureaucratic bungling" make him doubt that it will happen on time. And even if the agency does come through, he can't understand, he says, why it has taken so long to get the crucial information to law enforcement, who could possibly use the information to prevent sexual attacks.
One man arrested in Richardson in October was a registered Louisiana sex offender, but police say they discovered that only after he victimized an 8-year-old girl and fellow Katrina survivor.
"I am very upset," Perry told the Star-Telegram. "We can't seem to get any appropriate solutions to some of these big issues." Perry, a Republican, also called on President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to immediately reform FEMA in the interest of public safety.
"The president right on down needs to really hammer into this agency culture that you have a job to do and that job is to assist people in times of need and to protect the citizens of this country. So far they're failing," Perry said.
FEMA has cited privacy concerns as an impediment to releasing the list of Louisiana residents known to be in Texas, a list that state officials wanted so they could check to see if any of the names match those of known sex offenders. Rebuffed, the governor's office then said it would give FEMA a list of Louisiana sex offenders so the federal agency could determine which names match aid recipients and then inform law enforcement. That list of offenders was handed to FEMA on Oct. 16, said Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw.
"As of yet we don't have anything," McCraw said. "We're expecting it. We don't know what the holdup is right now."
Frank Mansell, a FEMA spokesman in Austin, could not say when the specific data Texas is seeking on sex offenders would be released, but he stressed that the agency is helping federal, state and local law enforcement agencies identify criminals while adhering to federal privacy laws. "We are cooperating with states that are seeking information on specific individuals who are either wanted by law enforcement or who have been convicted of specific crimes," Mansell said.
He said the state has to request that the information be matched against the FEMA database, which has 2.5 million names. Mansell said 12 of 14 requests from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies had been processed and the remaining two are still being worked on, one of them presumably the request from Texas.
In the meantime, Texas on its own has identified 140 Louisiana sex offenders who fled Hurricane Katrina and are believed to be living here among more than 400,000 Katrina evacuees, McCraw said. He declined to say how the state Homeland Security agency tracked the offenders, whose names have been provided to local law enforcement agencies. But McCraw believes the actual number of Louisiana sex offenders could be in the hundreds.
"I know it's going to be more than 140," he said.
McCraw said he wants to get the names of any known sex offenders into the hands of local and state police agencies immediately. Officials also want to know the names of evacuees who are on parole or probation.
"If we can prevent one violent act or sex offense, it's worth the effort," he said. "That's why there is the obvious sense of urgency."
For one 8-year-old girl in Richardson, it's too late, police say. They say Matthew Lindsey, listed on the Louisiana State Police Web site as a convicted sex offender, molested the unidentified girl in his FEMA-provided hotel room at the EconoLodge on North Central Expressway in Richardson over the weekend of Oct. 1. Lindsey was baby-sitting 11 children there at the time of the attack, police said.
A few days later, acting on a complaint from the child's mother, Lindsey was arrested and charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child and failure to register as a sex offender. There have been at least three other allegations of sex crimes committed by people describing themselves as Katrina evacuees -- two in Houston and one in Plano.
A search of the Louisiana police Web site did not produce matches for the other three suspects.
There were also reports of rapes at the Astrodome in Houston, which became a makeshift shelter for thousands of Katrina evacuees, but it is impossible to determine who the attackers were, said Cassandra Thomas, senior vice president of the Houston Area Women's Center. "I can tell you that around the area where the evacuees were, people were sexually assaulted," Thomas said. "Whether or not people in the Astrodome that were sexually assaulted were assaulted by evacuees, there's no way to know."
State officials are upset about more than FEMA's failure to provide information on the relatively small percentage of convicts among otherwise law-abiding Katrina evacuees. In a blistering letter to Chertoff several days ago, Perry complained of stingy reimbursement rates for debris removal, imminent evictions of Katrina evacuees living in apartments and "inconsistent and disparate treatment" of Texas compared with Louisiana.
"I think there are some deep problems in that agency," Perry said Friday. "For some reason or other they are not being able to function in an efficient way to serve the people of this country. I'm really disappointed and frustrated."
FEMA has said it will look into Perry's complaints about possible evictions.
IN THE KNOW
Evacuees charged with sex crimes
Oct. 5: Matthew Lindsey, 38, a convicted child molester from New Orleans, was arrested in Richardson and charged with failure to register as a sex offender and aggravated sexual assault of a child, police said. Lindsey had been baby-sitting 11 children, also Katrina evacuees, at an EconoLodge, where he received paid FEMA lodging; Lindsey confessed to sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl, police said.
Sept. 13: Yaphet Jones, 32, of New Orleans was arrested outside a Motel 6 in Houston and charged with indecency with a child by exposure, and burglary of a habitation with intent to commit sexual assault, police said. The victims, including a 14-year-old girl, were also Katrina evacuees.
Sept. 11: Gean Williams Washington, 38, of New Orleans was arrested and charged in Houston with indecency with a child by exposure, police said.
Sept 7: Freddie C. Murray, 48, of New Orleans was arrested and charged with aggravated sexual assault, police said. Murray attacked a 13-year-old girl at a private residence, where he was staying with relatives, police said.
Jay Root, (512) 476-4294 [email protected]
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