On August 24, the state announced it wants to release Sexually Violent Predator John Phillips into a home at 1619 Zuni Trail in Borrego Springs. That house already has an SVP living in it. The state’s plan is to put two of them under one roof.
The hearing that decides this is September 24. Public comment closes September 7. That announcement landed after the deadline to file business for our September 1 Board meeting had already passed.
So I am filing it anyway.
On Tuesday, September 1, I am bringing an item to the Board of Supervisors that requires waiving Board Policy A-72, the rule that sets our normal review timelines. I do not ask for that waiver lightly. I am asking for it here because the alternative is to sit on our hands until our next meeting, by which point the public comment window would be closed and this placement would be that much closer to final.
My item does three things.
First, it directs the County to send a formal letter from the Board of Supervisors to Judge Theodore Weathers and to the Director of the California Department of State Hospitals opposing the placement of John Phillips in Borrego Springs. Not a press release. An official position from the County, on the record, in front of the judge who decides this.
Second, it puts the County on record that stacking SVPs in one house is its own hazard. Concentrating multiple high-risk individuals at a single address makes monitoring harder, enforcement harder, and treatment harder, and it dumps all of the resulting risk on one small community. These men do not belong in our neighborhoods, and they certainly should not be rooming together.
Third, and this is the part that outlasts this one case, it adds to the County’s Legislative Program our support for changing the Conditional Release Program so that participants are housed in state-run transitional housing instead of scattered into residential neighborhoods.
That last piece has a clock on it too. SB 380, passed last year, requires the Department of State Hospitals to study the feasibility of exactly this kind of transitional housing and report to the Legislature by January 1, 2027. That report is being written right now. If San Diego County wants its position in it, we say so now or we lose the chance.
Here is why this keeps happening to the same places. The placement rules require distance from schools, parks and daycares, which in practice means rural rental properties are almost the only ones that qualify. The state pays above market rent, and rural landlords take the deal. Seven SVPs are currently in San Diego County. Every housed one of them is in Borrego Springs or Jacumba. The seventh is transient, often living in an RV, and his location can change at any time.
Borrego Springs and Jacumba are also, by the University of Wisconsin’s Area Deprivation Index, among the most under-resourced communities in California. The state is concentrating its highest-risk offenders in the places with the least infrastructure to absorb them and the least ability to push back. That is not a policy. That is a shortcut.
There is an answer, and it does not require anyone to be released who would otherwise be held. Put the transitional housing on state property, with the same conditions, the same monitoring, and the same freedoms CONREP participants have today. The state already owns the land and already staffs the security. What it stops doing is asking a town of a few thousand people to carry the risk for the entire state.
What you can do this week:
Submit a public comment before September 7. The court reads them. Email sdsafe@sdsheriff.org or call (858) 583-7238.
Sign the petition at https://www.supervisorjimdesmond.com/svp
Come to the hearing. Wednesday, September 24 at 9:00 a.m., San Diego Superior Court, Department 1702, 1100 Union Street. I will be there.
We have stopped these placements before by moving fast and showing up in numbers. That is exactly what this moment asks for again.
San Diego County District 5 Supervisor Jim Desmond
https://www.supervisorjimdesmond.com/
