The following is a copy of a letter addressed to Commissioner Wendy Shapero of the Santa Clarita Courthouse.
I read the report about the bail conditions imposed on Jared Paul Estrada, the man accused in the Whole Foods sexual battery case, and I cannot understand how this response is supposed to reassure anyone.
According to the reported allegations, this suspect (is charged with following) a woman through Whole Foods, exposing himself while she was crouched down shopping, and placing part of his exposed genitals near her face while apparently recording it.
If those allegations are true, that is not a minor offense. That is not simply “inappropriate behavior.” That is predatory sexual conduct against a woman in a public grocery store.
And the court’s answer was to order him to stay away from that one Whole Foods and attend a couple of sexual-compulsion classes each week?
How is that a meaningful restriction?
A stay-away order from one grocery store does not protect the public. It just tells him to go somewhere else. Another market. Another shopping center. Another parking lot. Another place where women are simply trying to go about their lives.
The issue is not Whole Foods. The issue is the alleged conduct.
This is the kind of ruling that makes ordinary people wonder whether the courts take public safety seriously anymore. It is also the kind of ruling that frustrates law enforcement officers who are still expected to do the hard work of finding suspects, building cases, writing reports, gathering evidence and making arrests.
Deputies and officers are asked to pursue criminals and protect victims. But when they bring a case like this into court and the result looks like little more than a calendar reminder for classes, what message does that send?
I am not saying law enforcement will stop doing its job. Good officers do the job anyway. But rulings like this grind people down. They make officers wonder whether the system they are working for is still serious about consequences. They make victims wonder whether coming forward was worth it. And they make the public wonder whether the courtroom is more concerned with managing the suspect than protecting the community.
Due process matters. The suspect is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. No one is asking the court to convict him before trial.
But presumption of innocence does not require weak bail conditions. It does not require the court to minimize risk. It does not require the public to pretend that these allegations are no big deal.
If a man is accused of exposing himself, placing his genitals near a woman’s face, and recording it in a public store, the court’s response should reflect the seriousness of that allegation. It should not look soft. It should not look routine. It should not look like the defendant has merely been inconvenienced.
This case deserved stronger conditions. It deserved meaningful supervision. It deserved monitoring. It deserved restrictions that addressed the risk to the community, not just one location.
Instead, the message many people received is that a suspect accused of this kind of sexual conduct can avoid house arrest, avoid monitoring and continue moving through the community as long as he attends a couple of classes each week and shops somewhere other than that Whole Foods.
That is not reassuring.
Commissioner Shapero, this is why people lose confidence in the courts. This is why victims hesitate. This is why law enforcement gets discouraged. And this is why the public increasingly believes that the justice system is more concerned with leniency than accountability.
Santa Clarita deserves better. So do victims. So do the officers and deputies who are still expected to do their jobs when the courts appear unwilling to do theirs.
Arthur Tom
Valencia
