Circle of crime

Lt. Stephen Wright gunned his police cruiser down Meeting Street in Charleston, anxiously tapping his fingers on the steering wheel as he tried to gain ground on a Honda sedan racing into the distance.

Wright couldn't afford to lose the Honda's driver, a broad-shouldered ex-con wanted for probation violations.

Wilbert Mills had served hard time for attempted robbery and aggravated assault. Police and state probation agents had searched for him for a month with no luck. Suddenly, he drove by them, nonchalantly shouted a greeting and sped off.

"C'mon," Wright grumbled as the Honda suddenly turned up Romney Street and disappeared from view. Wright scanned the alcoves and alleyways for a moment, then jammed on the brakes with a smile. There sat the Honda, under a canopy of oaks beneath a giant billboard of McDonald's french fries.

Wright slapped a pair of handcuffs on Mills as the big man stepped from behind a boarded-up, abandoned shack.

One down. Dozens to go.

Officials say new approaches, such as pairing police with agents on warrant sweeps and home visits, helps the beleaguered probation and parole system crack down on violators. But they acknowledge the efforts aren't enough.

The system sags under the burden of too many criminals, too little enforcement and not enough punishment for those who violate the terms of their release, a Post and Courier investigation found. This creates a demoralizing and frustrating cycle at the ground level for the police and probation agents who must deal with the same people repeatedly committing crimes in their communities, at times with deadly effects.

Take the case of Christopher Bennett, a 36-year-old Spartanburg man who was granted probation repeatedly despite numerous convictions for a host of crimes. His penchant for violence escalated until he beat an 81-year-old man to death with a hammer and robbed him in 2006. In March, he received a life prison term for the killing and a second hammer attack on another elderly man.

Seventh Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy, whose office prosecuted Bennett, said similar cases occur across the state because the criminal justice system is overwhelmed and under-manned.

"You would be hard-pressed to find a serious violent crime in your jurisdiction or my jurisdiction where you can't find the point on the suspect's rap sheet where he or she should have been in prison and not out on the street to commit a crime like that," Gowdy said.

Crime without punishment

Charleston police Sgt. Debbie Fritts knows the problem all too well. She heads a special unit that tracks the Holy City's worst habitual criminals and has seen them get chance after chance and mess up.

To Fritts, the problem breaks down clearly: Probation and parole agents struggle under immense caseloads and get little relief from the state's judicial system. Judges often don't imprison criminals even though they repeatedly thumb their noses at the system, refusing to report, pay restitution or stay out of trouble, she said. They learn that crime does pay.

"The offender has absolutely no reason, truly, to behave himself," Fritts said. "We're arresting them, they're sent to probation, probation is violating them and then they're getting sentenced to more probation. Why not be a criminal? It's absolutely amazing."

Consider Moses Frasier. While free on five years probation in connection with a restaurant holdup, he was arrested for possessing a gun during a 2002 shooting episode. Agents took no steps to revoke his probation and lock him up until the day after he beat 22-year-old Kenneth Boston to death with his bare hands behind a Charleston apartment in 2003. Frasier is now serving a 30-year sentence.

The state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services oversees some 48,000 criminals, including some who have moved out of state or are on the run. The agency considers its active caseload to be about 32,200 offenders that agents work with regularly.

Despite the caseload, state budget cuts have shrunk the agency's staff from 600 agents in the late 1990s to about 470 agents today. Each agent has an average caseload of more than 109 offenders to supervise — 34 more than the recommended national average.

Cheryl Cooper, the assistant agent in charge for Richland County, has worked for the agency for 17 years. She remembers when her office had as many as 65 employees. Now, they have just 21 agents trying to keep track of more than 4,000 offenders. They must share seven vehicles to cover the county's 772 square miles, and most front-line agents had to turn in their state cell phones two months ago because of budget cuts. "There's a lot of improvising going on," Cooper said.

In the Charleston area, departures have left agents in the regional office juggling more than 170 cases each. The two agents who monitor criminals on the Charleston peninsula each must keep track of about 181 people. Court hearings, office appointments and other duties cut deeply into the time agents have to go into the community, conduct home visits and check up on offenders.

Agent Lynne Moldenhauer supervises the probation and parole office in Charleston County, home to nearly 3,900 offenders. From her office, she hears them joke about getting picked up on probation violations. They figure they will spend 90 days in jail, go to court and be set free with little or no punishment other than the time served waiting to go before the judge, she said.

"If that is the word on the street, then we are in big trouble," she said. "The concern I have is that probation's credibility is getting carved away in tremendous ways and to some people it is just a joke."

Set up for failure

Each week, dozens of criminals get hauled before judges across the state to explain why they messed up on probation. Many have multiple violations. Some never showed up to see their probation officer after getting a break and avoiding prison for their crimes.

Chief Deputy Mitch Lucas, who runs the Charleston County jail, has seen upwards of 200 inmates at a time sit in the detention center on probation or parole violations, many of whom will be let go again.

He described the system as designed to fail: It locks up criminals for months or years and then tosses them back into the same old communities. They return with little or no rehabilitation and a host of new probation conditions they must live by, such as getting a job while strapped with a criminal record, a drug addiction and no skill, and still being required to pay restitution and court fees.

"Why do we expect success here? Under the best circumstances, these conditions would be difficult for most people," he said. "The system we have now just sets people up for failure."

Lawrence McIver agrees. The

47-year-old James Island man on probation for second-degree burglary said he landed in jail recently after a state restitution center booted him out for the third time. "I came in smelling like alcohol, so they violated me," he said with a shrug. "I'm an alcoholic, but I can't get no help with my addiction."

Andre Manigault, a 21-year-old from North Charleston, said he couldn't afford the $3,000 in fees he was ordered to pay when he was on supervised release after a crack-cocaine conviction. He bailed out and stopped reporting to his agent. "I figured they were just going to lock me up anyway," he said. He was right. He's now back in jail, waiting for a probation revocation hearing.

State probation and parole officials say they are trying to do a better job of coordinating services and programs to ensure offenders have the best chance of succeeding. They also point out that South Carolina's success rate with probation, or supervised release, is above the national average. About 65 percent of the people on supervised release in South Carolina successfully complete their time on supervision, according 2007 figures. The national rate, according to 2001 figures, is about 62 percent.

That, of course, is little consolation to the families of those who have been killed, raped or otherwise victimized by offenders who fell within that 35 percent failure zone.

Take the case of Paul Fletcher Reid, 45, a registered sex offender who raped a Lexington County woman multiple times at her home while his 3-year-old son sat outside in a truck in May 2007. He raped another woman in 1985 but served just nine years of a 30-year sentence before he was released. At the time of last year's sexual assault, Fletcher was on probation in connection with drug conspiracy charges from 2005.

Or consider 40-year-old Jeffrey L. Smith, charged with murder and robbery in the October killing of an 83-year-old man found stuffed in a car trunk outside a Myrtle Beach restaurant. Smith had been placed on probation earlier in the year in connection with a fraud conviction.

Then there is Antonio Jerome Rivers, who absconded from supervision after he was paroled from the state's youthful offender program in connection with stolen auto and gun charges. Rivers had been on the loose for months when he reportedly pulled a gun on Charleston police officer and former mayoral candidate Omar Brown at a North Charleston gas station last year. Both men were wounded in the ensuing shootout.

Rounding up violators

In recent months, probation and parole officials have worked together and shared information with other law enforcement agencies to better identify and track violent, repeat offenders.

The agents recently gave Charleston police a map locating all the criminals in the city on probation and parole. Police compared the map with their's showing high-crime areas. They were virtually identical, said Wright, the Charleston police lieutenant.

The map showing offenders in North Charleston is more impressive. It's filled with so many colored bubbles it looks like a gum ball machine. North Charleston is home to about half of the county's probation and parole cases.

Earlier this year, North Charleston Police Chief Jon Zumalt asked Gov. Mark Sanford to assign two probation and parole agents to his department to work full-time with a new unit targeting career criminals. The state didn't bite, citing a shortage of agents.

Zumalt, Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen and others also advocated changing state law to allow police to conduct warrantless searches of criminals on probation and parole and the homes in which they live. That measure stalled in the Legislature. Probation and parole agents already have limited power to search the homes of those on probation or parole.

Still, Charleston area police and probation agents fight the battle in the streets.

On one recent steamy morning, seven probation agents and Charleston police officers zig-zagged in a convoy across the peninsula to sweep down on and arrest more that a dozen probation violators.

Patrolman Nick Brown, a former football star in Berkeley County, said the sweeps are necessary but frustrating because they're often after the same people again. "We get them over and over ... What we've got ain't working."

Probation agent Teela Fleming, an 18-year-veteran, said it is "very frustrating" picking up the same people. But, she said, it helps to have marked police cruisers along because it presents a united front and a show of force that tends to reduce the odds of violence and flight.

The team banged on doors, searched homes and offered stern warnings to relatives. In the end, they made just two arrests over a three-hour period.

The hunt is often a game of cat and mouse, with relatives and friends doing what they can to cover for fugitives. Wright drove through the city's East Side with a team of agents. On each street they entered, men quickly lifted cell phones and dialed furiously, their eyes glued to the cruisers. "Look at them," Wright said. "They're warning their friends."

Within minutes, the streets emptied.

Escaped with her life

Beth Ferguson (above) is certain that she would not have been kidnapped, robbed and brutally beaten had the ex-con who attacked her last year not been given so many breaks.

When Lemar "Tommy" Mack, 46, abducted her, tied her up and beat her senseless, he already had served time for abducting a woman at a Kmart on Rivers Avenue and raping her in 1994. He also had been convicted for attacking women in 1979 and 1984. He was paroled on all of those charges, only to continue to attack women with increasing violence.

Ferguson, 41, should be his last victim. Earlier this year, he was sentenced to life in prison without a chance of a parole for his attack on her. She thinks he would have raped and killed her had she not managed to escape when he left her tied up.

After that harrowing experience, Ferguson learned to shoot and carries a gun. She says she's all for abolishing parole for people who commit violent crimes. "I believe it would protect a lot of society. I believe it wouldn't have happened to me."

'It's not fair'

"Oh God!" was Eva Mae Beasley's reaction when she recently learned that the man who killed her father was free on parole at the time.

Police found her father, Bryan A. Richards (above), April 15 last year on his hands and knees in his North Charleston apartment on Delta Street with a bullet in his chest. He died seven weeks later in Medical University Hospital.

Police charged Lavelle Richardson, an 18-year-old convicted robber who was out on parole from that conviction after spending 90 days in "shock incarceration" designed to scare young offenders out of a life of crime. Richardson lived just a few doors down from Beasley's father.

Beasley, who lives in Gray, Ga., said she's angry at the justice system. "I think if you're a violent criminal you should not be let out. I don't think it was fair ... To me 90 days ain't long enough ... The boy's violent. I think the law is wrong ... If he had been sentenced to prison this wouldn't have happened. It's not fair to the families. It's not right. My Daddy would not have died."

She's also angry because she believes Richardson should have gotten a much longer sentence than the 15 years he got for killing her father. The fact that he was on parole from a violent crime when the killing occurred, "to me ,that should have made a big impact" on his sentence, she said.

"My only hope is that when he gets out he does something stupid and is locked up forever. I don't want him to kill anyone, but a part of me wants him to get out and commit another violent crime. I know it's not right but to me it's not fair."