This story remains more than heartbreaking, especially when we heard from the families of both Chelsea King and Amber Dubois at the sentencing of their admitted killer John Albert Gardner. At one point Chelsea’s father even said, “I am not alone in my frustration with a justice system that 10 years ago identified this coward (John Gardner) as a serious and violent threat to young girls and failed to imprison him and monitor him for the rest of his life.”

Right now in California, more than 7,000 paroled sex offenders are wearing GPS trackers to monitor their movements and in the last four months alone, 31 thousand alerts sent out by these devices were reportedly not properly followed up on. Something that upset Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher.

“It’s shocking I mean, it’s absolutely unacceptable, I mean, 40 years ago, we put a man on the moon, and we brought him back and you can’t tell me we can’t design GPS devices to track the violent sexual offenders, to know where they go and to be able to respond when there’s an alert,” says Fletcher.

The startling number of alerts that hadn’t been properly cleared came to light while California state auditors were investigating the case of John Gardner, who confessed to murdering the two teenage girls in 19 months after having his GPS tracker removed. California’s inspector general says agents failed to follow up when gardner, a violent sex offender, broke curfew 168 times while on parole and had 7 or 8 other more major violations. Had Gardner been properly monitored and re-arrested, Chelsea King and Amber Dubois might still be alive.

According to California Inspector General David Shaw, “No one was looking at his GPS tracks, there were no alerts that were being generated because the zones had never been established, so, you know the fact that he was living too close to a school for example, just never came up”

The state department of corrections has only 275 parole agents monitoring GPS activity – too few to handle the traffic from serious violations to low battery warnings to riding in elevators.

Scott Kernan at the California Department of Corrections says, “The agents have close to a million alerts a year, in addition to all of the other work the agents have. It is for sure that there is going to be instances where alerts, especially low level alerts, aren’t responded to.”

Critics say the gardner case proves millions of dollars in new technology can’t protect California by itself. Also, because of the huge budget issues here, the state can’t afford more manpower, so the Inspector General recommends identifying high risk parolees for closer oversight and having analysts watch GPS alerts so those 275 agents can get back out in the community. What do you think?