La Jolla residents may soon have a new way to stay informed when registered sex offenders move into the neighborhood. San Diego County officials are looking into a subscriber-based system that will send residents an e-mail alert when a registered sex offender moves into their ZIP code.

The alert would not reveal the exact address of the offender but would confirm that an offender has moved into the neighborhood and provide a link to a sex offenders' database created through Megan's Law and hosted by the Office of the Attorney General

In late September, the San Diego County Supervisors board committed $20,000 in funding to launch the new program at the beginning of next year.

Approximately 4,000 sex offenders currently resident in San Diego County including seven in La Jolla, 20 in Pacific Beach and another 10 in UTC,

After convicted sex offender John Gardner admitted raping and murdering two San Diego County teens—Amber Dubois, 14, and Chelsea King, 17—support has grown within the board for increasing the ability of residents to track registered offenders. Supervisor Bill Horn originally proposed that San Diego take even more drastic steps due to local concern over children's safety.

However, San Diego detective, Jim Ryan, one of the two main detectives monitoring registered sex offenders in the city of San Diego expressed reservations about the proposed e-mail system.

"We cannot designate them all as pedophiles because some are rapists, sexual batterers and indecent exposure convictions. My concern is the public assuming the guy who just moved in next door is a pedophile, just like you categorized them, and not totally looking into the conviction info available on the public Megan's website," said Ryan. "I would have to see how this new program is exactly going to work before I could give an overall opinion on how effective this will be for San Diego and La Jolla residents."

Groups such as the La Jolla YMCA see an e-mail alert only as a positive. Jennifer Dunn, associate executive director of the La Jolla YMCA, states, "Our focus is always the safety of the children we serve in the community, and we welcome new innovative ways to keep kids safe."

For more than 50 years, the state of California has required sex offenders to register with local police. Information on where the offenders lived, however, was not available to the public until 1996, thanks to California's Megan's Law.

Megan's Law is based on 7-year-old Megan Nicole Kankan, who was raped and killed by a known sex offender who had moved into her family's New Jersey neighborhood without their knowledge. All states now have a form of Megan's Law, which provides public access to the information sex offenders are required to provide, while prohibiting harassment.