Parole Story

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SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 27, 2009 TODAY’S OUTLOOK: INLAND: 100|65 MOUNTAINS: 83|49 DESERT: 108|74 COMPLETE LOCAL FORECAST: B12

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Street racing on the skids statewide CRACKDOWN: A concerted effort by police, as well as the economy, are cited in a drop in accidents and arrests. BY STEVEN BARRIE THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE

It used to be the hot Saturday night ticket. Hundreds gathered along some stretch of road, usually in an industrial district, to watch souped-up cars race. But that was then. Reports of illegal street racing, organized through Internet Web

sites and phone texting, have fallen off significantly in the Inland area, the result of beefed up enforcement and an economy in the doldrums. Since the California Highway Patrol began a statewide crackdown on illegal street racing three years ago, deaths attributed to racing are down 54.5 percent and

injuries have fallen 55 percent, said Jaime Coffee, a spokeswoman for the CHP in Sacramento. One Inland resident died Sept. 20 in a street racing incident. Measures have included getting communities to install speed humps in areas favored by racers, ticketing racers and those aiding or abetting them, and conducting inspections of the cars to determine if they have illegally modified emissions controls or stolen per-

formance parts. CHP Officer Robert Corral, a spokesman for the agency’s San Bernardino office, said the state police force targets three types of racing: r So-call sideshows, where participants compete not only in short speed contests but in various kinds of skid competitions. r Drag racing. r Long-distance racing, usually

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H E AV Y W E I G HT T I T L E B O U T: R I V E R S I D E B OX E R O U TC L AS S ED BY C HAMPION

Duties engulf parole agents REPEAT OFFENDERS: A new law will reduce the workload, but there is still a plethora of dangerous people to track. BY SOLOMON MOORE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Challenger Chris Arreola, left, of Riverside, mixes it up with champion Vitali Klitschko during their World Boxing Council heavyweight title fight Saturday at Staples Center in Los Angeles. Arreola suffered his first defeat when he didn’t answer the bell for the 11th round.

ARREOLA TAKEN OUT BY TKO C

hris Arreola’s chance to win a share of the world heavyweight boxing title ends when the Riverside fighter can’t answer the bell for the 11th round of his bout against WBC champion Vitali Klitschko Saturday night at Staples Center in Los Angeles. With Arreola’s face bloodied and swollen from the counterpunching of Klitschko, and the challenger trailing on all three judges’ cards, Arreola’s trainer, Henry Ramirez, stopped the fight despite Arreola’s objection. “He was taking too much punishment,” Ramirez said. “When I told him I was going to stop the fight, he was irate.” It was Arreola’s first professional loss while Klitschko improved to 38-2. DAVID BAUMAN/THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE

MORE COVERAGE IN SPORTS DAY/B1

Chris Arreola, whose face was bloodied and swollen, leaves the ring after in tears after his trainer stopped the fight.

Court challenge inevitable if health care mandate OK’d BY SCOTT CANON MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

KANSAS CITY, MO. — A proposal to reform America’s health care system by forcing everybody to buy into it has touched a nerve. The keystone to Democratic efforts to overhaul health care has prompted complaints that Uncle Sam shouldn’t be ordering citizens to spend money on insurance, and at the idea that individual Americans would no longer be able to hazard their own risks. Some even question whether the U.S. Constitution allows Congress to impose such a mandate. And, if it passes, a court chal-

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California .......A2 lenge is almost inevitable. Lottery .........A11 David Rivkin and Lee Casey, two Nation ..........A3 lawyers who served in the Ronald People ..........A2 Reagan and George H.W. Bush World ...........A4 administrations, recently argued SPORTS DAY: B that a national insurance mandate Dodgers ........B1 is unconstitutional. States — Mas- Golf ............B12 sachusetts already has a require- Weather .......B12 ment — may be able to compel such BUSINESS: E insurance buys, they said. But the Chuck Jaffe.....E2 federal government does not have Kids & Money ..E2 that power over its citizens. “The Supreme Court has never accepted such a proposition, and it is unlikely to accept it now, even in

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LOCAL NEWS: C Datebook ........C2 Perspective ..C10a Quips & Quotes.C10a Our Views....C10b Your Views...C10b Young & Sharp.C11

LOCAL PLUS: D Books...........D5 Crossword .....D9 Family Fun ......D2 Movies..........D7 Facing off in Riverside Obituaries....D3-4 TV Listings .....D6 A handful of Neo-Nazis protesting illegal immigration near a day-labor CLASSIFIED . . . . . . . . E5 site in Riverside on Saturday were HOME SERVICES . . . E6 met by 200 counterprotestors. A few JUMBLE PUZZLE . . . E6 fights broke out but no one was PE HOMES . . . . . . . . . F3 seriously hurt, police said. LOCAL/C1

ESCONDIDO — A series of highprofile crimes involving parolees in California highlights the challenges of keeping track of them in a state that discharges more than 120,000 inmates annually, more than any other. Last month, two campus police officers at the UC Berkeley, became suspicious of a paroled sex offender named Phillip Garrido and called his parole officer, leading to Garrido’s arrest on charges of kidnapping Jaycee Dugard, now 29, in 1991, raping her and holding her captive in a backyard encampment. In July, a Los Angeles man on parole was arrested in the kidnapping and murder of a 17-year-old girl, and an Oakland parolee shot and killed four police officers before killing himself. California is the only state that places all released prisoners on parole, no matter the seriousness of their crime. Even at a time of historically low violent crime, critics argue that overloading parole agents compromises public safety. Legislation passed this month will reduce the “average” caseloads for parole agents to 45, from 70, and nonviolent, less serious offenders will no longer be returned to prison for administrative infractions like missing counseling appointments, ditching parole agent visits or failing drug tests. Agents handling some of the most

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CONTRACEPTIVES

Concerns rise about popular pills BY NATASHA SINGER NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

The oral contraceptives Yaz and Yasmin are the top-selling pharmaceutical line for Bayer HealthCare, largely as a result of marketing that presents them as much more than mere pregnancy prevention. Yaz, in particular, the top-selling birth control pill in the United States, owes much of its popularity to multimillion-dollar ad campaigns that have promoted the drug as a quality-of-life treatment to combat acne and severe premenstrual depression. Yaz, a newer sister drug to Yasmin, contains less estrogen. The franchise had worldwide sales of about $1.8 billion last year, based on Bayer’s successful positioning of Yasmin and Yaz as the go-to drug brands for women under 35. But recently, the Yaz line’s image has been clouded by concerns from some researchers, health advocates and plaintiffs’ lawyers. They say that the drugs put women at higher risk for blood clots,

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