Galt pushes back on placement
Officials oppose plan to let sex offender live on city’s outskirts
GALT — The Galt City Council on Friday unanimously approved drafting a letter opposing the placement of a sexually violent predator from Humboldt County on the outskirts of town.
The council held a special meeting to discuss a proposal from the California Department of State Hospitals to place 40year-old Joshua Cooley at a residence located at 9675 Harvey Road.
The residence eyed for Cooley is in an unincorporated area of Sacramento County on the outskirts of Galt, about a mile from Greer Elementary School, which enrolls more than 460 students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
The home is also about a mile from Walker Community Park, the largest recreational facility in Galt that is frequently used by children, as well as two miles from Galt High School.
According to public documents, Cooley was charged in Humboldt County with multiple cases of sexual battery, making criminal threats, kidnapping and the sexual assault of a person younger than 14 in 2001 and 2002.
He was convicted in 2004, and served four years and eight months in prison. He was released on parole and required to wear an ankle monitor. He violated parole in 2007 after providing alcohol to two 12-year-old girls at a party inside his Eureka home. Cooley also admitted to kissing a 17-year-old female at the same event.
In 2010, a jury determined Cooley to be a sexually violent predator. He appealed the finding, but was denied, and then sent to Coalinga State Hospital.
“Galt is very rural. It’s a bedroom community,” Councilman Jay Vandenburg said. “This is akin to putting an individual into a hotbed of opportunity, rather than placing him in an area where he will be least likely to reoffend. And after reading what medical experts have said about him, he’s likely to re-offend.”
To be classified a sexually violent predator, a person has to have been convicted of a violent sex crime against at least one victim and be diagnosed with a condition that makes that person likely to re-offend.
State law allows certain sex offenders to be sent to a state hospital indefinitely after a prison sentence, and then they undergo therapy until doctors and a judge find them safe enough to continue treatment in the community.
During Friday’s meeting, Galt clerk Tina Hubert read a statement from residents Randy and Tina Lindahl, who live near the residence chosen for Cooley.
The couple said they found court documents stating Cooley refused to accept treatment at state hospitals because he did not believe he was a sexual deviant, and that medical experts concluded Cooley could potentially engage in inappropriate behavior with minors again if released.
“We fear for the safety of the children at nearby schools, as well as the safety of the entire community,” the Lindahls wrote. “We were utterly astonished to learn he had been paroled. We fear for the safety of our granddaughter, who sometimes visits us for multiple days at a time.”
A Humboldt County judge found Cooley suitable for conditional release back into the community in 2016. Three attempts to place him in that county were unsuccessful, and a judge tried to place him in Tehama County, however the proposed location was deemed unsuitable.
The DSH attempted to place Cooley in San Diego County last year, but two more attempts were unsuccessful as well.
If placed in the Galt area, Cooley will only be monitored for one year, and would then be eligible for full release from supervision to live unmonitored in the community, according to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office.
City staff said because the proposed residence is in unincorporated Galt, law enforcement jurisdiction falls under the purview of the Sacramento County Sheriff ’s Office, which rarely patrols the area.
Council members worried that if Cooley were to re-offend, deputies would not respond in time.
“In addition to slow response times, (the location) is not convenient to monitoring by law enforcement, or convenient to the rehabilitation services he’d be mandated to have or he is going to need,” councilman Kevin Papineau said. “I think this site was chosen because there’s fewer people around to complain, and if this was closer to a larger populated area, more people would oppose it.”
Mayor Shawn Farmer said Galt is a community that doesn’t just take care of residents within the city limits, but those who live in its unincorporated areas, and opposing Cooley’s placement on Harvey Road protects both of the city’s demographics.
“I’m happy to sign this letter, and I think we have a credible case,” he said. “He doesn’t have family here, and he’s never lived here. We don’t have the kind of facilities that will benefit his rehabilitation, and he has no reason to be here.”
Cooley is the second sex offender proposed to be placed in Sacramento County in recent months.
Two weeks ago, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge denied a motion to place 50-year-old Daniel Shazier in a home on La Clair Road in Wilton, a small community of 6,000 in an unincorporated area of the county.
Shazier has been in state hospitals for nearly a decade after two juries determined he was a sexually violent predator as a result of two prior convictions of molesting teenage boys.
Galt interim police chief Brian Kalinowski said while his department does not patrol the area in question, he said he would draft his own letter to Humboldt County Superior Court opposing Cooley’s placement.
“Although this is not within our city limits, this is still our community,” he said. “They are our children, and they go to our schools. At the end of the day I have to ask, as police chief, how I can prevent him from acting on his impulses and assaulting a woman or a child.”
The public has until Jan. 25 to comment on Cooley’s placement by emailing
A virtual hearing in Humboldt County Superior Court is scheduled for Jan. 29, in which Kalinowski and Farmer plan to speak. To view the proceedings, visit www.humboldt.courts.ca. gov/4885.htm.