A 69-year-old convicted sex offender, Merle Wakefield, disappeared on Friday after his GPS monitor registered a "tamper mode" alert in San Diego. The monitor activated at approximately 3:30 a.m. at a worksite in Rancho Bernardo, but by the time supervisors arrived, Wakefield had already removed the device and vanished. His disappearance has prompted renewed scrutiny of California's conditional release programme for sexually violent predators and raises serious questions about the adequacy of monitoring systems.

Wakefield was convicted in 1980 and 1991 of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 and rape by force. Since his release in November 2024, he had been placed in a transient status (without a fixed address) after local officials opposed residential placements near schools and parks. The decision was controversial—the San Diego County District Attorney's Office had warned that a transient status would compromise monitoring and supervision. Notably, an audit of California's sexually violent predator programme found that approximately 36 per cent of participants had violated the terms of their release.