Irvine followed the leads of District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and Orange County Supervisor Shawn Nelson in July by making city parks off limits to perverts, but the council stopped short of the county leaders' desire to apply the ban to all registered sex offenders, choosing to prohibit child predators.
Jean Pierre Nguyen became Irvine's first arrestee under the law Thursday.
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Irvine Police detectives received a tip from the Orange County Probation Department that the Garden Grove 51-year-old was coming to Citrus Glen Park to play tennis, according to an email from police Lt. Dave Klug. On probation for indecent exposure in Garden Grove earlier this year, Nguyen has been a sex registrant since a 1996 conviction for misdemeanor child annoyance in Cypress.
Detectives staked out at the park saw Nguyen park his car and walk to the tennis courts, where he was confronted, interviewed and arrested around 4:30 p.m. Thursday for violating his probation and Irvine's Child Safety Zone ordinance.
Violating probation earned Nguyen a one-way trip to Orange County Jail, and he faces the possiblity of more time behind bars and/or fines for simply walking into the city park.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.