We are tired of hearing the same story. A dangerous man hurts someone, gets let go, and then hurts someone else. When people get away with crimes, so
We are tired of hearing the same story. A dangerous man hurts someone, gets let go, and then hurts someone else.
When people get away with crimes, some say they are “smart.” But they are not smart. The truth is much simpler: our system is failing to protect us. It is failing because it chooses to look away from real danger.
To fix this, we must make the system smarter. That means we have to stop chasing biases—like unfairly targeting Black people—while letting the real monsters slide by on a technicality. It means we must start listening to women and children. We must heed the patterns, not hide them just because the truth is uncomfortable. We must confront the evil head-on.
Here is how the system failed Amber Dubois and Chelsea King, and why we must demand real safety.
1. The Real Monsters Exploit the Gaps
For a long time, bad actors have used the system’s blind spots to their advantage. The system is often too busy tracking people based on race or a checklist instead of looking at actual behavior. Because the structure is biased, dangerous people know exactly how to slip through the cracks.
2. Violations Were Ignored Over and Over
John Albert Gardner III was a registered sex offender. He served five years for abusing a child in 2000. While he was out on parole, officials thought about locking him back up seven different times. Instead, they kept letting him stay on the streets. He broke the rules dozens of times, even living too close to a school. Every single time, the system gave him a pass.
3. The System Let Down Its Guard Too Soon
Because of past rules, the state put a GPS tracking device on Gardner’s ankle. But once his official parole time ended in September 2008, they took the tracker off. They stopped watching him.
4. A Year of Silence and Stolen Lives
Only four months after the state took off his tracker, Amber Dubois vanished. John Albert Gardner III abducted and murdered Amber while she walked to school. Because the state stopped watching him, investigators did not have the location data to connect him to her disappearance right away. He was left free to hunt again.
5. Catching the Pattern Too Late Costs Lives
Because the system let Gardner walk unmonitored, he kept harming people. In December 2009, he attacked a jogger who luckily fought him off and escaped. Then, in February 2010, John Albert Gardner III raped and murdered 17-year-old Chelsea King.
6. The Truth Was Discovered Too Late
It took the murder of Chelsea King for the system to finally look closely. DNA evidence connected Gardner to Chelsea. Only then did the state connect the dots back to Amber Dubois, who had been missing for a year. Gardner finally confessed to murdering both girls to avoid the death penalty.
7. True Safety Requires Shedding Biases
Why does this keep happening? Because the system places its energy in the wrong places. It is quick to lock away Black people for minor offenses, yet it hands passes to violent offenders who do not fit their biased ideas of danger. We cannot find safety until the system drops its racial biases and focuses on real harm.
8. We Must Listen to Women and Children
The system routinely ignores the voices of Survivors. When a woman or a child says they are unsafe, the system treats it like an afterthought. If we want a smarter system, we must make listening to the vulnerable our first priority.
9. We Must Heed Patterns, Not Hide Them
A pattern is a warning sign. When a predator breaks parole dozens of times, that is a pattern of danger. The system likes to hide these patterns when they do not show what officials hope to see. We must stop covering up the warnings.
10. Change Begins With Confrontation
We cannot fix a broken structure by being polite. We must courageously confront the evil in our laws and in our neighborhoods. Chelsea’s Law was passed in California to force lifetime prison terms and lifetime GPS tracking on certain offenders. It was born out of outrage. We need that same outrage everywhere.
Our Demand: The criminal justice system cannot keep allowing this to happen to us. We deserve real safety. We will not let them call these predators “smart” while our children pay the price for a soft, biased system.