Police arrested a 36-year-old Lathrop man suspected of lewd acts and sex with minors at a former San Jose children's daycare facility.
The alleged molestations happened while John Mario Cortez Jr. helped with the day-to-day care of children attending Growing in Grace Daycare at a residence on Centerwood Way in East San Jose, police said in a news release today.
San Jose police identified three children who allege Cortez annoyed and/or molested them at the daycare facility while it was in operation, from 2013 through 2017. The victims' ages range from 3 to 8 years old at the time of the incidents.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office has charged Cortez with eight counts of lewd acts with a minor child under the age of 14 and one count of sex acts with a minor under 10 years old.
Anyone with information about the case, or other cases involving Cortez is asked to contact Detective Ramos #4371 of the San Jose Police Department at (408) 537-1397.
This is in Evergreen, not East San Jose. If it was a story on a student scholar, or a great volunteer effort or something like that, I’m pretty sure it would be an “Evergreen” story.
All of you who want to defund the police, please comment on this news article.
One recent victory in the effort to re-imagine public safety (sometimes called “defunding the police”) is the effort to defund approximately $1million that was spent maintaining SJPD officers in SJUSD schools. That’s $1million that is better spent on counselors and programs that directly benefit students without creating the opportunity for the police to involve young people in the criminal justice system.
Many people complain that the police are too busy to respond to burglaries. One way to address that would be to remove from the police the responsibility of responding to calls for help in mental health crises — situations in which police are notoriously ill-trained and temperamentally unsuited for, resulting in unnecessary injury and death. Take those funds and spend them on effective mobile mental health crisis teams rather than spend them on unqualified and harmful police involvement in mental health care. Without the responsibility of having every social ill dumped on the police, that institution could put more effort towards its primary function of preventing crime and preserving public safety, including things like arresting people suspected of child abuse.
Just because the police get to come in and make the final arrest doesn’t mean they had anything to do with preventing or resolving the crime. Child care licensing & inspection agencies, as well as parents and childcare staff are better positioned to identify and prevent abuse, and to report it promptly. Cops only respond on reports of abuse – they have no significant role in preventing it here. Defund the police and fund child care.