NPR – A suburban county on Long Island, N.Y., is taking a novel approach to monitoring sex offenders: It’s giving the job to a victims’ advocacy group. The measure was approved unanimously earlier this year; lawmakers call it a cost-effective way to keep citizens safe. But a local lawyer calls it a “vigilante exercise,” and convicted sex offenders are organizing to challenge the legislation.
____ ____, 42, a convicted sex offender, is among those who object to the methods of Parents for Megan’s Law, the advocacy group hired by Suffolk County. ____, who was convicted of sexual abuse two decades ago and is now married with two children, says one day last spring he met the people he calls “the trackers.” Full Article
Oh geez what could possibly go wrong here? Vengeance has no place in our society and this so called group is not law enforcement. I would encourage all registrants to refuse to register with these brown shirts. Besides, many people, myself included, HAD NO VICTIM!
Oh, legal harassment. How touching it is to have such dedicated citizens living among us.
Wouldn’t they be better served peeking in windows trying to catch people engaged in illegal sex before the fact?
I sure hope someone alerts all registrants in this county that they are not required in any way shape or form to interact with this group. I am offering to donate $100 worth of stamps to make this happen. Holla back.
This is possibly the worst thing I have seen yet as far as monitoring of registrants. How could anyone with a brain think that having a victim advocacy group monitor registrants is a good idea? I guess I just answered my own question…
The people there forced to register will challenge that
monitoring …and they will win…..monitoring ..???…oh…like people on parole and maybe gps monitor parole…..but on
people free from parole..????……challenge that and WIN.
This “monitoring,” at least in California, is a term that arouse in a court opinion, and that most all other subsequent SOR court opinions simply picked up mindlessly. There isn’t any actual monitoring mandated by the 290 statutes, except in recent years when some SORs were required to wear GPS devices. But other than those who have to wear GPS devices, all SOR is is to know which registrants are in that community — not to impose actual surveillance on them.
Some dumb court opinion used the word surveillance, and forever more that is what people say, but the court did not say what it meant by surveillance, and the law says nothing of surveillance. All the “surveillance” is by the statue is to know where they live — the statute otherwise gives no mandate to do what most people would consider to be surveillance, such as doing house checks or otherwise spying on you. It doesn’t stop police form house check and other, but it does not call for them to do it, and it does not require a registrant to cooperate with it. (And as I have pointed out in other threads, there are things you can do to bar even the police from entering for other than an emergency or with probable cause.)
But I guarantee you, the second you contract a mandate to a vigilante group to do the surveillance, they WILL go over the line, since the line in the law really provides for doing nothing. I guess these vigilantes will “surveil” those wearing GPS devices, rather than the GPS company already being paid for that. But if they are going to start going around and bothering registrants, sue the hell out of them — doesn’t matter if they have a contract to “monitor” you.
I guess that New York county can’t wait to make the next Trayvon Martin be a registrant.
Good people: It is great to post on this forum but we should all post on every other public forum available. There is less need to talk among ourselves than there is to run an anti-propaganda campaign against the liars and terrorists who support the Registries. So, please post at the article’s source.
Not to mention that these self righteous zealots will feel the need to arm themselves for their own protection from the very, very dangerous registrants. Probably going to be bloodshed if this goes through, and the law enforcement agencies in charge of the moral patrol will turn a blind eye to the outcome. We know the mentality of both law enforcement and hyped citizen patrols/monitors/stalkers/peeping toms. Ignorance empowers these knuckleheads.