California is often labeled the most litigious state, and a rash of lawsuits around the state not only upholds this contention, but threatens the safety of California’s children. Local ordinances defining places where convicted sex offenders may not visit are apparently going the way of the dodo, under an onslaught of legal challenges aimed at expanding the rights of offenders.
Two such lawsuits, targeting ordinances in Irvine and Orange County banning convicted sex offenders from visiting city parks and recreational sites, have resulted in those ordinances’ invalidation by a state court of appeals. The court did so on the grounds that state laws—which the local laws exceeded in their stringency—fully occupy the field and therefore preempt tougher local laws.
As if those lawsuits were not enough, Santa Maria attorney Janice Bellucci has apparently taken up the cause of sex offenders’ rights as her personal cause, flooding courts all over California with challenges to local ordinances that also exceed the restrictions in state law. Full Article
Wanted: Parents who watch their own kids instead of expecting the government to enact useless laws that do nothing but create a false sense of security!!!
“under an onslaught of legal challenges aimed at expanding the rights of offenders.”
No, aimed at restoring the basic United States Constitutional rights of people who have paid their debt.
This editorial is beneath contempt and, though he or she doubtless is not self-aware enough to know it, written by someone with no understanding of what it is supposed to mean to live according to the ideals of the Founders.
And once again those who would champion a noble cause are unfairly dealt with by an ignorant biased writer. yawn….
“Editorial”? Who is the author? I would like to send thia person an email.
Here in Los Angeles, there are no less one story per week related to a police officer having inappropriate relations with a minor, and no less than 2 stories related to a teacher being arrested for sexual encounters with a child. You know what’s rare: a story about a registered citizen being arrested for re-offending!
Seems to me that if you want to protect your kids, you need to need to keep a close eye on police officers, and your child’s teachers!
Can’t wait to visit Janice in her new mansion, driving her Lexus, or her Mercedes, or her Cadillac around Beverly Hills shopping at all the chick Rodeo Drive botiques on her “attorney’s fees” from all the cases around the state. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams, laments the disillusioned columnist in Lake Arrowhead.
Yes, this is sarcasm, despite the fact that even if the above were true, it would still be far more ethically and morally just than the current laws in place.
I’m bald now. This latest crazy nonsense in the editorials made me snatch out the last of my head hairs.
Yes, finally! Someone who wants to do something to protect children…sorry…thought this might have pertained to the millions of children with a registered parent that have their innocent minds warped living like outcasted,ostracised, second-class citizens instead of the now thoroughly debunked notion that presence restrictions help children. My mistake.
Well, at least SOME people reference SOME studies based on SOME sort of data (also knows as facts) to indicate that residency or presence restrictions are NOT overall effective in doing what they say they are suppose to do.
All I hear from the pro-restriction people is hysterical, irrational Chicken Little like warnings about RSOs lurking around these so called Child Safety Zones ready to snatch children. But I have seen no EVIDENCE, no research, to support that assertion.
You don’t like the FACTS that say such restrictions are next to useless? Fine. How abut providing some FACTS or research studies that say that they (the restrictions) are actually good for something other than harassing people, who are now doing their best to live law abiding lives, just because you don’t like them. Let’s see those FACTS.
So I will ask again, what factual/actual problem did the Carson ordinance, and others like it, solve?
What is the EVIDENCE that the ordinance is/was needed?
Were children being molested left and right in the, previously, Child UNsafe Zones for all the decades, or even the last 10 years, before Carson enacted the ordinance?
If not, is there any EVIDENCE that any current RSO was even attempting to do so in these areas?
And lastly, according to the editorial, EVERYONE on the registry is there because they have an “unbalanced psyches” and “predatory proclivities”? Really? Everyone? Does that even make sense? It shouldn’t because it is, factually, not true.
Yes, there are those who are considered high risk to re-offend and those who are even classified as Se**ally Violent Predators (SVPs). But they are not even the bulk of the registry. And so painting ALL people on the registry with the same brush is simply NOT justice.