ORLANDO, Fla. – The YMCA of Central Florida announced to its members that it will begin screening all members and guests to see if they’re registered sex offenders before being let inside their buildings.
The announcement came in the form of a letter sent to members signed by Chief Operating Officer Daniel Ickes.
Ickes sent an explanation to News 6.
“At the YMCA of Central Florida, there is nothing more important to us than the safety and security of our members, staff and volunteers. For that reason, we proactively evaluate our safety procedures; and, as a result, recently made the decision to enhance our check-in process,” Ickes said.
I tried to reply to the website’s article, but was unable to register to make comments. But I’ll try to get this reply on there: ” ‘At the YMCA of Central Florida, there is nothing more important to us than the safety and security of our members, staff and volunteers.’ Let’s be honest. If safety and security were the real reason, the YMCA would also screen all members, guests, and participants (and YMCA staff, volunteers, and job applicants) for convictions for assault, drug dealing, weapons charges, domestic violence, etc. The YMCA is singling out this one group because it wants to jump on a sex offender hysteria bandwagon. Furthermore, if the organization’s liability insurance carriers is requesting this change in procedure, again why are they not including those other convicted felons who have much higher recidivism rates and, therefore, pose a much greater risk to safety and security??”
It’s Florida, not exactly the leader in progressive thought.
Someone please ask them to send you the list of all crime that has occurred in their clubs due to citizens with sex offenses. Tell them to promptly send the list of the dozens of hundreds of incidents that have occurred which have prompted this exclusion of a specific group of people, as we need this info for an article that we are writing in collaboration with a news station. Let’s see them send the proof!
The U.S. is a society that responds on reflex, and to the extreme. Time and again, the laws passed and criteria required for entry or employment have been always been in response to an isolated incident.
Majority of countries treat each crime as an individual offense, even if committed by repeat offender.
What I have noticed, and this is not completely outside the scope of this article, is that most businesses, groups, and countries that promote unfair rules and laws towards a particular group are christian based. Yet they tend to have the highest offense rate as a group. The “Y” is such a group. I would be interested in seeing the stats for employee based crimes in that org. Vs. Member based offenses.
In fact, just read article where an ex CIA officer told of supplying children to pedophiles overseas in order to obtain information and assistance. Yet do we ban the CIA for their actions, no.