ACKSON, Georgia (WSYX/WTTE) — A Georgia sheriff’s office is placing “No Trick-or-Treat” signs in sex offenders’ yards in an effort to keep children safe.
“As Sheriff, there is nothing more important to me than the safety of your children,” said Butts County Sheriff Gary Long. “This Halloween, my office has placed signs in front of every registered sex offender’s house to notify the public that it’s a house to avoid.”
Long said Georgia law forbids registered sex offenders from participating in Halloween. That includes decorating their property or handing out candy.
The sheriff told residents to keep an eye out for signs marking the sex offenders’ houses.
The sign reads, “WARNING! NO TRICK-OR-TREAT AT THIS ADDRESS!!’
In the article, it claims the sheriff is acting in accordance with the Statute that says he, ” shall inform the public of the presence of sexual offenders in each community.” However from the image in the story, the signs he placed do no such thing, thus he’s not complying with his own cherished law (regardless whether true or false). Instead, he’s compelling speech on private property, as well as the aforementioned trespassing. Sounds like a fish-in-the-barrel lawsuit for anyone affected.
I also happened to notice Butts Co., GA is home to the “Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Diagnostic_and_Classification_State_Prison). It’s, let’s say, where people get their first exposure to the GA prison system (original felon intake) and their last (death chambers). Now I don’t know about your parts of the country, but where I’m from this probably isn’t the high-rent district in the Peach State.
if you care so much about children’s safety, why don’t you fund the idea of having and extra person helping out on a school bus. This extra should make sure traffic comes to a complete stop when the bus comes up the the bus stop. The individual needs to get off the bus and with a neon shirt walk into the street with a stop sign and making sure traffic is at a complete stop before anyone enters or gets off the bus. you gotta protect them children against those evil drivers. Do you know how many children lives are effected from either injury or death from careless drivers?
Personally, I don’t really care if there are Halloween punishments/harassment/restrictions, as long as they don’t involve trying to tell me where I may and may not be (including at my home). I leave my home every Halloween and go out and celebrate somewhat. My wife and I always drive around neighborhoods and check out the decorations and the trick-or-treaters. Ooooo, if the brain-dead Registry Terrorists ever thought for a second and realized that is exactly what happens, they would lose what is left of their tiny minds.
We always take a very nice vehicle that attracts tons of attention and I don’t care. Still, no one knows anything about me. I do find it quite hilarious that a person can drive such a vehicle around and people still have no idea at all that it belongs to a Registered person. I do wonder if someday neighborhoods will get their own license plate readers and plug them into their Nanny Big Government databases. I would guess that a number of areas around where I live have already looked into that. I don’t think they could keep Registered People from driving in their neighborhoods but I’m sure they would try. If they “found out” that it was happening (like who wouldn’t already know that?!), I do expect that might prompt some neighborhoods to gate themselves off. So many already do. I find that funny as well – they gate themselves off but the trouble is inside the gates!
If I was interested in doing something bad, I wouldn’t be driving one of my vehicles and I wouldn’t be anywhere near my home. The Grovetown, GA mayor told me that he hoped to see me in Grovetown. I responded civilly but I considered telling him that I would be in Grovetown but there’d be no chance that he would know it. And of course I’d say that’s almost guaranteed to happen in the future.
A number of people here have said that the people targeted with “no candy” signs ought to put out their own signs. Frankly, I know that I wouldn’t really give a damn about any signs that NBG put on government property, like government right-of-way, near my home (wouldn’t allow it on my property). They can keep signs up all year for all I care. It would keep scum bags away from my home even better.
But, I would have to have my own signs. I’d have to have some with the sheriff’s name specifically on them. I do like “Sheriff xyz is more likely to commit a $EX crime than the person who lives at this home.” Who could argue with that? Or how about “Sheriff xyz is more likely to be a child molester than the person who lives at this home.” Nice.
I think I’d also have to make a sign about 20 times larger than their “no candy” sign that says maybe something like “Awesome candy at this home, come on up!” Or perhaps, “Great treats for all people who hate big government!”
And lastly, I would have to decorate for Halloween by creating great effigies of the sheriff and other officials who supported the signs and hanging them on some nice gallows in my yard. You could pin signs to their chests that said things like “Traitor”, “Idiot”, or things that were much more offensive. Serious fun! That would be great decoration year round.
A little more light reading on this particular sheriff and a rather interesting article posted this morning with plenty of good data points (e.g. According to the National Safety Council, children are more than twice as likely to be hit by a car and killed on Halloween than on any other day of the year. And as for keeping the general pubic safe, vandalism spikes by 24% on Halloween, making it the night with the most vandalism of the year.):
Georgia Government Officials Celebrate Halloween By Engaging In Pointless Hassling Of Sex Offenders
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181031/14533540953/georgia-government-officials-celebrate-halloween-engaging-pointless-hassling-sex-offenders.shtml
Interestingly, I’m trying to go to the Sheriff’s web page (not allowed on Facebook or Twitter) to leave a remark or two regarding this subject, but for some reason it won’t open. Not suggesting he took it down, though I wouldn’t discount the possibility. It’s also possible the servers his page is on crashed.
My daughter checked his Facebook for me looking for responses to my remarks that she posted on my behalf. He got a lot of blowback on this story, and a good bit of it from non-registrants.
I sent email to sheriff stating that there were no child abuse complaints by registrants, and that it MUST have been due to his signs. I then asked if he knew how many kids got drugs in candy, hurt by strangers, and abused by parents the same night.
Since a sheriff is an elected office, the game rules are the same as any office decided by voters. Scare them with B.S. then act like you are doing something about it.
Why does this kind of stuff only happen in rural communities.
Wether it be California or bum fuck florida, it seems rural areas are hit hardest with legislation and ordinances that target registrants ( and other felonies I’m sure). Are they that bass -ackwards that they are scared of boogie men!
I am totally under this guy’s skin. He keeps sending emails. Each one a little more sarcastic. I think I will drag him on a little more, then send a complaint to the city council about harassment from their sheriff.
Not to point out the obvious, but here is a a classic example of the True safety issues on Halloween. Drunk drivers and parents who are drunk with their kids in the car out “taking them around for safety” on Halloween at twice the legal limit crashing into cars with other parents with their kids taking them in a car for safety so they don’t get hurt by drunk drivers. Glean what you can from the article, and it’s on The Patch, LOL. Amazing, truly irresponsible people at The Patch doing their “beware of these xxyy registered people in Your Town Map, this story got little attention:
https://patch.com/connecticut/stratford/dad-drove-drunk-during-trick-or-treating-stratford-police
Yeah I bet there would be a major issue concerning a badge of shame affixed to the individual if it stated sex offender, of course if the online registry is not considered such, it may be that you would have to have it attached to you physically and be bound in chains and shackles in a public square. So compelled speach, projected dangerouness, shaming, subjecting to real potential physical harm, man just on and on. They need to attempt all these laws with every convicted felon (over 20% of the country btw) and see how long it last.
This does appear to be a different tactic thogh if the sign is accurate. No words sex offender on it…
Sorry, that was about 8% have felonies.
Then there is this from Halloween where kids have to not only worry about DUI drivers and which houses to not visit due to signs, lights out, and other factors, but possibly being shot as they trick or treat, which these two unfortunate kids had to face:
14-year-old girl, 5-year-old brother shot by gunmen while trick-or-treating: Police
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/14-old-girl-5-old-brother-shot-gunmen-205504324–abc-news-topstories.html
So, should trick or treating be outlawed as long as it saves one child from one of the many ways they are killed, maimed, or injured on Halloween where is registrant is not involved?
Where was LE when this was going on? Isn’t this child endangerment? This is not a town parade!
10-Year-Old Dies After Falling from Trailer While Trick-or-Treating
https://www.yahoo.com/news/10-old-dies-falling-trailer-135800545.html
Again, no registrants are involved, so the hysteria is reasonable why?