Source: northglenn-thorntonsentinel.com 8/28/25
A proposed ordinance that draws lines between sexually violent offenders and children may actually put kids in harm’s way, a Thornton resident said.
The worry isn’t over the wording of the ordinance, which is like other city ordinances that mandate the distance convicted sex offenders must maintain in areas where children congregate.
The problem is that the draft ordinance requires the city to publish and maintain a citywide, live map of school bus stops, said resident Steven Mathias.
Mathias – who told the city council during its August 26 meeting that he is a survivor of abuse – said the live map details where children gather, isolated and unsupervised every morning. The city is essentially handing the map to the sexually violent predators the policy targets.
“Is that your definition of public safety – of protecting our children and our community?” Mathias told the Thornton City Council this week.
The city removed the draft ordinance from consideration at the Aug. 26 meeting to be reviewed and likely revamped after talking to officials with Adams 12 Five Star Schools, Mathias said. It is scheduled for the Sept. 23 city council meeting.
Adams 12 Five Star School District Superintendent Chris Gdowski said this week he wasn’t told about the ordinance until the Friday before the Aug. 26 meeting. School officials with more knowledge of the ordinance couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.
Before the September meeting, city officials must solve shortcomings hobbling the proposal, Mathias said. Bus stops, he points out, are not marked and change with new school years, construction and ridership, he said.
The city’s draft never says clearly whether it means “next door to a stop” or “within 1,000 feet,” or how anyone would know where a “designated” stop is that day, Mathias said.
If the city does not publish an accurate school bus map, convicted child sex offenders can’t comply with boundaries they cannot find, he said.
More and more ridiculousness. Just stop the stupidness already.
They are brilliant, aren’t they?
Finally, a non-registered person speaks up with common sense. The lawmakers/government officials that made this ordinance must feel so confused now.
From what I read in the article, it was not a registered person, or group, that spoke up against the ordinance. Instead, it was a citizen of the type that the city council thought they were protecting but he ended up telling them that they were putting children in danger.
Recently, a new law in Louisiana was passed requiring people convicted of a “violent” offense to stay a certain distance away from school bus stops. I wonder if Louisiana will provide maps of school bus stops now, or get rid of the new law.
I hope this is a watershed moment to where it not only causes second thoughts by those in elected and appointed positions, but those who have to give out maps now showing all the locations that create an exclusion zone. Every time an exclusion zone could shrink or expand, the map and the addresses therein have to be updated and released so everybody is aware of where the law is going to be applied.
This will force the elected and appointed officials to settle on those established facilities such as educational places and establishes storefront daycares. Those that are going to be attempted to be held in personal residences will be the ones that will always be given second consideration on whether they want that information to be released.
I will give credit to Steven Mathias for opposing this nonsensical proposal. I would bet there are only a handful of kidnappings or sexual assaults at school bus stops since the invention of the bus, and even then the person(s) that did them resided anywhere near them. I would also bet that if any such attack ever happens in the future (God forbid), the assailant will not be a registrant. And even if it’s a registrant, it only shows that the registry and all its associated obligations and restrictions are completely worthless in terms of parenting sex crime recidivism.
That said, Mathias misses the point. This proposal was never about child safety and security. It’s about an obscure and/or dirty politician painting a (false) picture of all the “good work” he’s doing to persuade his electorate to keep him there. It’s pandering, nothing more, nothing less.
Reached out to Monte and left them with this (where @Dustin and @Literally Nobody are the inspiration for it with their exchange):
In reply to the subject topic, may I recommend you should follow up with a story on the rate of child abductions from bus stops, where the alleged abductor lived in relation to the alleged abduction, and what problems have happened at bus stops by the hands of those who have sex crime convictions where a minor was involved in the crime. I believe what you are reporting on with the topic is fearmongering, unfortunately. While I don’t diminish the alleged trauma suffered by the person who testified at the public meeting, I admonish the fearmongering they are enacting, as seen by the reaction to it by those in power to do so.
Perhaps, you could write about the problems for those with sex crimes convictions overall when topics such as this come up where fearmongering by one who fails to see the non-existent data rationally of the issue they are creating.
As an investigative reporter, all sides of a story need to be presented with factual basis and data to back it up. Let’s see the other side of the matter about those who are being implicated here without basis to begin with when fearmongering is taking place in a public meeting.
Look forward to your investigative piece on this.
Dull-minded people think that one “bad” act makes a person “bad”.
Dull-minded people think that placing a label on these “bad” people makes children safe.
Dull-minded people think that the “bad” people can’t grow or change.
The dullest-minded people think that all the “bad” people with labels are predators.
Smart people know that making an impossible-to-follow law only entraps law-abiding people with made up crimes and doesn’t improve public safety at all.
Smart people know that truly dangerous people (on or not on a registry) would benefit from public maps, perhaps increasing risk for children from those very very rare abduction scenarios.
Smart people know that if real predators are not deterred from committing sexual crime by the extremely harsh criminal penalties they face, a law banning them and the other 99.999% of law-abiding registrants from being in proximity to children won’t either.
The smartest people teach their children how to be safe in public and, more importantly, how to be safe in their friendships/relationships. That is the only effective way sexual crime against children is prevented.
My mom owns property out there in Colorado, BUT I still haven’t worked up the courage to tell her that I can never move out there not even for a month or two. She thinks im off the registry nation wide which is technically true BUT if I leave California then I would be placed back on the registry and all my personal information will be sent back to the FBI and the DOJ to be publicly available, and in order for me to leave back to California I would have to “de-register” with DPD.
I’d rather not even deal with any type of law enforcement agency anymore, 27 years was enough and after reading this and doing other research, Colorado doesn’t seem like a good relocation spot for me.
It’s a crazy situation when you can’t leave your state BUT it’s better than being in jail, prison, or on Megan’s Law, or having a passport with that PFR identifier.
California is one of the biggest state in country I guess I Just gotta make the best of it.
☀️ 🏝️ 🐬