[newyork.cbslocal.com 5/21/18] GORDON HEIGHTS, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — Just how much can one community take? There are multiple neighborhoods in New York where the state has clustered paroled ex-cons, and innocent families are paying the price. A 26-year-old mother accused of trying to kill her baby earlier this month created anguish in her Suffolk County community. Her lawyer claims she was mentally ill and a victim of human trafficking, while others say she was an interloper moving from house to house on a notorious street in a hamlet that borders Coram…
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NY: A Jury Rejected the Charges, but He Still Has to Register As a Sex Offender for Life
[reason.com 4/30/18] New York’s highest court says accusations can be considered for registration purposes even when the defendant was acquitted. In New York a defendant can be forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life based on accusations a jury rejected. So the state’s highest court ruled last week in a case that illustrates how fear and loathing of sex offenders lead to results that would be recognized as unjust and illogical in any other context. __________’s 13-year-old niece, identified in court documents as A.B.,…
Read MoreNY: Prosecutors Aren’t Just Enforcing the Law — They’re Making It
[injusticetoday.com 4/20/18] Just a few months ago, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo seemed sure that criminal justice reform was imminent. During his annual State of the State address in January, he called for a legislative package that would limit civil asset forfeiture, reform discovery, reduce trial delays, and most notably, significantly reduce the use of cash bail. “For far too long, our antiquated criminal justice system has created a two-tier system where outcomes depend purely on economic status — undermining the bedrock principle that one is innocent until proven guilty,” Cuomo said.…
Read MoreNY: Congress passes bill giving NY youth groups access to FBI sex offender database
[syracuse.com] WASHINGTON — Sex offenders who move to New York state will no longer be able to exploit an FBI loophole when they apply for jobs at summer camps and other organizations that work with children, according to U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer. A bill passed by Congress authorizes the FBI to make its full database available for employer background checks, regardless of where an individual had to register as a sex offender. Schumer, D-N.Y., had tried for almost eight years to pass legislation that allows the FBI to release all…
Read MoreNY: Gov. Cuomo’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Plan to Protect Your Kids
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently unveiled a legislative proposal packaged as part of a budget amendment to expand already onerous residency and presence restrictions for some sex offenders in New York. Full Article
Read MoreNY: State police: Sex offender’s death accidental at Central New York Psychiatric Center
[lohud.com] State police have ruled that a sex offender’s death inside Central New York Psychiatric Center in Marcy was accidental. Investigators determined Philip Barbato, 47, accidentally hanged himself with string while alone inside a shower room, Trooper Jack Kelly said. Barbato had been locked up under the state’s Sex Offender Treatment Program, part of the civil-commitment law that allows for confining sex offenders who completed their criminal sentence, according to Kelly. Nursing staff tried to resuscitate Barbato and an ambulance responded Monday at 3:05 a.m. He was pronounced dead at…
Read MoreNY: Bills re-instate residency/ proximity laws, Shelter Bans and end Statutes of Limitations
[once-fallen.blogspot] Read comments by once-fallen.blogspot Read NY Assembly Bill A9505C Read NY Senate Bill S7505B
Read MoreNY: Outdated Ideas About Violent Crime Hurt Victims and Trap Offenders
[citylimits.org] On August 21st, 1979, two girls aged 17 and 21 entered Rose and Louis Feit’s apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn and demanded money. Rose refused, so the girls grabbed a knife and a potato peeler out of the kitchen drawer. Rose Feit, who was 73, was left with 28 stab wounds, according to court records. Louis, who was 80, had 59. Both died of their injuries. Valerie Gaiter, the 21-year-old, was convicted of two counts of robbery and two counts of second-degree murder. Almost 40 years later, she’s still technically…
Read MoreNY: Sex offender awareness advisory board being pursued in Falls
A pair of city lawmakers say a continuing pattern of concerned inquiries from residents regarding the presence of pedophiles and other sexual offenders in city neighborhoods has pushed them to pursue the creation of an advisory board. Full Article
Read MoreNY: Governor Cuomo Announces 30-Day Budget Amendment to Protect New York’s Children from Sex Offenders
[governor.ny.gov] Action Will Prohibit Level 2 and 3 Sex Offenders From Being Within 1,000 Feet of Kindergarten and Pre-K Schools. Ban Sex Offenders From Staying in Temporary Emergency Housing or Shelters Where Families Live. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced a 30-day budget amendment will be advanced to protect children in New York State. The amendment will restrict sex offenders whose victims are under the age of 13 from traveling or living near schools where young children go to learn, and will ban offenders from living in temporary or emergency…
Read MoreNY: “All Sex Offender Registries Should Be Abolished”: Reason/Soho Forum Debate
[narsol.org] That’s the highly controversial resolution that will be argued at the next Soho Forum/Reason debate, on Monday, February 12 at New York’s Subculture Theater from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Emily Horowitz will argue the affirmative position. She is professor and chair of the sociology and criminal justice department at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, where she founded a program that helps the formerly incarcerated complete college. Marci A. Hamilton will take the negative. She is Fox Professor of Practice and Fox Family Pavilion Resident Senior Fellow in…
Read MoreNY: Death, assaults and sex offenses: Life behind Central New York Psychiatric Center’s walls
[lohud.com] A New York State psychiatric center operated illegally with impunity while two dead bodies, 40 assaults and 25 sex offenses triggered police responses behind its walls from 2012 to 2016, The Journal News/lohud has found. The newly obtained tally of violence, roughly one attack per month, is part of 210 criminal incidents at Central New York Psychiatric Center. Much of the violence involved the mentally ill men locked up there, and it unfolded without the independent monitor required by law. From rapes and beatings to illicit drug use and…
Read MoreNY: Justice Department probes state’s civil confinement of sex offenders
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is examining New York’s controversial system of civil confinement for sex offenders. The probe was revealed when an attorney with the Justice Department’s special litigation office recently interviewed a sex offender confined at the Central New York Psychiatric Center in Oneida County. Under New York’s decade-old Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act, convicted sex offenders can be kept in secure psychiatric hospitals indefinitely after their prison terms expire. If an offender is found to have a mental abnormality that makes the person…
Read MoreNY: This 11-year-old got wrongly caught up in Pervnado
[nypost.com] __________, a Brooklyn sixth-grader in a schoolyard tussle with two girls, got caught up in the sex-harassment tornado. __________ insists he only tried to grab the water bottle and backpack of classmates who had tossed his stuff during lunchtime horseplay. But the school charged him with “conduct of a sexual nature.” He was accused of trying to touch one girl’s breast and kiss her and of “humping” another girl from behind. “Like, I’m not sexual,” the baby-faced 11-year-old wrote in a city Department of Education statement. “I do dumb…
Read MoreNY: Cuomo wants revenge porn posters to register as sex offenders
[New York Post] Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to criminalize revenge porn — and force the creeps who post it online to register as sex offenders — under a plan he’ll unveil in his upcoming State of the State Address, The Post has learned. As part of the proposal, the governor also intends to outlaw “sextortion,” or threatening someone into preforming sex acts. “The dangerous proliferation of sextortion and revenge crimes disproportionately targets young women and girls and causes harm and embarrassment that can follow victims their entire lives,” Cuomo…
Read MoreNY: Neighbors question nonprofit’s assistance of sex offender’s home
Along Fountain Street, tall trees and manicured lawns are graced with flowers, trimmed hedges and American flags. And, in the yard next to convicted sex offender ____ ____’s house, two lawn signs together read “Sexually molest a child and you get your home remodeled for free!” The signs highlight not only a simmering feud between ____ and several of his neighbors, documented in several Olean Police Department reports over the last two years, but also a debate the neighbors would like to have: Should nonprofit assistance funds for the impoverished…
Read MoreNY: Order reveals ongoing confinement of sex offender
Saratoga County’s first civilly confined sex offender remains in custody nearly a decade after his original release date, according to an appeals ruling issued Thursday. Full Article
Read MoreNY: Sex offenders banned from driving for Uber, Lyft
When Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers approved a ride-hailing law in April, it would have allowed certain low-level sex offenders to drive for companies like Uber and Lyft. That’s no longer the case. Cuomo signed a bill late last week block all sex offenders from driving for ride-hailing companies for as long as they are listed on the state’s registry, regardless of the severity of their crime and how long ago it was committed. Full Article
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