[cleburnetimesreview.com – 6/15/18]\ The problem warrants concern, and is growing, Johnson County Sheriff Adam King said. “We’re averaging two to four new sex offenders per week moving into the county as the cities continue to squeeze them out,” King said. And it’s not just the cities within Johnson County. “As a suburban county next door to a large urbanized county we’re getting a lot of sex offenders moving into the unincorporated portions of Johnson County,” Johnson County Commissioner Larry Woolley said. The problem, King and Woolley said, is the authority…
Read MoreTag: Residency Restrictions (SORR)
OK: The “Justice for Danyelle Act of 2018”: The Shady Tactics behind another Oklahoma Knee Jerk Law
[sosen.org – 5/31/18] Oklahoma’s “Justice for Danyelle Act of 2018,” an act that prohibits registrants from living within 2,000 feet of their victim’s home and loitering within 1,000 feet of the same, is a prime example of a knee jerk law. This law also demonstrated one of the deceptive tactics that Oklahoma lawmakers use in order to advance their own personal agenda using the public safety issue. To add insult to injury this law is going to be applied unconstitutionally to over 6,800 registrants in Oklahoma and the author of…
Read MoreAZ: Sex offenders are legally living just feet away from Arizona schools
[12news.com – original: 5/16/18, updated 5/24/18] PHOENIX – A loophole in Arizona law allows sex offenders to live near schools, in some cases just feet away from campus. Per state law, it’s only illegal for a sex offender to live within 1,000 feet of a school if that person has been convicted of a dangerous crime against children. According to the state sex offender registry, one sex offender in Mesa lives steps away from two schools, Ishikawa Elementary School and Stapley Junior High. The Maricopa County Adult Probation says his…
Read MoreFL: Safety versus second chance: A home for sexual offenders has neighbors up in arms
[tallahassee.com – 5/26/18] Nestled in a pocket of land surrounded by the I-10 overpass and Mission Road sits the Moon Lane neighborhood. A dirt road that runs along the interstate wall leads to several mobile homes hidden behind a barricade of drooping trees and unkempt foliage. Cornered off and relatively quiet, homes are scattered around the unpaved road with no real boundaries. But, residents of the area are beginning to draw a line in the sand. Neighbors on Moon Lane are fighting to remove a rehabilitation home for sexual offenders…
Read MoreNY: ‘We Just Want Our Community Back:’ Long Islanders Upset Over ‘Clustering’ Of Ex-Cons In Residential Neighborhoods
[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…
Read MoreTX: Houston Is Forcing Its Parolees Out of City Center and into ‘the Boonies’
[injusticetoday.com 5/22/18] Houston has come up with a new way to make life harder for people leaving prison on parole: by forcing the programs that provide them with housing, often paired with job placement and other services, to move outside the city limits. At the end of March, the city council approved an ordinance that imposes new regulations and inspections designed to improve safety conditions in boarding houses and other facilities. But it also requires housing for people on parole — known as “alternative housing” — or correctional facilities to be located at least…
Read MoreFL: New Encampment, “Bookville V”, already has 75 “residents”
[floridaactioncommittee.org 5/16/18] As Legal Services of Greater Miami attorney Jeffrey Hearne cautioned the Judge and the media less than one week ago; unless something is done (about the 2500 foot exclusion zone) new encampments will pop up and “the cycle will continue.” It took less than a week after hundreds of registrants were evicted from a warehouse district along the railroad tracks near Hialeah for a new encampment to emerge; “Bookville V”, is named after lobbyist Ron Book, the man who not only created the laws that force sex offenders…
Read MoreFL: Sex Offender Homeless Camps in Miami-Dade County
[UPDATED LINKS 5/15/18] [cbslocal.com 5/13/18] Ron Book, the chairman of the Homeless Trust joins Jim DeFede to debate the ongoing problem in Miami Dade County where sex offenders are living in homeless camps Watch the video Related links: FAC Letter to Jim DeFede and CBS [floridaactioncommittee.org 5/14/18] A Heartless Man Without A Soul [blog.womenagainstregistry.org 5/16/18]
Read MoreFL: Police Move Remaining Homeless Sex Offenders Out Of Encampment
[nbcmiami.com 5/12/18] All of the homeless sex offenders living in a make-shift encampment in northwest Miami-Dade have been moved out of the area, police say. Dozens of sex offenders and predators were residing in tents near NW 71st Street and 36th Avenue due to a Miami-Dade ordinance that required registered sex offenders to live about 2500 feet away from schools and child-care centers. The make-shift homes are within those parameters, but the Florida Department of Health determined the homes were a health hazard and unsanitary living spaces. “At night, there’s…
Read MoreFL: Update: Miami-Dade Encampment
[floridaactioncommittee.org 5/11/18] Registrants are still at the Miami-Dade Encampment. Some, because their GPS monitoring will trigger if they leave the area (probation has them designated to) and they don’t want to violate probation and go back to prison for that. Others, because they realize there’s noplace for them to go and they will be violating the overnight camping ordinance wherever they are, so might as well stay put. News crews are on site, waiting for enforcement action. This NBC6 video is from earlier this AM, where you can still see…
Read MoreUnintended Consequences: Sex Offenders in Motels
[nbcchicago.com 5/7/18] In April of 2014, a 5-year-old girl was playing with her brothers on the grounds of the Econo Lodge in Terre Haute, Indiana, where she was staying with her family, when a man grabbed her, took her into his motel room, hit her, pulled off her clothes, and molested her. Court records show that the man, Timothy Blazier, 50, was a recently paroled, twice-convicted child-molester. He’d been living at the Econo Lodge for three months when he molested the 5-year-old girl. He’s now back in prison, serving a…
Read MoreFL: ACLU Sues to Stop Miami Homeless Sex-Offender Camp Evictions
[miaminewtimes.com 5/8/18] In 2007, New Times broke national news with a story about how a group of sex-offenders was forced to live in tents underneath the Julia Tuttle Causeway because of restrictive laws barring them from living within thousands of feet of schools or playgrounds. Their case became a focal point in efforts to reform the nation’s laws governing sex criminals. After a local outcry, the Tuttle colony was uprooted — but soon rematerialized near Hialeah, once again sparking national debate. After New Times wrote about the new encampment last…
Read MoreFL: Miami-Dade Sued Over Sex Offender Eviction
[floridaactioncommittee.org 5/7/18] A Lawsuit and Emergency Motion for Temporary Injunction were filed against Miami-Dade County on behalf of registered sex offenders legislated into homelessness and directed to live at an encampment on a street corner alongside active railroad tracks in a warehouse district in unincorporated Miami-Dade County. This is the fourth such encampment created by the County, after sex offender residency restrictions exclude registrants from living in most of the County. In an effort to shut this one down, the County recently amended their “overnight camping ordinance” to allow police…
Read MoreFL: Residents Of Homeless Sex Offender Camp Ordered Out Given Extension
[floridaactioncommittee.org 5/7/18] MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Residents of a homeless sex offender camp near Hialeah who have been ordered to leave have been given an extension. Originally, they were supposed to be gone from their roadside refuge near NW 36th Avenue and 71st Street by sunrise Monday. Now they have until Thursday, May 10th, to pack up and go. Monday morning, Miami-Dade police showed up the area but said they were not there for enforcement. Read more Related links: Officials give final notice to homeless sex offenders living in encampment [local10.com…
Read MoreFL: Walls closing in on Miami-Dade homeless sex offender issue
[floridaactioncommittee.org 5/7/19] I guess someone didn’t let Ron Book’s “Homeless Trust” know about the reprieve, because according to Local10 news, “workers from Miami-Dade’s Homeless Trust arrived Sunday night with police to give the offenders their eighth and final warning.” In fact, the Deputy Mayor had given assurance to Attorney Jeffrey Hearne from Legal Services of Greater Miami, who had prepared to file an immediate legal challenge to the (now 4th) forced eviction of sex offenders, that enforcement action would not begin until AFTER the 10th, which gives the County some…
Read MoreBook: The Sex Offender Housing Dilemma: Community Activism, Safety, and Social Justice
by Monica Williams (Author) The controversy surrounding community responses to housing for sexually violent predators When a South Carolina couple killed a registered sex offender and his wife after they moved into their neighborhood in 2013, the story exposed an extreme and relatively rare instance of violence against sex offenders. While media accounts would have us believe that vigilantes across the country lie in wait for predators who move into their neighborhoods, responses to sex offenders more often involve collective campaigns that direct outrage toward political and criminal justice systems.…
Read MoreWI: Many On GPS Monitoring Are Homeless
[urbanmilwaukee.com 3/10/18] Michael walked out of the Oshkosh Correctional Institution in April 2017 at age 60 with $140 to his name, a record as a sex offender and a GPS monitoring bracelet strapped to his ankle. Michael, who requested that only his middle name be used to avoid public attention, was convicted of two child sex crimes, the most recent in 2006, for which he spent 10 years in prison. Upon release, he traveled to Vernon County, where he had committed his most recent sex crime, and stayed in a…
Read MoreFL: Jackson County Proposes 2500 feet Sex Offender Residency Restriction
[floridaactioncommittee.org] Jackson County, Florida is considering enacting a Sex Offender Residency Restriction (SORR). According to this article, the county currently has a 1000 foot ordinance, which they are looking to increase to 2500 feet. “Our whole goal is not to punish anyone, it’s just to make our community safer,” Jackson County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Quinton Hollis said. In fact, studies have shown that residency restrictions DO NOT make the communities safer and may even increase recidivism by destabilizing former offenders. SORRs were just declared to be punitive in the City…
Read More