This week in the sex offender world

Re the current Pokemon Go craze and concern this could put children and youth in "proximity" to registrants:

This is shaping up to be the new "Halloween boogie-man" scare. Now that enough people have said often enough and loudly enough that there is no statistical increased sexual risk to children in connection with Halloween and trick-or-treat activities, along comes Pokemon Go to keep the fear-pot boiling. And of course the sensationalism-creators and fear-mongers can point to an actual

incident: a registered citizen was "caught" playing Pokemon with a 16 year old teenager--outside of a downtown courthouse, a location that probably boasts as many law enforcement officers per square foot as any other in town. Television anchors, a-la-weather map style, are displaying maps of local areas with Pokemon stops marked in one color and the homes of registered citizens marked in another and pointing out, with horrified faces but barely concealed glee, the places where one is within proximity to the other. Well, that does it! Put a kid on the same block with someone on the registry, and Katie, bar the door. I wonder what the statistical risk of harm is to a minor while playing Pokemon Go within shouting distance of where a registrant lives?

Re online "stings" and headlines shouting that parents are terrified over the potential risk of harm to their children:

Of course parents are terrified; that is the purpose; terrify the parents and assure future funding for continued stings and special forces. It has very little to do with actually protecting children. There were no children. Those men were idiots as well as potential criminals. Virtually everyone arrested for being online child predators are arrested in these kinds of made-up situations. Where are the cases

of real children being lured from their homes by some stranger online? Surely there are police reports...parents whose children have just disappeared? Where are the real ads from parents offering up their children like items on a menu? If this were the problem that law enforcement and the media make it out to be, there would be enough real cases to keep law enforcement busy. There would be no need to resort to entrapment and 50 year old cops pretending to be 12 year old kids.

Re the necessity of residency restrictions for protection of property values among other reasons:

Many millions in public resources are spent in the U.S. on keeping and maintaining a public registry. Research has shown little to no public safety value in public notification and most definitely no reduction in child molestation. Little to nothing in public resources is spent on education,

prevention, victim services, and meaningful reentry initiatives for former offenders. Research shows that all of these enhance public safety and work toward reduction of child molestation. Property values, which do not come close to importance in comparison with child molestation and general public safety, are reduced only due to public notification. If no one knew that the guy next door who committed a crime 20 years ago, has led an exemplary life since, is raising his kids and supporting his family, had committed a sexual crime, there would be no increased risk to anyone and no loss of surrounding property value. If his crime had been murder or arson or armed robbery or killing someone while driving intoxicated or any other offense, all with higher reoffense rates than sexual crimes, no one would know. As far as the disproportionate number of registrants "clustering" in areas without restrictions, registrants of necessity live where they are allowed rather than where they are not. If there were no residency restrictions anywhere--and nothing is so devoid of any proof of effectiveness or public safety value as residency restrictions--the disbursement would be even-handed, driven primarily by what the individuals could afford. Nothing supports the efficacy of a public registry. The many millions would be much better spent on the things are are shown to work. A law-enforcement only registry under the conditions supported by empirical data is the only logical answer.

Sex offenders, transgender folk, and public toilets

I thought I was through writing about this transgender/bathroom issue when I wrote “Is Target’s bathroom policy an open door to sex offenders?” I’m really sick of the whole silly thing. The expression “tempest in a teapot” surely was penned for situations such as this. However, two recurring themes in pieces written on the issue are driving me to the keyboard again.

One is the identification of many who are protesting the loudest about the matter as “devout Christians” or “fundamentalist Christians.” I myself am a devout Christian, by some standards meeting the criteria for the fundamentalist label, and I am almost embarrassed to admit it in light of the ignorance, vitriol, and downright silliness displayed by these protesters.

My strongest ire, however, centers around statements such as this one from – what else – the Christian Post:

“…with one of the protesters, a mother of four, warning that there are as many as 209 registered sex offenders within a 5 mile radius of that particular [Target] store. ‘With Target's new policy, it's unverifiable. You cannot verify a person's intent, so these sexual predators will use these policies to gain access into the women's restroom, making it a dangerous place for women and children,’ said Carrie Peterson.”

Where do I begin? I guess first with this woman’s belief that all on the registry -- regardless of the offense committed, discounting that a few of them were wrongly accused and convicted, ignoring that the vast majority have been in the community, many for years, without committing a second sexual offense – are predators.

This is one of the most insidious dangers of the public registry. The mere presence of a name on it cries to the public, “Watch out; I am a menace; I will do you harm!” when very, very seldom is that accurate.

And as ignorant and as lacking in any evidence whatsoever is her assumption that registrants will put on dresses, wigs, lipstick, and heels and infiltrate women’s public toilets in order to molest those in there.

We all want to keep children safe, but there is no evidence whatsoever that trans people pose any sexual harm to children or that registered citizens dress up as the opposite sex in order to commit crimes in public bathrooms. Children are far, far more likely to be molested by those close to them in their everyday lives and in their own homes or other places they regularly frequent than by anyone they don’t know, regardless of their gender identity, in a public place.

So if you feel compelled by God to protest this or similar bathroom policies, please make it clear that you do not speak for all persons of faith, and for crying out loud, do a little research and learn a few facts.

A Result of Sex Offender “Stranger Danger” Nobody Saw Coming

The entire sex offender registry—indeed, the entire sex offender industry—is built around the concept of “stranger danger,” the idea that children are at high risk of sexual assault from people they do not know, strangers, people who have already sexually offended and are out there just waiting to grab a random kid and do it again. Nothing will produce spasms of eye-rolling and unintelligible

sounds of disgust and derision in the well informed as will the term “stranger danger.”

The greatest part of the American citizenry supports the public sex offender registry. And yet when anyone says that those most likely to sexually abuse a child are those the child knows, those who aren’t on the registry but rather are close to the child in his everyday life, often family members, everyone within hearing distance nods his or her head in agreement. They do know this. It has been written in article after article, talked about ad nauseam by television talk show hosts and pop psychologists, and verified by any personal knowledge they have on the subject. Yet still they support the public sex offender registry.

Three members of a family and their accomplice are in jail because of stranger danger. They apparently had not read the articles or seen the talk shows, and when the mother of a six-year-old child in Missouri felt her son was too friendly and nice to strangers, to people he didn’t know, thus increasing his risk of becoming a victim, the boy’s grandmother and aunt agreed. So they did what any loving family would do; they decided to teach him a lesson.

They enlisted the help of a co-worker of the boy’s aunt who was ready and willing to play the part of Mr. Stranger Danger himself, and his performance was truly Oscar-worthy. He lured the little boy into his pickup as he got off the school bus. There the stranger from Hell proceeded to tie his hands and feet together; he told the terrified child he would not see his mother again; he threatened him with being “nailed to a wall.” He threatened him by waving a gun at him and covered his face with his jacket so that he could not see.

In this condition—bound, vision obscured, terrified and sobbing—he was carried into the basement of his own home. There he had his pants removed and was told he would become a sex slave. This surely begs the question of what a six-year-old child knows about being a sex slave. After four hours in captivity and terror, he was released and told to go upstairs to his mother. There he was lectured by his family about—you got it—stranger danger. This kid would have been safer with almost any stranger I could drag in off the street than he was with his family members.

At school the next day, he disclosed his ordeal to school authorities. The four adults were arrested, and the little six year old victim of the unfathomable ignorance and cruelty of the people who should have protected him from ignorance and cruelty was placed in protective custody and is by now most likely with a foster family.

What will happen to this family and to this child is anybody’s guess; all we can do is keep the child in our thoughts and prayers.

And, lest the irony has escaped anyone, this case proves that, in spite of the myths that persist about bogeymen hiding in the bushes, strangers that will pounce without notice, once again the true bogeymen, the ones so much more likely to bring fear and pain and horror to children, are those close to them in their everyday lives. 

Sex Offenders and Halloween--will it ever stop?

What do these four headlines have in common?

"Staying safe and avoiding sex offenders while trick or treating on Halloween"

"Sex Offenders in Colorado Can Open Doors on Halloween" (sub-text: and we've got to put a stop to that)

"Police out in force for Halloween; extra eye on sex offenders in Effingham"

"County sex offenders required to report on Halloween"

Not a very hard question, is it? These are headlines of just four of a multitude of articles that appeared in online and print media in the four weeks before Halloween. Multitude? Yes...multitude. I captured 50 separate articles, coming from 22 separate states. Those are the ones that crossed my desk in the regular course of my work. When I did an actual search, they are less than half the number that one search brought up.

The states that seem to have put forth the most are, like the first one above, from states that have no restrictions in place for registrants on Halloween. One assumes that someone did his or her homework and knows this is a non-problem and no laws are needed. Not satisfied with that, enterprising law enforcement and journalists took it as a challenge and issued warnings left and right about the danger of those on the registry on this night above all. They cautioned every parent to check the registry carefully before letting the kids go trick or treating. Two of those states now have legislators considering bills that will bring their states in line with the ones that have restrictions. And so it spreads, like a fungus or a cancer.

Additionally, after Halloween a plethora of new articles appeared, all with the same theme: "We did it! We protected your children on Halloween from the big, bad sex offenders. No children were molested by anyone on the registry!" Well guess what, California and Florida? Guess what, Nevada? None were molested in Alabama or Kansas, or any of the other states that have no state laws and very few or no jurisdictional ones that affect registrants on Halloween. None were molested anywhere by anyone on the registry while trick or treating--ever, as far as research has been able to determine.

But this is not what the public thinks. How could they when headlines and TV anchors shout at them for weeks about the necessity to take extra precautions on Halloween against "sex offenders"? This was made clear when, in response to an article titled, "Operation Scarecrow helped keep sex offenders away from kids on Halloween," I commented:

"Kept kids safe from sexual predators"--that is such a joke. I don't imagine any kids were attacked by hyenas either, so you might as well take credit for that also. I admit to that being a bit of hyperbole, but the fact is that children are at ZERO increased risk for sexual crime on

Halloween, and all of the law enforcement hype and political hype across the nation is just that--hype that has nothing to do with actually protecting children and much to do with making the public think so. There is no record of a child being molested by a registrant while trick or treating--ever. Now, if increased patrol cars and even foot patrols were out and visible, you may have had an impact on traffic safety and thus have saved a child from being hit by a car. That is what children are at increased risk for on Halloween, and six were killed this year trick or treating. We need facts and truth in laws, in law-enforcement, and in journalism.

I was immediately challenged by a well-meaning reader who wrote:

"the fact is that children are at ZERO increased risk for sexual crime on Halloween" Really, Shelly? And where did you obtain that fact from? From your extensive...several minutes worth of...thinking about the issue? Kudos to the officers for looking out for the kids. I'm glad they take the issue more seriously than Shelly does.

To his credit, when I nicely replied and gave an excellent research source as my evidence, he apologized and complimented me on my response. He is a rare, rare exception.

When did this start? I remember many articles last year, and the year before that, and....? Time out for research.

I searched "Halloween restrictions for sex offenders." I used the time frame of September 1 through November 15. I started at 2000 and came forward. I looked at every single entry. I did not look at any actual articles. If the entry did not clearly link danger from registered sex offenders with Halloween, I did not count it. Early on and continuing forward, the entries include reports of courts overturning or disallowing these restrictions. Frankly, I was surprised there were so many. Everyone needs to go to court over this. The entries also include material from advocates, experts, and research debunking the entire premise and the laws that are useless because there is no problem for them to address. This is by no means a "real" piece of research, but these are my results:

• 2000  0 articles
• 2001  1 article, written by someone denouncing the rumors of children's deaths by poison in treats; he calls it Halloween sadism; sex offenders are not mentioned, but I found it interesting.
• 2002  0
• 2003  3; California, Louisiana, and a third I was unable to determine announced their creation of laws restricting the activities of registrants on Halloween.
• 2004  1
• 2005  11; Megan's Law was mentioned in two of the entries
• 2006  8
• 2007  15
• 2008  60 ?? My guess is that SORNA was becoming a motivating factor.
• 2009  23
• 2010  40
• 2011  66
• 2012  100
• 2013  117
• 2014  177

With very few exceptions, the pattern is clear--an increase every year. I do not expect a decrease for next year, but maybe more will be announcing the overturning of some of these laws. The evidence is clear and compelling that they are laws that have no purpose and no merit. 

Sex offender alert: get those bumper stickers off that window!

~~by Shelly

This will sound like my friend Lenore Skenazy at Free-Range Kids, but honestly, this has just gone too far.

Besides being poorly written and edited--it says "several police departments" and identifies none; it uses "sick" when it means "stick"-Freudian slip?--this article and what it says are ridiculous.

The premise is that seeing bumper-sticker-type stick figures portraying a family with young children will incite someone with pedophilic tendencies to--what?-follow the car home, kill the parents, and abscond with the children? Attack the car at a stop light and drag the children from the car?

The article, and presumably the warning of these police departments, whoever they are, also cautions against anything on the car that identifies the school that one's child goes to. The only rationale I can think of here is that someone intent on abducting a random child would not know that schools contain children until he sees a bumper sticker announcing, "My child is an honor student at Roosevelt Elementary."

And don't even get me started on the ridiculous notion that children are abducted from schools by strangers on a regular--or irregular--or any kind of--basis.

Lenore's mission is to debunk the notion that our children are at risk every minute of every day from every conceivable danger. I wonder if she will re-think her position now that she has been alerted to the potential horrors that await those who put stick figures on their cars.

Do we really need new sex offender laws every time a child is killed?

First, we need to get out of the way the accusations, based on the title of this post, that I don't care about the victims. I care about the victims much, much more than those who persist in supporting a system that all but ignores the victims and apparently doesn't care about any victims except those victimized by registered sex offenders.

Florida has just passed a plethora of laws, and is looking to pass more, under the guise of protecting children from those registered sex offenders

According to the FBI Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Statistical Briefing Book, 2008, family members and acquaintances are responsible for, depending on the age of the child, 98 to 95% of sexual crime against children. The remaining small percentages are committed by strangers, and those already on the registry are a small percentage of those small percentages, leaving the focus on registrants, the public registry, and all of its appendages a useless but very expensive exercise in futility, virtually worthless in addressing the serious issue of child sexual abuse.

As far as these new bills in Florida are concerned, careful analysis seems to reveal one impetus: an opportunity to make political hay driven by the tragic death of a child, Cherish, by a repeat sex offender. Even though Florida has some of the most self-defeating and draconian laws on the books, the civil commitment program that has been in place has actually done a good job. Much has been made of the fact that "...Florida has a serious problem with repeat offenders. Hundreds of violent sexual offenders have committed new sexual crimes after being released from prison...." That sounds so alarming, and of course any violent crime is alarming and should be answered with a prison sentence commiserate with the crime, but using all of Florida's numbers relevant to this reveals a totally different perspective.

Those hundreds of violent offenders--a few short of 600--represent the failures of the program over a 14 year period of time. During those 14 years, the program screened and released 31,000 individuals. That means that, under the program in place, 30,400 released sex offenders did not commit a second offense over the 14 years. It appears the program had a 98% success rate with violent offenders over the time period. The number of total re-offenses, including the almost 600 violent ones, for the 14 years is 1,400. For those who like recidivism--sexual re-offense--rates, that is less than 5%. Some states come in lower, some a bit higher. Florida is right in the middle, right at the figure the DOJ arrived at after a multi-state, mega-study released in 2003.

These new laws are not needed. I predict that the rates will not change. Somewhere around 5% of released offenders either will not choose or will not be able to alter their behavior and will be, deservedly, returned to prison. And children in Florida will continue to be sexually abused at exactly the same rate as they have been and by the same people, and so few of them will be registered sex offenders that everyone on the registry could drop dead today and the amount of sexual crime against children will be the same tomorrow.

When sex offenders are the topic, we need some honesty in journalism and in legislation

Florida, which already has the reputation for its harshness and apparent lack of concern for measures promoting rehabilitation when dealing with sex offender legislation, has churned out four new bills, as detailed here.

The political posturing is seen from the first sentence but is no where more colorful than in the quote by Florida Senator Gaetz promising to "make Florida scorched earth for those who seek to harm our children."


I have two problems with the presentation of information in this article.

First, the standard for "sexually violent predator," if one actually reads the criminal code, is extremely vague and structured so that it could be, and undoubtedly is, applied to many who should not be in that category. The article, to be fair and balanced, has a responsibility to point that out.    

Secondly, using Mr. Harrel, who was not on the registry and therefore not a known repeat offender, as an example equal with Mr. Smith as "cases involving repeat sexually violent predators" is misleading, even unethical, journalism. Is Harrel the second-best example? Then the entire premise is a lie. Removing Mr. Harrel leaves only Mr. Smith, and the justification of "repeat sexually violent predators" coupled with the "last three years" is gone.

Both of these men were murderers. Both committed heinous crimes against their victims before they murdered them. Both deserve(d) appropriate punishment through the justice system. However, those designated as sexually violent predators in Florida who have murdered no one and fall far short of committing such heinous acts do not deserve punishment thinly disguised as "public safety measures" based on what those two men did.

If another has brutally raped a child, if another has murdered a child, then apply the stricter guidelines to him, not to the 99.9% who have done neither.

The Predator Test? In My Opinion, It Fails

I just finished watching a program on the CNN/Headline News Channel program Raising America with

Kyra Phillips, a segment titled “The Predator Test."  It utilized a “sting-like” format, with an adult stranger complete with dog approaching children at a park and asking the children to go with him to his car to get more treats for the dog.  Parents were nearby watching; they had, of course, all agreed for their children to be unknowing guinea pigs in the "test."

I did not find the test very realistic or credible. The "predator" gathered up several children at a time, and the ones that would go with him trooped along together in a procession that included some other adult with another dog whose function was never explained. Some of the children waved to their mothers sitting nearby as they left. Somehow I don't think a true predator targeting a victim in a park, which is a very rare occurrence, would take children en masse and in view of their parents.

The promo for the show included some of the footage as well as written text, and based on that, I put this comment on the comment board before the program aired.

My quarrel isn't with addressing the issue of "stranger danger" but with the skewed proportions with which the entire situation is addressed. The greatest focus and use of resources is on the registered sex offender, and that is who has the tiniest risk of harming a child--less than 1%. The next focus is "stranger danger," and that too is very small. According to the office of Juvenile Justice, it is 2-6 %. 

The only way to address the overwhelmingly greatest risk is through structured programs of awareness, education, and prevention, and, as far as I know, our government spends zero effort and money on that. The only thing that is done is by private agencies and is so limited as to be virtually ineffective in addressing the issue. More simply put, our nation spends 100% of its resources dedicated to this issue on 5% of potential victims and nothing on the other 95%.

Then I watched the program. And I took notes.

I was even more disturbed at some of the misleading inferences and missed opportunities for some facts. For example, one parent asked how prevalent a problem it was that children were taken by strangers, and the "expert" indicated it was a serious problem, even saying at one point, “Families need to practice for that moment when a predator comes,” as though it were inevitable. In reality, according to federal statistics, about 115 children are taken by strangers each year; as a basis for comparison, 250,000 are injured in auto accidents.

One of the program "experts" talked about school starting and the dangers of children waiting for the school bus due to the prevalence of kidnappings from bus stops and how an adult must always, always be with them. I Googled several different phrases having to do with children taken from bus stops, and I was stunned when I couldn't find any. The closest I came was the case of Jaycee Dugard, who was taken off the street walking to a school bus stop in 1991, Brittany Locklear in 1998, taken from her own front yard waiting for the bus, and this year's abduction of 15-year-old Kathlynn Shepard and her friend who accepted a ride in a pick-up after getting off of their school bus. There have been a few other reported attempts but no actual kidnappings that I could locate.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with teaching children not to go anywhere with someone they do not know; parents would be negligent not to teach their kids that. However, until we are willing to expend a significant amount of resources on education and prevention programs in schools and communities that address the vast majority of child sexual abuse, that at the hands of people already in the lives of the children, we will not make a dint in the problem of sexual crime committed against children.

The sex offender registry didn't help, but...what if, instead...?

A horrible thing has happened. A little girl, only eight, has been murdered, and the prime suspect** is a man who has been on the sex offender registry in Florida since 1993 for attempted kidnapping and has had some misdemeanor sexual charges since.

Details are still sketchy, and “facts” will change as more is learned, but apparently he met the mother and daughter and gained the trust of the mother on Friday night. He took them shopping and left the store with the child on the pretext of getting them something to eat.

And now…..and now the hue and cry will go up. I could write the headlines myself. Tougher laws for sexual crimes. Mandatory life sentences for any offense involving a child.

But Florida already has some of the toughest laws for those who commit sexual crimes and some of the most stringent restrictions against registered offenders. None of that helped; none of that gave the mother the information that could have saved her child.

What if, instead, Florida had paid more attention to data that says that putting all resources into targeting those who have committed a sexual offense in the past will not reduce present or future sexual offending?

What if, instead, Florida had listened to the experts who said that the only way to reduce sexual crime, especially against children, is through comprehensive awareness, education, and prevention programs?

What if, rather than persecuting every man, woman, and child in Florida who is on the registry, Florida had looked at the research and the data and understood that punishing more and more strictly after the fact does not prevent sexual offenses from continuing to occur?

What if, instead, some of those education and prevention programs had been in place? What if the state of Florida had decided to spend even half of its resources on an attempt at prevention? Would this child’s mother have received literature or attended a meeting or heard a spot on television where she learned that almost all sexual crime against children is committed by those who have or form a connection to the family?

Might she have seen or heard about “grooming” behavior and recognized it enough so that she would have trusted this new man in her life a little less? Might some warning bells have sounded for her if she had read or heard cautions about anyone who pays excessive interest in children or tries to get a child alone, away from the parent?

We will never know, will we?

But when the strident voices are raised demanding longer sentences and more stringent conditions, I hope the state of Florida listens instead to the voices of experts, the voices suggesting once again that laws and conditions will not protect a child against a predator.

This tragic case is proof of that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

** I do not normally modify posts once they have been printed, but I need to make an exception. I originally wrote "...has been murdered by a man who..." I was taken to task, and rightly so, because I was violating my own beliefs and what I demand of others: an assumption of innocence until guilt is shown. Mea culpa.
~~Shelly

Warning--Sexual Predator Lives Here

The second week of April, 2013, a picture appeared in varying media outlets—mainstream papers, blogs, news broadcasts, and, of course, Facebook. It came from Florida and depicts a smiling  man clad in typical sheriff’s dress, lawman’s star proudly visible on his chest. He holds a posthole digger in one hand and stands beside a large red sign planted firmly in the ground.

The white letters on the sign proclaim that pursuant to Florida Statute 775.21, a sexual predator, who is named, lives here.

According to the articles, Sheriff Gordon Smith of Bradford County, Florida, is causing 18 of these signs, differing only by the individual’s name thereon, to be erected in front of the homes of Bradford County’s 18 registered sexual predators. Based on the pictures, one would assume that Sheriff Smith will dig every hole and plant every sign himself. However, Fox News 30, WAWS reports, “They'll use inmate labor to post them this week, making the burden on the taxpayer minimal.” 

This blog does not have enough space to contain all that should be written about this, so I will focus on a few legal questions.

In FS 775.21, named “The Florida Sexual Predators Act,” is an attempt, but not a very good one, to distinguish between a sexual predator and an ordinary, garden variety sexual offender: “Repeat sexual offenders, sexual offenders who use physical violence, and sexual offenders who prey on children are sexual predators who present an extreme threat to the public safety. Sexual offenders are extremely likely to use physical violence and to repeat their offenses, and most sexual offenders commit many offenses, have many more victims than are ever reported, and are prosecuted for only a fraction of their crimes.” Does the second sentence still mean predators, or is it, misinformation aside, a statement, as it says, about sex offenders in general? 

The sheriff’s department and his supporters make much of the fact that a clear line is being drawn between sex offenders and predators for the purposes of these signs, yet the ordinance being used to justify the signs is vague in making that distinction. In an attempt to clarify, Fox News printed, “The difference is that a predator is either a repeat offender and/or their crimes are violent with a victim under 12.”

But that is not what the ordinance says. The ordinance says, as given above, the predator designation is assigned to those who 1) are repeat offenders  2) use physical violence  3) prey on children, and, in regard to the last element, a few lines down is this clarification: “…where the victim is a minor…” In Florida a minor is anyone under the age of 18. Nowhere is the age 12—or any age—given as a requirement for the classification.

There is nothing in the ordinance that requires all three elements, or any two elements, to be present, as Fox News has indicated with saying their crimes are violent with a child victim. A repeat offender could be someone who has run naked around the town square three separate times. A person who had a victim under the age of 18 could be the 20-year-old boyfriend of a 17-year-old consensual partner. Are such people designated as predators in Florida? In Bradford County? I don’t know. But using Florida Statute 775.21, they could be. Will they wake up one morning and find bright red signs outside their front doors?

An additional legal issue is the need for this in-your face action. The legal authority, again from FS 775.21, is the directive to provide “…for community and public notification concerning the presence of sexual predators,” and “…upon the court’s written finding that an offender is a sexual predator, in order to protect the public, it is necessary that the sexual predator be registered with the department and that members of the community and the public be notified of the sexual predator’s presence.”

The same Fox News item reports, “Florida law states, as Sheriff, he can notify his community about sexual predators any way he sees fit.” I’m not sure that it does. Any way he sees fit might include branding the letters “SP” with a red-hot poker on the faces of those defined as predators.

The more important issue is the necessity of the signs as means of public notification. The Fox article states, “To alleviate any confusion parents might have about where sexual predators live, he's posting big red signs, bearing the predator's [sic] names, in front of their homes,” and, “He [Sheriff Smith] said parents kept calling with concerns.”

However, the registrants in question are already on a public database, easily located by concerned parents. Furthermore, in a response on a blog called “The Right Sphere,” a citizen of the community wrote, “Thing is, all the neighbors already knew because by law, a sexual predator has to tell all of his neighbors, and the officers will also inform the area to be doubly sure. So the sign only serves to make the knowledge known to visitors.”

To visitors? To people driving through Bradford County on their way elsewhere? To people visiting the designated predators? If they know them well enough to visit, surely they know their status. To people visiting the neighbors of the designated predators? They would surely share such knowledge with friends and family dropping in.

Then why does Sheriff Gordon Smith feel this is a job that he needs to undertake? I wonder if the answer does not lie in these words of the Sheriff in his interview with Fox 30 news: “And if the predators have a problem with it, he said, ‘If they don't like it, they got an option. Leave!’ "

Shelly

Coursey, Leslie. "No more hiding out for sex predators in Bradford County." 
         (4/8/13) ActionNewsJax.com/Fox 30 WAWS.

Tommy. "Check Out How This Sheriff Informs Public of Area Sex Offenders." 
         (4/10/13) The Right Sphere.