Town of Babylon Sex Offender Residency Restriction Map (Click to view full-size version)
A North Bellmore high school student searched his block on an online sex offender map last month and found something that unnerved the whole neighborhood: A Level 2 sex offender who served one year in Nassau County jail for sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl was not only living near him, but within 1,000 feet of a school, in violation of county law. Less than a week later, at a community meeting in Merrick, Nassau County Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey got an earful from a room full of angry parents who accused police of failing to notify them and thereby leaving kids at risk.
The commissioner did his best to assure the crowd that officers are aware of all registered sex offenders in their patrol areas and that the errant offender would be forced to leave. “I have a 15-year-old daughter,” one unappeased father barked. “If he comes near her you’re going to be ‘cuffing me!”
It turns out Special Victims Section detectives had visited the sex offender’s new home prior to the meeting and shortly after he moved in on Oct. 14, which was on or about the same day that the student made the discovery and his neighbors reported it. The Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District, which has a sex offender alert program, was also called into question at the meeting, but schools can’t alert parents until detectives have notified administrators—and it was that built-in lag that ticked the parents off. But if that pile-on wasn’t enough, the next day the Town of Babylon released a report that suggested the current system of sex offender restrictions and alerts, although well-intentioned, leaves much to be desired.
“We need to take a look at the sex offender system that we have created here in New York and we need to ask ourselves if we’re being given a false sense of security,” said Babylon Town Supervisor Steve Bellone at an Oct. 21 news conference on the steps of town hall. He called on New York State to conduct statewide analysis of residency restriction laws.
Bellone was concerned that Suffolk’s residency restrictions, which bar convicted child molesters, rapists and other sex offenders from living near schools and playgrounds, would drive offenders “underground” because of the difficulty in finding housing. He also took issue with the notification system—school districts vary in their methods—and the accuracy of information on the state sex offender registry, which town investigators found was flawed in some cases.
Like in the North Bellmore case, it turned out that vigilance fueled a scathing reaction to the complex and sometimes inconsistent system intended to protect the public. Still, the system is not without its defenders.
“It is not residency restriction that motivates a sex offender to violate the law, it is their perception that law enforcement is not dedicated to ensuring compliance,” says Laura Ahearn, executive director of Stony Brook-based Parents For Megan’s Law and the Crime Victims Center, a group that advocates for sex crime victims and other victims of violent crime and lobbies for tougher laws governing sex offenders. Although the burden is on the sex offender to tell authorities where they live, Suffolk has a compliance rate of between 95 and 98 percent and Nassau is comparable, Ahearn says.
She adds that sex offenders are mistaken if they think police are slacking, since Nassau and Suffolk counties have some of the strictest laws in New York State. Some towns and villages have their own additional residency restrictions as well, and still more are currently up for debate.
As for more immediate notifications, Ahearn suggests that the public sign up for e-mail alerts through her website, www.parentsformeganslaw.com, where users can register to be notified if a sex offender moves into their neighborhood by entering their zip code. Users can enter multiple zip codes as well, so they can be notified about sex offenders who move into nearby neighboring school districts that they otherwise wouldn’t be alerted to, Ahearn says.
Such diligence pays, because with the nearly 1,500 registered sex offenders on Long Island—Nassau has 484 and Suffolk has 987, as of Nov. 13—there are equally as many special circumstances. Despite what the state registry says on a given day, moves may be in progress and addresses therefore inaccurate, a warrant may already be out for the offender’s arrest, or an offender may be grandfathered into homes near schools, meaning they can stay because they lived there before residency restriction laws were enacted.
As for Kevin Johnson, the convicted child molester who was found to be living too close to Grand Avenue Middle School in North Bellmore, he has until mid-December to move out—60 days from the date of notice of eviction, same as anyone else.
Whether the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services will take Babylon’s recommendations is unclear, but spokesman John Caher says the agency is also concerned with the “inconsistency” of the residency restrictions.
Inevitably, once Johnson moves, he will infuriate his next set of neighbors. Says Caher: “They have to live somewhere.”
Laws about sex needs to washed from the books. People who use laws about sex usually are as guilty as the one who wants to make the other suffer for having sex with that includes the Judge, Jurors and the seducer/the seduced. Surely threats are made if you don’t have sex or visaversa. Get caught and call a cop? Get in bed with someone you want to case pain is the montage used and both are wrong if that is the desire to use sex as a weapon. Some say sex is only for procreation and they are dead wrong too. The law is dead and wrong. Look if you make a law it is for one thing and one thing only like a law against homosexuality in Africa to kill homosexuals. Sex is not nor has ever been something laws should be enacted for and the ones who do never in vision equality for sexes, the law is to curb any chance of equality between sexes. If the laws were abolished then sexes would have a chance to be equal in nature. If women really wanted equality they would can and trash these law too, Judge Judy and any other judge that thinks they are doing something good by publicly abusing someone like using their image without their approval is legally irreproachable and disgustingly encroachingly disgusting. I’m confident if someone Photo Shopped JJ in bed with a child she would be upset. What is the difference when the justice system lies in a plea bargain? I find that worse by far. I wrote right on the plea bargan that I do not agree so your imaginary action and the law useing it was and still is as dead as your argument, and your sex offender list.
Just like the seventy’s when the seat belt law came out so did the over the shoulder strap and the flag was raised to create probable cause and the car could be pulled over, the citizens inside could be quizzed and revenue created. It did not save lives at all. Check the numbers. The number of cars in relation to cars on the road as related to the number of traffic deaths are not what they say and the overall long term advantage is not in the interest of the change in law bandaid but the effect of the revenue is proof to my statement. Drivers are not all the same and you don’t find seat belts in limos. The rich have sex scandals and the poor get raped is an equivalent were the money is funneled. Well here we go again! You can not prove the sex offender registry has keep one child safe yet we can prove the sex offender registry is in direct relationship to the death of innocent people, putting us to mind of scenes from Casablanca
People who are so obsessed with any sex they can find/unearth & the only way to deal with this kind of “hierarchy” of historic hysteria. A word taken from hysterectomy, hysteria is tied to castration used to make animals less threatening which clearly explains the atmosphere we have made for ourselves.
Anyway we are supposed to be an advanced nation and we still have a death penalty when the rest of the world except for some nations we are still warring with/selling weapons too. Our weapons dealers/torture lovers delighting in support for the death of people they don’t know or want to simply because they don’t know how to get money for telling them how to live or taking it from someone by force. Is that supposed to include mutilations? In my humble opinion that alone is a terrorist activity as much as severed hands, ears, heads, or making a case with nothing more than an obsession justified by a self inflicted wound?
People the worthlessness of the use of it and Pink Triangles has been proved so many times. The concepts are the same and in tell we get a handle on the business of Washington we better think. Getting a ticket for fishing just adds to ones starving more.