Wednesday, April 6, 2011

OC Supervisors Approve Banning Sex Offenders From Parks, Beaches


An ordinance that bans registered sex offenders from some Orange County parks and beaches and imposes a $500 fine on violators was approved by county Supervisors Friday. Tell the truth. It means arrest and fine.

Under the law, registered sex offenders are banned from county recreational areas where children regularly gather. It covers any county-owned, leased, operated or maintained land, including harbors, beaches, parks or recreational areas.

Supervisor Shawn Nelson proposed the ordinance in response to one of his constituents complaining about a registered sex offender who inherited a home in Fullerton across from Laguna Lake Park. Sad

Erin Runnion -- the mother of slain 5-year-old daughter Samantha Runnion, who was abducted, molested and strangled in 2002 -- urged the board to approve the ordinance.

"I want to support Supervisor Nelson's ordinance because the reality is when we look at recidivism rates, it's one of the most underreported crimes in the country," Runnion said, referring to child molestation. "I urge you to pass this ordinance to better protect our children." recidivism rates from professionals are obviously not good enough so why not just quit wasting the everyone's time and money since it is so "underreported".

Nelson assured critics of the law that it would not lead to "shakedowns" or "profiling" by sheriff's deputies at the county's parks. Right....

"It is certainly a good ordinance. I don't know that anyone could say it better than (Erin Runnion)," Nelson said.

Without the law, Nelson said, registered sex offenders "could sit there and watch these children and the only prudent thing a mother or father, like me, could do would be to be forced out of the park." First how do you know someone at the park is a sex offenders and second, why be forced out when a sex offender isn't technically allowed to be around children. So this reasoning is ignorant. Nelson's seriously not making sense here. How about watch your own kids and keep tab on them...now that's a novel idea.

Supervisor John Moorlach asked if there was a way for people to appeal the ban and worried about the constitutional issues in enforcing it. What are those?

Nelson and Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas assured the supervisors the law is constitutionally sound. Nelson added people who work for the county who are registered sex offenders could apply for a waiver, but the constitution does not demand it.

"We don't have to give an exception, it's an accommodation," Nelson said. "It is constitutional to have no exceptions. The fact we're giving them one is more than is required." Constitutional for whom exactly?

County counsel Nicholas Crisos told the supervisors that while someone could sue over the law, county officials are confident they would prevail in court.

"Nick is saying if we get sued we'll probably win, but we're spending taxpayer dollars, not your personal dollars, so I hope you're right," Moorlach said.
NBC LA legal analyst Royal Oakes agreed.

"Measures like this usually are found constitutional," Oaks said "They're very popular with communities." There's that word again.

Oaks explained that as long as the restrictions are not too broad and the law was narrow enough in scope, it would likely survive any legal challenges. 

Anyone violating the law could face up to six months in jail and a $500 fine, Rackauckas said. What you really mean to say is there is an upgraded level if you are a low-risk, non-violent offender. Now do you become a high-risk, violent or predator with arrest?
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"When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect."
~Adlia Stevenson U.S. Vice President (1893–1897) and Congressman (1879–1881)

On a Personal Note

Thanks for the opportunity to express my thoughts regarding the issue of citizens’ rights, particularly addressing certain sex offenders’ crimes that do not fit the devastating, inequitable and endless punishment given.


As you know, many young men and women lives across the nation are being destroyed by incarceration, life-time registry and restrictive laws that do more harm than good. For those individuals, there is no second chance.

Below is a personal letter to President Obama:
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“Dear President Obama,

I truly agree with your sentiments that individuals, such as ex-felons, should be able to receive a second chance at life. Since we all know that one can veer off that path of life and travel along rough, rocky terrain, sometimes running off and ending up in some ditch. We all have made our fill of mistakes and sometimes those held a costly consequence that changed life forever. So we lived through it, trying harder to make things right with family, friends and those around us, but what about those who aren’t able to make things right even if they tried…because they’re labeled as too dirty, a leper, a person who is rejected from society and home.

But what if they’re a seventeen year old and had sex with a fifteen year old, consensual at that? Or they’re a teen that had gotten so enraged after a breakup that he sent out naked pictures of his girlfriend on his cell phone or email? Or an individual urinates where someone just happens to see them?

All are wrong and a travesty but do they deserve the life of no second chance with a registry that ends all. They are labeled, no jobs, no where to live…they have been deemed a menace to society, a plague. These certain circumstances, and many other situations similar to these, I believe still deserve a second change.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

After my son’s early release and two years of prison, I thought I had handled that fact graciously knowing after serving his time he would be able to get that fresh start, that second chance. He was an exemplary inmate, GED, college courses and vocational classes. Little did I know that a second chance on the outside was the farthest from the truth? He now struggles and lives in a trailer park sharing a trailer with another and surrounded by others in the same rocking boat, one to float endlessly in shark infested waters. I see him little because of probation requirements (he couldn’t live with us because we were 800 feet near a school). My family is afraid of what would happen to them if he lived with them…vigilantism. My son has no other place to stay since others condemn him of his crime that is screamed from the highest rooftop. Sex offender, sex offender!

Not all sex offenders are pedophiles or predators but some are simply young kids that make one stupid and rash decision that eventually changes everything, and they have no idea what they’ve done until their life is never their own. Exactly, where is that second chance for those sex-offenders who are lumped together with pedophiles and predators? Now, it makes me sick to think of my son’s future and many like him that are on the registry and many with no second chance…ever. I am asking you as a mother and as another concerned citizen of the United States that these laws are looked at again and taken into serious consideration in what they are doing to the Constitution of the United States, not for sex offenders in general but the future rights of every citizen, before anymore are put into effect. They unjustly strip an offender of their rights and place them in a guillotine that can be easily set off by anyone and at anytime. Where is the second chance for ex-sex offenders in the present, pending and future laws?”
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What truly saddens me is the weakness and deterioration of what the sex offense issue is doing to our once, great nation. Across Europe, others are seeing the injustice and disregard of rights, but we ignore this problem and it makes me wonder where humanity is heading….

We have become a hysterical society in which our latest witch-hunt is a sex offender--no matter his/her crime.

Below is a email sent from a foreign advocate to a father of a sex offender:
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“The tragic story of your son's death is just so sad that it's difficult to explain how. It was very hard to read your letters. It seems almost unbelievable that this can take place in a democracy! From our point of view, there is no justice in this. Not in any way: not for you, your son, the former girl friend – or even the state.

It is an abusive legal system. It seems barbaric. And we are so very sorry that this takes place. That's why it's so important for us to try to neutralize the debate with this…, hopefully making some changes. ….. to show the every day life of the sex offenders, trying to show how they keep on being punished, even after served prison time…..But we will for sure tell the story of the injustice that your son has been exposed to.”
* * * *
I appreciate everyone's commitment and backing to protect everyone's civil rights, plainly as noted in the Constitution of the United States and is presupposed, giving ALL men are “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”