Below I highlighted a quote in red. In the town counselors own words they state the goals behind their law. It is plain outright banishment! No person deserves that, once the time is over they need to be able to get on with putting their life back on track, to led a law abiding life and not get in trouble again. The registry instead promotes fear and hatred, and promotes vigilantism. While not doing anything to protect a child.
State overturns city sex offender law
Reporter - American Journal
WESTBROOK (June 25, 2009): A new state law that establishes boundaries for where convicted sex offenders can live will overturn the more stringent restrictions put in place by Westbrook officials two years ago.[0]
In the municipalities that choose to enact the new law, which will take effect in September, registered sex offenders will be prohibited from residing within 750 feet of a school or any municipally owned building generally used by children.
Westbrook’s ordinance restricts any registered sex offender whose crime was committed against an individual under 18 from living or working within 2,500 feet of a school, child care center or home, park, playground, bowling alley or any other location frequented by children. The ordinance bars these sex offenders from the most densely populated residential and business districts in the city, including all of downtown.
Westbrook officials, who unanimously enacted the ordinance in September 2007, said this week they were unaware of the new law, but not pleased to hear about it.
Council President Brendan Rielly said rules restricting where sex offenders reside is “exactly what should be handled locally,” by officials who know the needs of their communities.
“I think that’s not a really smart use of their time in Augusta,” he said.
“For the legislation to just wipe this away, clearly they do not represent their constituents and that is extremely troubling,” said Councilor John O’Hara.
Both senators who represent Westbrook, Philip Bartlett and Joseph Brannigan, voted in favor of the bill, which passed 22-12. The bill passed through the house without a vote, and Rep. Tim Driscoll, D-Westbrook, said he didn't remember any debate about it. Rep. Ann Peoples, D-Westbrook, did not return a call from the American Journal.
Westbrook’s debate about the ordinance lasted months, went through several revisions and elicited testimony from both sex offenders and victims of sexual assault.
The resulting ordinance, which was supported by the city’s police department, prohibited sex offenders from living or working in the vast majority of the city, save about 2 1/2 miles of Methodist Road, a half mile of Bridgton Road, a half mile of Duck Pond Road and two-thirds of a mile of Brook Street.
About 30 offenders living and working in the city were grandfathered and didn’t have to leave their jobs or homes. Today, Police Chief Bill Baker said, 37 sex offenders live in Westbrook and 15 offenders work in the city. All of them are monitored by the department.
Baker said he is disappointed about the state law, but does think it's a good idea for rules about sex offenders to be the same from one community to the next. He said he'd like the city to adopt the new restrictions soon, in order to start making the necessary enforcement changes in the department.
The bill signed by Gov. John Baldacci this month gives towns and cities the option of enacting local ordinances to prohibit sex offenders from living within 750 feet of a school or other public property primarily used by children. The law is not mandatory and does not automatically apply to every municipality. However, it will supersede any town or city ordinances that are more restrictive, and municipalities will not be allowed to keep or enforce ordinances that are more restrictive.
The catalyst for the law was pressure from the federal government for uniform categories of sex offender laws at the state level, according to Rep. Joe Wagner, D-Lyman. Maine has a waiver that gives the state until July 2011 to hammer out those categories, and he fully expects the issue of restrictive boundaries to be revisited when the categories are debated by legislators during the next session. Wagner said he hopes legislators look at urban and rural areas separately and “they can be adjusted accordingly.”
As originally written, the bill, called An Act To Ensure a Uniform Comprehensive State Policy Regarding Residency Restrictions for Sex Offenders, sponsored by Sen. Anne Haskell, D-Portland, proposed no restrictions on where sex offenders could live. The bill that was eventually passed, Haskell said, was a compromise among the Maine Municipal Association, the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault and the Department of Corrections.
Legislators in favor of the original law not to allow boundaries say statistics show that restricting where sex offenders live does not make children safer, but does the opposite.
“They have a tendency to drive offenders underground,” Haskell said about residency restrictions. “Then you don’t know where they are, which is a more dangerous situation.”
In addition to driving sex offenders off the radar, Haskell said, strict ordinances create a false sense of security.
Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, D-Brunswick, chairman of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, said he’s attended forums around the country on the subject and heard experts give the same testimony over and over again about the ineffectiveness of residency restrictions on sex offenders.
“It doesn’t give you what you want,” he said. “The argument for having restrictions is purely emotional.”
Gerzofsky said no matter where sex offenders live, they always have the option of driving to another town and parking in front of a school where no one knows who they are. When residents and parents are aware of who they are and where they live, there’s more pressure for them to stay in line, he said.
“I’d put them all downtown across the street from the police station,” Gerzofsky said. “The more people you have staring at you, the more likely you are to behave.”
The parties involved in coming up with a compromise for the bill said no one ended up fully satisfied with the final result.
Kate Dufour, legislative advocate for the Maine Municipal Association, said the original bill would not have allowed cities or towns to have any restrictions on where sex offenders lived or worked – a pre-emption of local control that, she said, “was going way too far.”
Adding the ability for municipalities to establish a 750-foot boundary was the compromise reached, but Dufour said that was far from what she was arguing for.
“Our communities are so diverse,” she said about the municipalities in the state, and because of that, these kinds of laws should be established by “the people who know best what goes on in them.”
Elizabeth Ward Saxl, executive director of the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said her organization believes that neither state nor local officials are the right people to be establishing residency restrictions for sex offenders. She said it should be the job of the probation officers and done on a case-by-case basis, rather than by law.
However, Saxl said, she’s glad to see towns and cities consider the issue and take protecting their residents against sexual assault seriously.
Both Rielly and O’Hara said they will turn to the city’s attorneys to see if there’s any way they can keep the current ordinance in place.
However, Mayor Bruce Chuluda said he wasn’t surprised about the state law and thought the ordinance the council passed was too restrictive.
“I think these folks need to be able to live and work within a community,” he said. “There needs to be some realistic boundaries.
But councilors said they didn’t want that community to be Westbrook. Rielly said had it been constitutional to ban sex offenders from the city entirely, he would have been in favor of doing so.
“If by protecting children we infringe on some so-called rights of criminals,” Rielly said, “I’m fine with that.”
Reporter Ann Fisher also contributed to this article.
Based in Westbrook, Reporter - American Journal Leslie Bridgers can be reached at 207-854-2577 or by e-mail at lbridgers@keepmecurrent.com .
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