Florida: Online Sex Offender Alert System Launched (sends emails when perp moves nearby)

Local 6 (Florida) ^ | March 27, 2008

[Stoat]

Online Sex Offender Alert System Launched

New Service Is Free

 

POSTED: 12:35 pm EDT March 27, 2008

UPDATED: 12:57 pm EDT March 27, 2008

 

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Authorities in Florida on Thursday introduced a high-tech alert system that helps people keep track of sex offenders and predators.

  The new feature, which is free at www.floridasexoffender.net, allows registered users to enter numerous street addresses, such as a home, workplace or school. When a sex offender or predator moves into that specified area, an e-mail alert about the offender and his or her address will be sent to the user, officials said.

  "You can be safe in your neighborhood and your kids can be safe. This is an amazing step forward in protecting families in Florida," Orange-Osceola State Attorney Lawson Lamar said.

"One of the places I use to take my children, I used to take them to daycare, which wasn't a school it was at someone's home. I didn't know who lived next door from them. I didn't know who lived on their street. Now, I would," Joyce Dawlye of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said.

  The new feature also allows users to monitor specific sex offenders. Whenever the specific offender updates his or her information or new address, the user will receive an e-mail alert informing them of the update.

[Stoat]

And for those offenders who don't register as prescribed by law and who don't update their online profiles as required, The Sunshine State still allows law-abiding residents to utilize a 'slightly' different high-tech approach in protecting their families:

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There's also a video report available at the Local 6 site, for those interested.

[Stoat]

Hopefully other states will soon follow Florida's excellent example.

[Stoat]

Ping

[21twelve]

If they aren’t in jail or dead already (and why not), how about a GPS tracking bracelet that anyone can log on to follow these beasts. (And no, I’m not talking about the 17 year old caught with his 15 year old girlfriend.)

[peggybac]

Lordy, don’t let the NH ACLU find out about this.

[perfect stranger]

Cross-reference the charges with the local NEA.

3 Female Teachers Charged With Having Sex With Students

At this point, what is the difference?

A degraded culture is the difference.

[Westlander]

[D-fendr]

When do the murderer, crackhead and speedfreak alerts begin?

[bikerman]

Just before DUI,baggie pants,and boom box audio systems in cars.

[Clint Williams]

"You can be safe in your neighborhood and your kids can be safe. This is an amazing step forward in protecting families in Florida," Orange-Osceola State Attorney Lawson Lamar said.

What a fatuous self-serving idiot he is.

Item: over half the sex-offense convictions every year are first-time. Those folks don't appear on any registries. But it's okay: "You're safe because we identified less than half of your children's potential predators."

I'd like to send this jerk through a minefield where, to be generous, 55% of the mines are flagged and see how he feels if he makes it through.

Oh yeah -- unlike the item above the feds haven't published the stats on how many offenses by strangers are committed in the offenders neighborhood. For these reasons I say "sex-offender no-residency zones" are really in fact "target-rich environments," because self-serving politicians like MR. Lamar here pretend such places are safe havens where a parent can let his or her guard down.

And some, inevitably, will learn the ugly truth.

[Stoat]

Agreed....anybody who puts all of their faith in ‘any’ Government program and believes the self-aggrandizing spew of some politician is going to get an extremely rude, and possibly fatal awakening.

Hopefully this will serve as only one small element of a very large arsenal of protection that thoughtful Florida parents will use to protect their children.