NY- Sex Offenders Could Be Tracked By Signals From a Satellite

6-5-2008 New York:

A domestic violence offender released from custody after agreeing to a plea deal recently spent a morning circling through Northeast Queens. Then, he accelerated onto the Long Island Expressway, a route that brought him closer to where his victim works and lives.

Not too close, though: He knew not to venture anywhere nearer her neighborhood because police and prosecutors were watching his every move via the Global Positioning System strapped to his ankle. He kept driving — on to a job interview in Manhattan.

The offender is a participant in a small pilot program that started in Queens this year.

The program could soon expand into a statewide surveillance system for tens of thousands of convicted criminals with orders of protection against them, if legislation currently being considered in the Assembly passes. It could eventually be broadened even further to track sex offenders and gang members.

For now, the Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, and the police department are starting small. Between five and six offenders at a time have been enrolled in the program since it was rolled out in February.

The offenders are outfitted with the anklets at the Queens courthouse, and their names, pictures, ages, weight, license plate numbers, and other personal information are logged into a computer system. They are given maps laying out zones where they are not allowed to enter — usually a half-mile area around a victim's home, workplace, or school.

Then they are set free.

For 24 hours a day, a private company, Rocky Mountain Offender Management Systems, monitors computer screens where little circles representing the offenders move across a map of Queens. If the offenders enter a prohibited zone, alarms go off alerting the prosecutor's office and 911 operators, who can immediately pass along the offender's personal information and photo to police.

The victim also gets a cell phone text message warning to get to a safe place.

-But, let no one forget, GPS cannot prevent crime, numerous units have simply been cut off leaving the offender to do as s/he wishes.

So far, only two offenders have come close to a prohibited zone line and were given stern warnings, but no one has crossed, the chief of the domestic violence unit for the Queens district attorney, Scott Kessler, said.

GPS monitoring of convicts has taken off in places across the country, but has been slow to start locally in part because of the amount of money and time required for the equipment and to staff the 24-7 monitoring system.

The mayor announced a similar pilot project in Brooklyn just more than a year ago, saying the launch of the program allowed him to tick off one of his campaign promises. The pilot there is even smaller, with only two offenders so far.

The Queens district attorney's office has found a way to get around the major financial barriers by requiring the convicts to pay for their bracelets themselves for the three to six months they participate — a cost of $15 a day.

Another obstacle just as tricky as finding funds in a tight budget year also has made it difficult to expand the program: GPS devices become invisible underground. That means as soon as offenders enter the city's vast underground subway system, or drive into a tunnel, they disappear.

For that reason, Mr. Kessler said he has limited his pilot project to victims who live relatively far away from subway stops. This way, the offender can't duck underground and pop up again steps away from the victim's door.

-Ahhh, what about tall buildings, trees, mountains, etc. there are a host of other places where GPS just does not work, but notice how he skips over this, explaining what he believes is the only problem, subways.

Despite the kinks being worked out by law enforcement agencies and some initial concerns about privacy protections, some lawmakers in Albany are eager to begin expanding the program as soon as possible. Assemblyman Felix Ortiz is sponsoring a bill to match bills that have already passed in the Senate that would require all defendants with orders of protection to wear the bracelets.

"We need to look for this as prevention, instead of waiting for tragedy," Mr. Ortiz said. "I think it's doable."

City officials are wary of implementing such a bill, which would likely require a huge investment of money and time. More than 30,000 orders of protection are filed in the city each month, police officials say.

Nor is the program necessarily effective for the worst offenders. A violent offender determined to re-harm a victim can cut through a GPS anklet or ignore it, law enforcement officials acknowledge.

The commanding officer of the police department's domestic violence unit, Deputy Chief Kathy Ryan, noted that the majority of domestic homicides happen in households where no previous violence complaints have been filed with the police or courts.

She pointed to an incident this week in which a young woman who had never filed a domestic violence report was killed in Chelsea by her boyfriend. A few days earlier in Chinatown, police said a woman who had filed a domestic violence complaint was attacked by two men allegedly hired by her abuser — not the abuser himself.

Still, the GPS program, along with a new police department initiative to increase visits to homes where reports have been filed, "is better than nothing," Chief Ryan said.

"Maybe it's not going to save everyone's life, but I truly believe it's a huge deterrent," she said.

The Queens district attorney's office also acknowledges that the program is "still a work in progress."

But the program already seems to be working in at least one respect: "Victims have peace of mind," Mr. Brown said. ..News Source.. by SARAH GARLAND, Staff Reporter of the Sun