VT- State police conduct 2-county check of sex offenders

A review of all sex offender laws could not turn up a single law requiring the registrant, to be home when address checks are done, or even respond to the knock on the door if they are, registrants have no responsibility to take part in address verifications. Here police mention 3 they could not verify, will they issue an arrest warrant, if so on what legal grounds? The importance placed on knowing where registrant's live is overrated as they may be there for a mere 2-3-4-6 hours, just to sleep. Effectively police monitor sleeping registrants.

9-17-2008 Vermont:

Vermont State Police detectives spent about eight hours Monday knocking on doors in Orange and Washington counties to make sure sex offenders are living where they should be.

Vermont's Sex Offender Registry requires that convicted sex offenders tell the state where they live, and 31 of the 34 people police visited Monday were in compliance.

Police are still investigating the three sex offenders whose residency they could not confirm Monday, said Lt. Brian Miller.

The six detectives from the Middlesex and Williston barracks conducted the compliance check in towns where Vermont State Police are the primary law enforcement agency, said Miller.

The day's effort took police from Duxbury to Orange and up to Cabot. If the sex offender was not at the residence – and half of them were not — police spoke with another person at the house, neighbors or looked for a name on a mailbox to get confirmation of residency, according to Miller.

Vermont's compliance rate for sex offenders living at the proper residence hovers around 98 percent, according to Sheri Englert, the Sex Offender Registry Program Coordinator.

In contrast, Florida has an 80 percent compliance rate, said Sen. Richard Sears, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Non-compliance with the registry is one of the "red flags" that tells law enforcement officials that they need to keep a close eye on a sex offender, said Sears.

"What we know is that when sex offenders are not compliant with the registry – in other words, when they're hiding something – that's when they're the most dangerous," said Sears.

-Absolute nonsense, personal belief, and not backed up by any form of statistics. This is one way the police further public hysteria.

It became clear how important registry compliance is after speaking with governors and legislators from other states, as well as national experts, Sears said. And in 2007, the Legislature created a second offense of not complying with the registry and made it a felony.

The type of sweep conducted by Vermont State Police this week is rare, Miller said. Compliance checks are usually done in conjunction with "warrant roundups," he said.

"We usually don't have details dedicated to this type of thing," said Miller. "We just thought it was a good thing to do."

Sending police to knock on doors is a more "hands-on" approach to checking on sex offenders, said Englert. The more routine way is to send letters to sex offenders who then have 10 days to return the inquiry to the Department of Public Safety to confirm their address, she said.

Each sex offender living in a community in Vermont gets one of those letters per year, Englert said. ..News Source.. by Thatcher Moats Times Argus Staff