NY- Dozens of sex offenders live in the Falls

Clustering as mentioned in article is the result of Political Fear Mongering who use myths to gat laws enacted. Politicians care not how they affect neighboring communities when they pass residency restrictions, their ONLY concern is their particular district and constituents who keep them in office.

6-21-2009 New York:

Ten offenders or more housed within a mile of seven schools

NIAGARA FALLS — A cluster of sex offenders living in a rooming house above a bar on Niagara Street violates a city ordinance, The Buffalo News has learned.

However, the grouping of a dozen sex offenders in the Midtown Inn over the Zodiac Lounge at 1967 Niagara St. is legal under state Division of Parole regulations.

The city has a law prohibiting Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders — the two most dangerous classifications— from living within 1,500 feet of a school, park or child care facility. But state parole regulations use a 1,000-foot prohibition, and under the state’s rules, the Midtown Inn is a legal place to house sex offenders.

The News used two different computer mapping programs to measure the distance between the Midtown Inn and Niagara Street Elementary School. One showed a distance of 1,173 feet; the other calculated it at 1,175 feet. The News measured the distance between the nearest corners of the properties.

Heather Groll, spokeswoman for the Division of Parole, disagreed with the data.

“The current law requires that offenders not reside within a radius of 1,500 feet, measured from the main entrance of a school. Our assessment of this requirement reveals that all Division of Parole-supervised offenders are in compliance with this requirement,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Judge’s ruling

The Niagara County Sheriff’s Office has a sex offender finder program on its Web site, which shows that the Midtown Inn cluster only accounts for about half of the sex offenders near Niagara Street School.

It lists 24 registered sex offenders within one-half mile of the school. Investigator Leonard Guagliano, who is in charge of the sex offender registry, said the county listings include Level 1 offenders, who are not barred from living near schools under the city ordinance.

Guagliano said more than 200 registered sex offenders live in Niagara Falls.

The sex offender cluster at the Midtown Inn came to light when State Supreme Court Justice Richard C. Kloch Sr. assigned one of the state’s most dangerous sex offenders to live there.

James A. McKinney, 51, a North Tonawanda native rated as having a “mental abnormality” that makes him likely to re-offend, ended up in the Midtown Inn after a trial under the state’s new civil confinement law.

It allows the state to take sex offenders to court when their prison sentences expire and ask for them to be confined to a mental institution for as long the rest of their lives.

Kloch found McKinney, who was convicted of having sex with four girls under age 14, to have the required mental abnormality, based on courtroom testimony from psychologists.

But he didn’t want to commit McKinney to an institution, so he asked the Division for Parole and the state attorney general’s office to find a place to put him while on Strict and Intensive Supervision and Treatment, a harsher-than-normal parole program.

The defense suggested that McKinney be sent to his mother’s house in North Tonawanda, and since the state had no other suggestions, Kloch said he would probably do that. After The News reported that May 22, North Tonawanda Mayor Lawrence V. Soos protested, as did residents of Pioneer Drive, where McKinney’s mother lives.

Kloch, who also lives in North Tonawanda, listened and decided to assign McKinney to a halfway house in Buffalo often used by parolees. But the attorney general’s office protested that all the arrangements for monitoring McKinney had been made with Niagara County agencies.

When Kloch asked where in Niagara County he could send McKinney, a parole officer who was in the courtroom spoke up and suggested the Midtown Inn. Kloch quickly adopted the suggestion.

Niagara County Social Services Commissioner Anthony J. Restaino said the Midtown Inn often is used to house homeless welfare recipients. He said his department keeps a list of landlords with vacant apartments willing to take the homeless. Many sex offenders, especially those just leaving prison, fall into that category.

“We get notified by state parole when a sex offender is going to be released, and they decide where he’s going to be housed,” Restaino said.

The building is owned by an absentee landlord. County property records show the Midtown Inn is owned by “Cornelia at Bushwick LLC,” whose mailing address is a post office box in Forest Hills, a district of the borough of Queens in New York City.

Restaino said he was unaware of the city’s 1,500-foot rule for sex offenders.

The law seems to be generally obeyed, judging by the county Web site, which shows that no more than five sex offenders live within a quarter-mile of any school in Niagara Falls.

The consequences

Detective Patricia McCune, who monitors sex offenders for the Niagara Falls Police Department, said that to her knowledge, no one ever has been arrested for violating the law.

“Level 1 offenders don’t have that restriction, and some of them were there before the ordinance [was passed in 2006]. You can’t tell somebody to move [who was there before 2006],” McCune said.

“It’s an ongoing challenge to find housing for sex offenders,” said Groll, the parole spokeswoman.

One reason, she said, is because of sex offender buffer zone laws, which exist in nearly 100 municipalities around the state. Niagara County has a countywide 1,000-foot law for Level 2 and 3 offenders around schools, day care centers, parks and playgrounds.

But some municipalities have tougher laws. Besides Niagara Falls, Somerset and Royalton also have 1,500-foot rules, North Tonawanda has a quarter- mile rule, and the Town of Niagara has a 2,000-foot law.

Town of Niagara Police Chief James Suitor said he can remember three arrests since the laws was passed in 2006.

He said the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, which operates the state sex offender registry, sends his department a list of sex offenders in the town. If the addresses are too close to a park or child care facility — there are no schools in the town — Suitor sends the person a letter giving him five to seven days to move or be charged with a misdemeanor.

“Residency restrictions are something the state always has fought against,” said Guagliano, the county’s sex offender specialist.

He said the buffer zones in effect force sex offenders to live near each other, often in rundown areas. “I think it’s an unintended consequence,” he said. “Plus, jobs are low, so socioeconomics comes into play.”

“[The Midtown Inn] houses the largest concentration of sexual predators in Niagara County, and is the chief reason that Niagara Falls has the highest concentration of sexual offenders in New York State,” Sharon Szwedo, a Niagara Street Business Association board member, said at Monday’s City Council meeting. She called for even tougher restrictions on sex offenders.

That might produce only larger concentrations in smaller areas.

“I like to cite the San Diego example,” Guagliano said. Restrictions on where sex offenders can live in that city are so harsh that they ended up sleeping in parks.

In another incident that received publicity a few years back, a rest stop on an Interstate highway in Iowa became a sex offender refuge because of buffer zone laws.

“There’s some indication sex offenders may be herded into particular neighborhoods,” said John Caher, spokesman for the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. “There’s been a couple of concerns with the residency laws: They tend to drive sex offenders underground, and we don’t know where they are; and I’ve never seen a study that shows they are effective.”

By effective, Caher explained, he meant effective in stopping them from re-offending. The laws do keep offenders from living near schools.

“Sex offenders are not generally well off. They’ve got to live somewhere,” Caher said.

Misconceptions

The popular notion of a sex offender jumping a child near a school rarely happens. Caher cited a U. S. Justice Department study that showed 93 percent of sex crime victims under age 17 were abused by a family member or someone else they knew.

The nightmare scenario does happen occasionally, however. The only recent Niagara County example came last year in North Tonawanda, when Mitchell W. Brokob abducted a 12-year-old girl walking past his Gilmore Avenue home on the way to a nearby elementary school. He abused the girl in a vacant house on the street.

Brokob, who was not a known sex offender before the incident, pleaded guilty and is serving a prison sentence of 25 years to life.

“Niagara Street is our poorest district,” Szwedo said, “with 75 percent of our children walking to and from school at hours when these offenders are allowed to be on the streets.”

Restaino said efforts are being made to solve the problem of sex offender housing. There is a Local Re-Entry Task Force, including representatives from the county Social Services and Probation departments, state parole and local police agencies.

“They are trying,” Restaino said, “to find a place that could house sex offenders that would be in a nonresidential area.” ..Source.. by Thomas J. Prohaska, News Niagara Reporter