CA- Yucaipa lawmaker's sex offender bill (ice cream vendor) dies in committee

Yea for common sense, I thought he died...now we know he exists in at least one place.

7-18-2009 California:

A bill that would have either prevented certain sex offenders from selling ice cream to children or created a wholly superfluous new law - depending on who you ask - stalled last week when it failed to get the approval of the state Senate Public Safety Committee.

Assemblyman Paul Cook, R-Yucaipa, wrote a bill that he said would clarify the law and explicitly prohibit sex offenders whose victims were under 16 years old from driving ice cream trucks. Opponents said existing law already prevents that from happening.

"It's a matter of semantics," Cook said.

Cook's bill had the support of one Democrat on the Senate Public Safety Committee, but it failed to get the four votes needed to move forward. Committee Chairman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said the bill isn't necessary because existing law already prohibits sex offenders from working around children.

But Cook said it isn't specific enough.

Current law says a registered sex offender whose offense involved a child under 16 cannot work "directly and in an unaccompanied setting with minor children on more than an incidental and occasional basis."

"Where is the weakness in that statute that ... you believe we're going to have registered sex offenders selling ice cream to our children?" Leno asked Cook Monday during a committee hearing. "I don't think there's any problem with the current statute."

But Cook said that leaves some ambiguity because an ice cream vendor isn't working with children in the same way as a day care worker.
"Are you working with kids, or are you selling ice cream?" he said. "If you're working with kids, then prevailing law applies. But if you're selling ice cream, you're selling ice cream to everybody."

Cook said the issue is particularly important because children are attracted to ice cream trucks and tend to trust those who operate them.

Sen. Roderick Wright, D-Inglewood, who voted for the bill, said an ice cream vendor can build a relationship with a child that can later lead to exploitation or an attack.

Leno asked Cook and representatives from law enforcement agencies if they had examples of sex offenders operating ice cream trucks. No one answered.

Cook said there was a case in Perris in Riverside County and that county law enforcement officials were not able to arrest the offender. But Riverside County Sheriff's officials said they had not heard of the situation.

Leno called Cook's bill "a solution in search of a problem."

"He grilled me pretty good," Cook said. "But it's not done yet." ..Source.. by James Rufus Koren, Staff Writer