This article almost provides the answer to residency laws causing homelessness. I wonder what lawmakers would do with residency laws IF, I say IF, if all homeless registrants with cars registered giving addresses that JUST HAPPENED to be the street in front of the Mayor's home or other lawmakers' homes? Does anyone think lawmakers would be motivated to change the laws? This would be better than any march on Washington DC.
11-2-2009 Ohio:
CINCINNATI - Hamilton County's second in command at the sheriff's office calls it a flaw in the law. Neighbors call it dangerous. It's a loophole they say lets sex offenders get around registration laws.
Those laws force many offenders to register their addresses so people in those neighborhoods know to be careful. But many offenders have figured out a way to disappear into society instead, rendering almost useless those state and local Web sites supposed to help you track who's in your neighborhood.
All the sex offender has to do is say he or she is homeless. Our records found that in just one zip code in Hamilton County, of 117 registered offenders, 35 listed themselves as homeless. They registered to park benches, courthouse steps, outside homeless shelters, under bridges, along the riverbanks, or in wooded areas behind homes. Some listed street corners or entire parks.
But when we went looking for the offenders, none were "home". And neighbors who truly lived there said they'd either never seen the offenders or hadn't seen them in months or years.
Chester White is one example. He's a Tier III sexual predator, the worst tier the state assigns. He was convicted of kidnapping and raping a young girl nine years ago.
When he got out of prison, White registered his address as part of his sentence. The address: "On the riverbank, under the blue bridge."
But White wasn't under the blue bridge when we went looking. Several homeless people to whom we spoke there said, while they knew him, he hadn't been around for at least two months. Neither had they seen any of at least three other sex offenders who registered to the same address. Neither had police seen them there.
It was the same story when we went to look for the almost dozen people who registered outside or in the alley behind the Drop-In Center, a local homeless shelter. No one to whom we spoke who lived or worked in this area recognized any of the offenders whose photos we showed them.
The Chief Deputy of the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department says, "It may be a way to skirt the law." Sean Donovan says offenders have caught on to the "homelessness loophole." He says deputies would have to surveil a park bench or under a bridge for seven days to establish if a sex offender lived there or not, and even before budget cuts, "There's no manpower. We don't have the resources to do that."
Donovan says no one can force sex offenders to live in a building. Just like the rest of society, and especially after so many laws restricting where they can live, some sex offenders can't afford to rent or own a home. So Donovan says, "Some individuals have figured out that I can give this fictitious address, and they avoid any notoriety on where they really do live, and that's where the problem is."
Tell that to Rick Berry. He lives on a street in Oakley where neighbors look out for each other and quickly noticed a blue Camry that showed up one day.
"It was right here," he pointed out recently to a spot on the street in front of one home, parked there for a month before neighbors got a notice from the county that a sex predator, Stewart Creekmore, had registered to the car on their street.
Creekmore was convicted of two rapes and had just gotten out of prison this year. Berry says neighbors first couldn't believe Creekmore was allowed to register to a car. "I was absolutely horrified, the fact that I have a daughter. She's young," Berry says. "It just tugs at you. I know that supposedly he's paid for his crimes and what not, but that doesn't help me. I feel like I'm the victim and my family's the victim."
But then Berry and his neighbors noticed Creekmore was rarely there at all. "I don't think it's right that he's allowed to claim that he's living in his car when clearly he wasn't. We've got a real issue here, if sex offenders can do this."
At least neighbors know where Creekmore is staying now. When they notified his parole officer, Creekmore moved to a halfway house that has a sex offender treatment program.
Ashley Crabb, on the other hand, has no idea what happened to the man we revealed to her is a predator, who used to live in the woods behind her home. Robert Hall is still registered "in the woods" behind an address on Eastern Avenue, on the east side of Cincinnati.
But when we went looking, he wasn't there. Crabb and another homeless man who still lives in those woods pointed out where Creekmore had stayed once. But he'd been gone almost a year, even 'though he was still registered to this address.
Crabb says even if Creekmore has moved on, as the mother of a 3-year-old daughter, she can't believe there's a loophole that lets predators melt into society, letting them avoid registering where they really live. "It worries me that they're out here on the street for anybody's children," she says.
Back at the sheriff's office, Donovan holds up yet another registration that's crossed his desk. Another tier three predator has registered to a van on Kenner Street downtown. Dwight Ingram was convicted in two, separate rapes. "He was extremely violent," Donovan says. "I'm sure it's a fictitious address. And he knows that he can do what he wants to do without having anybody check on him."
It seems to have worked. Police now have a warrant out for Ingram for another assault, this one in Kentucky. No one knows where Ingram lives now. He's still registered to the van on Kenner Street. And many other sex offenders are continuing to avoid registering their real addresses, with no repercussions. ..Source.. by Hagit Limor
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