Database: Wisconsin state employee salaries
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Friday, May 26, 2017
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Kenosha News
Kenosha News
Kenosha to loosen residency rules for sex offenders
Lawsuit prompts move
Published 9 hours ago
BY DANIEL GAITAN
dgaitan@kenoshanews.com
Residency restrictions the city of Kenosha places on sex offenders could soon change.
On Monday evening, the city’s Public Safety and Welfare Committee approved ordinance changes proposed by Mayor John Antaramian to repeal and recreate some of the city’s rules. The changes must still pass City Council later this month.
The proposal would shorten from 2,500 to 1,000 feet the distance from a prohibited location where sex offenders could temporarily or permanently reside.
Prohibited locations include schools, youth centers and day-care centers. It also removes a rule banning offenders from living within six blocks of each other.
Assistant City Attorney Bill Richardson said the changes are the city’s response to a recent legal battle in Pleasant Prairie. In April, a federal judge struck down the village’s rules on sex offenders.
The village was sued by a handful of sex offenders over an ordinance put in place last spring. The ordinance mandated offenders live at least 3,000 feet away from prohibited spaces or within 500 feet of another sex offender.
The effect, though, made nearly every part of the village off limits.
Key lawsuit
Mark Weinberg, a Chicago attorney who filed the suit, called the decision uncommon and important after the ruling.
“There are a lot of other communities in Kenosha County with similar ordinances. I hope this decision will encourage them to re-evaluate theirs,” he told a Kenosha News correspondent last month.
Weinberg has a similar suit against the city of Kenosha ordinance pending in federal court, which he said “is more restrictive” than Pleasant Prairie’s initial ordinance. That suit is still in the discovery stage.
“The recent decision had an impact, we feel, on our ordinance,” Richardson said. “The idea is to try and pass an ordinance that addresses the court’s decision, as well as provide for the safety of citizens of the city.
“The bottom line impact really is that there would be more residential area available to the designated offenders, so they could reside in the city limits.”
Antaramian was not immediately available for comment.
“This is one of those situations where we are really in a difficult bind here,” said Ald. Jan Michalski. “Nobody wants these predators living in their area, but we have certain constitutional restraints.”
Local ordinances
There is a dearth of state legislation regarding sex offender placement, so communities have been stuck grappling with how to deal with them.
The city’s proposal also stresses the dangers of offenders and the need for tough restrictions, Richardson said, to help provide clear rational for the rules.
According to data compiled by the Center for Sex Offender Management which was incorporated into the proposal, about 12 to 24 percent of sex offenders will reoffend. It is estimated that 1 in every 5 girls and 1 in every 7 boys are sexually abused by the time they reach adulthood.
“The city is not inclined to sit idly by and do nothing to protect children within the city when these most vulnerable members of our community face these documented threats from offenders who are highly prone to re-offend if given the opportunity to do so,” the ordinance reads.
The ordinance also offers rationale for the city’s original domicile restriction, which allows only offenders from Kenosha to be located here after serving their sentence in prison.
“(Without the restriction) the city would have open doors for non-resident sex offender residency when other communities have closed doors, inviting a substantial increase in child sex offender placements,” the ordinance reads.
Monday, May 8, 2017
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Kenosha News
Kenosha News
0
Judge finds sex offender ordinance unconstitutional
Village has loosened restrictions in response to suit
Published April 17, 2017By Kevin Murphy
KENOSHA NEWS CORRESPONDENT
MILWAUKEE — A federal judge Monday found unconstitutional Pleasant Prairie’s initial ordinance that largely banned registered child sex offenders from residing in the village.
The village amended its ordinance three months after the offenders filed suit in June 2016, but U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller ruled that did not make moot the issues the offenders raised with the first ordinance.
In granting summary judgment to the nine plaintiffs, Stadtmueller found the village imposed restrictions on where the offenders could live without considering any studies or data regarding the safety risk that posed to other residents.
“The village has admitted that the ordinance was based on its own conjecture about the dangers posed by sex offenders,” Stadtmueller wrote in the 19-page order.
Village Administrator Michael Pollocoff testified in a deposition that the ordinance’s goal was to reduce the number of child sex offenders living in the village.
The ordinance may be counterproductive to citizen safety, as Pollocoff admitted that turning child sex offenders into outcasts had “more deleterious (or harmful) impacts.”
The ordinance the Village Board passed in April 2016 prohibited child sex offenders from residing within:
— 3,000 feet of any school, day care center, park, playground, church or athletic field or place where minors congregate.
— The village unless they lived there at the time of their most recent offense.
The result of the ordinance made 90 percent of the village off-limits to offenders, with the remaining 10 percent largely non-residential. Most of the low-income housing, which was all the plaintiffs could afford, was excluded.
Stadtmueller rejected the village’s claim that the new ordinance made a suit challenging the old one moot, stating the plaintiffs’ claims that they suffered stress as a result of the threat posed by the initial ordinance, the fear of homelessness and the difficulties in attempting to find a new residence.
The plaintiffs can pursue damages on those claims at trial, which Stadtmueller set for May 15.
Important decision
Mark Weinberg, a Chicago attorney who filed the suit, called the decision uncommon and important.
“There are a lot of other communities in Kenosha County with similar ordinances. I hope this decision will encourage them to re-evaluate theirs,” he said.
Weinberg has a similar suit against the city of Kenosha ordinance pending in federal court, which he said “is more restrictive” than Pleasant Prairie’s initial ordinance. That suit is still in the discovery stage, he said.
Pollocoff said Monday afternoon that he had not seen the decision and referred questions about it to an attorney representing the village, who did not return a phone call by deadline.
Pollocoff acknowledged that the village amended its initial ordinance in response to the suit Weinberg brought and that no sex offenders had been cited under the ordinance.
The amended ordinance lowered the 3,000-foot prohibited zone to 1,500 feet, which still makes 60 percent of the village and 75 percent of the residences off limits to offenders.
The restriction on offenders living near each other was removed entirely, as was the limit on renewing leases for offenders living within a prohibited zone.
Also, the amended ordinance did not apply to an offender whose most recent conviction occurred 10 years or more prior to living in the village.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)