Brooklyn Nabes Topping City-Wide Sex Offender Ranks
Has Senator Jeff Klein been reading Brownstoner? Three weeks ago we ran a post detailing the high concentration of sex offenders in just a few Brooklyn neighborhoods. Now Klein, a Democrat from the the Bronx and Westchester, is out with his own analysis of the publicly-available data showing these Brooklyn nabes—Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Brownsville, Cypress Hills…
Has Senator Jeff Klein been reading Brownstoner? Three weeks ago we ran a post detailing the high concentration of sex offenders in just a few Brooklyn neighborhoods. Now Klein, a Democrat from the the Bronx and Westchester, is out with his own analysis of the publicly-available data showing these Brooklyn nabes—Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Brownsville, Cypress Hills and East New York—are actually among the worst in the entire city, not just Brooklyn. The New York Post reports that Klein wants to set up a system where any resident could sign up to receive an email alert when a sex offender is moving into his or her neighborhood. “This is a free, safe and easy way for families to know if there’s a dangerous sexual predator living in their community,” Klein said.
The city tends to put shelters and halfway houses in poorer neighborhoods because they know these neighborhoods don’t have the political clout of a Brooklyn Heights or Park Slope. That’s why we’re fighting the intake center they want to put in the armory. Too many of these places are shoved down the neighborhood’s throat. There are families here, with little kids- just like in Park Slope.
“‘Sex offender’ is a blanket name attached to a very, very wide range of offenses and offenders, and range from the most awful and reprehensible, to someone urinating in public, and everything in between.”
public urinators are not tagged on the website. nor are any “level 1” sex offenders — those unlikely to commit the same crime again — tagged on the website. only the more serious offenders are identified. also, i have never heard anyone identify someone who peed in public as a “sex offender” until you did just now.
“Some stupid kid texting nude pictures of him/herself to friends can be prosecuted as a sex offender. (Yes, I watch Law and Order.)”
i don’t know whether this is true in the real world. i do know, however, that a perusal of the registry does not reveal a single stupid kid who texted nude pictures of him/herself. it does, however, show adult rapists and child molesters.
i’m not a big fan of these registries myself, but it’s misleading to suggest that the rolls are filled with stupid horny kids and drunk people peeing in alleys.
Good question, Etson. Note also that these areas have very low rents. Typically when people are released from prison, don’t they go to an SRO? In fact, one of the houses we looked at for sale on Bushwick Ave. was literally a men’s shelter-program of some kind. We have no idea what kind. Each room was set up with bunk beds and there were notices on the wall about rules. The men were extremely courteous to us.
etson- I’d like to know that too. It seems that it’s awfully easy these days to label someone a sex offender. I’m not belittleing the seriouslness of sex crimes, but how effective is putting them in jail, or treatment yet at the same time, once they’ve paid their dues they ar still very publically exposed, reviled and pretty much the new lives they may be trying to build are constantly torn down. Yet we don’t have a paroled murderers website, or a public drunken drivers who have caused deaths website.
I wonder how we can be so terrified of a sex offender, but be so easy on people who drive drunk or commit hit and runs. Rape is heinous, sexual crimes against children are completely intolerable- yet abusive parents maim and abuse and kill their children every day and fwe aren’t outing them on public websites or sending opt in emails to tell us where they are.
Meaning that if there is a disconnect between number of registered offenders and the number of offences committed, it could well be a sign that some of the sex offenders are on the less nefarious end of the spectrum, and so not much to worry about.
Do the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of sex offenders also have the highest concentration of sex offences?
And of course most sexual abuse happens inside families and amongst people who know each other. To circle back to another contentious discussion, when I had my son at pre-K at PS 20 in Fort Greene, the parents invited the since much reviled (and defended) principal to a morning bre4akfast meeting. He arrived and dropped a bunch of pictures of registered sex offenders who lived in the neighborhood and proceeded to talk about them rather than curriculum, the gifted and talented program or the PTA. While I think he had good intentions, it seemed to be a distraction and a misfit with the concerns of the parents in front of him. I’m with MM in the belief that this is a sideshow to the real problems our communities face.
“Sex offender” is a blanket name attached to a very, very wide range of offenses and offenders, and range from the most awful and reprehensible, to someone urinating in public, and everything in between. Some stupid kid texting nude pictures of him/herself to friends can be prosecuted as a sex offender. (Yes, I watch Law and Order.)
While the Senator may have his heart in the right place, he’s not doing much for promoting the common good. The neighborhoods listed, are all very large, and all have lots of other problems, with pockets of pervasive poverty, joblessness, street crime and hopelessness. Sexual offenses are part of that total picture. Put some money and backing into some productive programs that help employ and raise people up and out of this cycle of poverty, and these statistics will go down. Of course, go after and protect people from violent rapists and child molesters. But they are a symptom of much larger problem in our society, not merely statistics in a neighborhood, or pinmarks on a map.
Aren’t there different “levels” to classify how dangerous they may be???