Sex Offenders in the City
I’ve never been a big fan of unenforceable laws. I think they are a waste of time and money. One law I tend to put into that category is the ordinance passed by the Indianapolis City County Council that fines sex offenders who come near parks and playgrounds. The measure had bi-partisan support, but just because everyone votes for something doesn’t make it a good idea.
The point of the ordinance is to give extra teeth to already existing law to keep offenders out of park, unfortunately they are false teeth. The measure fines certain offenders who come near parks and playgrounds. The first offense is $600. The second offense is $1,000. Subsequent offenses are $2,500. One reason why I argue that this will be so difficult to enforce is that there are more than 2200 sex offenders living within 20 miles of Monument Circle. More than 180 parks and playgrounds covering more than 10,000 acres.
Now since IPD and the Marion County Sheriff’s Departments have to deal with double digit increases in crime I don’t think they’ll have time to hang out in the parks and write tickets. That job, you would think, would go to the park rangers. You might want to think again.
I was following up on a rumor Friday that the park district was eliminating some of its volunteer ranger positions (which turned out not exactly to be the case). I spoke with Park District director Joe Wynns. I initially asked if the park district was eliminating the volunteer ranger positions? Wynns told me the positions were not being eliminated but some of the rangers wanted more police powers and the costs of workers compensation insurance made that prohibitive. Currently the volunteer rangers assist with special events and pool patrols during the summer. He said some rangers were upset and have decided not to come back. I asked him if that was going to impact in other area of park safety, for example, enforcing the sex offender ordinance. Wynns immediately told me it was not going to impact the ordinance because the park district was not going to enforce it.
Take a second to catch your breath, I’ll still be here.
Welcome back.
You read correctly, the head of the park district told me, on the record and with full knowledge of who I was and what I was doing, told me it was not the job of the park district to enforce the ordinance to ticket sex offenders who come near parks or playgrounds. He told me it was the job of other local law enforcement.
Wynn later went on to tell me that they also were not planning to go door to door to check and see who were sex offenders living near the parks and who weren’t. “We are not in the sex offender business” were his exact words.
During the entire course of this conversation, I kept asking myself, what was the point of having a law that ticketed sex offenders in parks, if the primary branch of law enforcement wasn’t going to do the job? Initially, Wynns agreed to come on my morning radio show and talk about this. He told he wanted to make it clear to the public that this was not the Park District’s job. He said he’d already made that fact known to the council, as well. However, a Park District spokeswoman later called me to tell me the interview was cancelled and they could not talk about the ordinance because of the pending lawsuit by the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. (Note, the city had no problem talking about the violent video game ban suit a few years back.)
Now City attorney Kobi Wright has agreed to come on my radio program Monday morning at 7:20 and explain to me exactly where I may be confused. But when the head of the Park District tells me that his agency is “not in the sex offender business” things seem pretty clear to me.
Like I said in the beginning, I’m not a big fan of unenforceable laws, but usually it’s the law that’s the issue, not the people who are supposed to be carrying it out.
