UPDATE – HOPE TO SEE YOU at the Brevard Commission Meeting. Please arrive by 4:30 pm to avoid delay at security screening.
Tuesday August 2, 2022, 5:00 PM, at 2725 Judge Fran Jamieson Way, building C, Viera, FL 32940
The agenda for the forthcoming Brevard County Commission meeting has been posted and they WILL be discussing the amendment to their sexual offender/sexual predator ordinance.
We are calling upon members to appear at the Commission meeting to speak against the ordinance and show support for the other members who will speak against it. If you plan to attend, speak or send a letter contact [email protected] for questions.
If you are unable to attend the Commission meeting but wish to make your voice heard, please write a letter to to the commissioners and send by email to us that will be hand delivered to the meeting for inclusion in their minutes.
Please send an email to [email protected] containing your comments as you want them presented to the commissioners. We will not be able to read it at the meeting but we will submit your email for inclusion into the minutes of the meeting.
1. Use subject line: “Opposition to Proximity Ordinance Amendment”
2. Start your email with “Dear Commissioners”
3. End your email with your real name. Include phone, address or other Identification if desired. Your email will already be included.
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO REGISTERED CITIZENS
If you plan to attend, please be certain to send email to [email protected]. For Example: “This e-mail is notification of my attending the following public meeting: Name: ______________, Birthdate: ___________, Meeting: .Brevard County Commissioner’s Meeting, Located at 2715 Judge Fran Jamieson Way, Building C, Viera, FL. 32940. Tuesday August 2, 2022 at 5pm. ”
This is our opportunity to show up and speak out, please, please, please do your part!
Contact [email protected] for more information.
What is our next step now that the ordinance passed?
Who will be on the board/council that I am writing my letter to?
You can google ‘Brevard Commissioners’ or simply follow the email format that our Membership Committee has recommended above.
Brevard County Commissioners
Commissioner Rita Pritchett
Commissioner John Tobia
Commissioner Curt Smith
Commissioner Kristine Zonka
Can I write a letter and not share my name? My loved one is still on probation and we don’t want it coming back on him.
I think there’s a way to write them without giving away your loved one’s identity. Consider my letter below— it raises important issues without making it obvious whether the letter was written by a registrant, a family member, a concerned citizen, etc.
You also mentioned probation. I don’t know whether probation status would factor into this at all. I could be wrong but I have a hard time imagining that a probation officer would have any problem with a probationer petitioning their government for redress.
Here’s something I wrote to them…
Dear Commissioners:
I want to thank you for exploring ways to protect children in our community.
Unfortunately, the Proximity Ordinance Amendment constitutes one of the most counterproductive possible ways to attempt to accomplish child protection.
Nothing in the Proximity Ordinance Amendment has the potential to reduce the incidence of sexual offenses occurring in the County. It will, however, impose costs on hundreds of Brevard families as well as the BCSO. Officers will need to be trained to identify boundary lines located 1,000 feet from the property line of a certified business. Then they will be expected to make arrests and defend those arrests in court. And most of those arrests will disrupt valid activities that most people would consider necessary in the community, such as buying groceries for one’s family, visiting family members, or taking family members to medical appointments. BCSO resources would be better spent investigating sexual abuse cases, some of which have not cleared, and which continue to take place in spite of the existing Proximity Ordinance.
And the baffling thing is, the Commissioners already know all this. Commissioners by now are familiar with the voluminous statistics on who commits sexual crimes against children, who does not, how they happen and don’t happen. We now know that very few new cases have to do with the sex offender registry, and virtually none of them are caused by physical proximity. The Proximity Ordinance Amendment, despite its costs to Brevard families, does not consider sexual offending data in any way.
So why do the Commissioners persist in advocating for an ordinance that they must realize is counterproductive to child protection and public safety? I can only conclude that Commissioners seek to score political points at the expense of Brevard’s least-popular families. It’s understandable that not all of us are willing to forgive those who have a crime in their past, regardless of their rehabilitation efforts, nor the families who depend on such individuals. But the Proximity Ordinance Amendment raises legal and constitutional questions that put the County at risk for costly litigation.
With this in mind, I ask that the Commissioners reconsider their support for the Proximity Ordinance Amendment.
Thank You,
[my name]
Excellent letter!!
Very well put.
That is awesome!
Some suggestions, please:
Do not mention details of your crime/story. The details do not matter in this situation and it just makes people cringe. You do yourself no favors.
Be confident in your rights according to the Constitution. Shaming and banishment are against the law. Remind the Council that dangerous people are kept in prison and that shaming an entire group of people creates a community that is LESS safe.
Remind the council that they are inncorrectly assuming that because you made a mistake, that you will automatically keep making that mistake for the rest of your life. Research has shown this to be UNTRUE just as we don’t label or register people “drunk drivers” or “murderders” for the rest of their lives. Further, they are assuming that everyone on the registry is a predatory pedophile just waiting at any moment to attack a child. That simply is not true. Again, dangerous people are kept in prison.
Tell the Council that this ordinance is a misuse and misunderstanding of the sex offender registry; that the registry is not meant to shame people, banish people or keep punishing people. It is simply meant as a precaution to let the public know who is on the registry. People who are truly dangerous are kept in prison. To add on or turn it into something more than that will be challenged in Court.
If they go through with this ordiance, lawsuits will follow. As in California, this is probably the only thing they will actually care about or listen to.
We are simply not the monsters you think we are. Your hate and disgust against sexual crimes against children is shared and perfectly understandable however that hate poured out onto the names on the sex offender registry is simply misplaced. People on the registry have had a long journey through the justice system, have had years of counseling and therapy and deserve a chance to live their lives in a free and democratic society. Life is already very difficult and we accept that, but this ordinance they are proposing might satisfy some kind of revenge, fear or hate but making life MORE difficult for registrants creates hopelessness, desperation and further seperates us from the supportive people and programs needed to succeed. Therefore, in reality, such an ordinance makes our community LESS safe.
PS. Both me and my mother have already written letters after the last meeting to the Coucil stating these very things.
Hopefully we have studies printed out that can be given to the council memebers that show the % of sex offenses that are committed by strangers versus the overwhelming amount committed by some one known to the victims. That will refute the “we are doing this to protect the children” argument and another that show recidivism for those one the registry is lower that any other crime
Commissioners have already been given these studies, no?
They’ve had them for two years, if I’m not mistaken.
The commissioners received these studies as part of Phase 1 of the Media Blitz. If they now claim ignorance, it’s because they are ignorant.
Howdy Capt. I hear what you are saying but putting this into their hands again at the meeting and maybe a few hundred copies to pass out to the audience might not hurt. Idk I feel bad for those of you in South Florida. We really need a break through in Florida.
I pray all the time that God would intervene. At some point logic an common sense will prevail. One day at a time and we all need to do our part and make sure we follow the rules and not give them a reason to legislate us into obscurity.
Do you HAVE to send prior notice?
YES!
IF John Tobia’s mindset and temperament is anything CLOSE to resembling Joe “I run the County” Mullins – then don’t get too elaborate with your enthusiasm and expectations.
However, if you’re the timid and meek type, just stay home. If you’re grateful to just “be out of prison” then stay home. If you’re not angry and fed-up, just stay home. If you think that you’re not a victim government encroachment and invasive intrusion, then stay home. If you’re unable to look these people in the eye while talking , then stay home.
You’re not there to change minds. You’re there to tell them what they’re doing is WRONG.
Well I agree with you basically, but hopefully we change their minds as to whether cruelty is good politics. Or at least plant seeds of doubt. And perhaps change some minds among the more thoughtful members of the audience and the public.
Absolutely right, and they should be reminded that history will judge their actions just as it did for Judge Leon M. Bazile, a racist person who was on the wrong side of justice when it came to banning interracial marriage and whose ruling will be remembered for the pejorative action that it was.
Incidentally, Judge Bazile died shortly before seeing his ruling overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article263876987.html
Miami-Dade Commissioners are cone heads!
As I have said before, I REFUSE to comply with every single minute obstacle and hurdle of this bizarre registry. It almost is not reality. It will make you detach from reality if you aspire to make your life goal every single detail of this unconstitutional registry. I am living comfortably in the desert and away from the unconstitutional web of deceit that some desperate lawmakers use to TRY to make a name for themselves. They are a pathetic mess and trying to make up for the failures that they have had in their lives and to take it out on the registered, scared society that all of you live in. I refuse, bottom line
‘I’m so brave that I live out in the desert to get away from society.’
I’ve been dealing with the County Commission in one way or another for years….. we CAN NOT go to the podium and in ANY WAY portray ourselves as “victims” of the draconian ordinance. That falls directly into the Commissioners response where they can go on and on about the way we destroyed our victims lives and now we’re whining.
Do we all deal with hardship because of this thing? ABSOLUTELY. I personally can’t go to any of my children’s homes to see my family.
I’m fortunate enough to have places to shop and conduct personal business but I realize that there are many of us that don’t have that ability.
I ran into John Tobia in public one time in a County office and ended up having a 5 minute discussion on this. About 2 minutes into the conversation I was able to shut him down by telling him “Commissioner, I’m not a victim, I had a victim”. Still was a terse conversation but you tell that my comment confused him and took him out of him canned rhetoric.
Roger makes an important point. When someone like Tobia asks you a question in public, he is not making an inquiry; instead, he is planting a trap so he can use you to make a point. I think the previous meeting’s volunteer speakers intuitively sensed this. Avoid joining in games you can’t win!
I am grateful that someone was able to get five minutes of his time to feel him out; most of the rest of us get three if we’re lucky.
As stated before we should expect that they will make condescending remarks and default to “it protects the children” when it doesn’t of the sort. We need to be able to respond in a way that makes our points without invoking an angry response. We are and have to be the better people.