FAC Statement in opposition to Senate Bill 234
Following is the text of FAC’s letter to senators concerning SB234. If you would like to write to your senator urging them to oppose this Bill, we encourage you to do so. You can find their contact information here: https://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/#Senators
February 10, 2021
Senate Judiciary Committee
404 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1100
RE: OPPOSITION TO CS/SB 234: REGISTRATION OF SEXUAL
PREDATORS AND SEXUAL OFFENDERS
Dear Senators:
I am President of the Florida Action Committee (FAC), a 2000+ member non-profit organization that advocates for public safety and laws based on empirical research. Our focus is on the Florida Sex Offender Registry.
I am writing to express my organization’s strong opposition to the above-referenced Bill, which will come before your committee for consideration on February 15, 2021.
While there are many items we find objectionable in this Bill, I will limit the focus of this letter to one item which is so illogical that it will yield absurd results – that is the proposal to define the word “day” to include “partial days”.
Currently, persons required to register must register their “Permanent Residence,” “Temporary Residence,” and “Transient Residence” within 48 hours. These are places where the individual “abides”, “lodges”, “resides”, “lives”, “remains”, or “is located” for three (3) or more “days”, either consecutively (Permanent Residence) or in the aggregate (Temporary Residence/Transient Residence) during a calendar year.
Previously, persons on the registry were unsure whether a “day” meant the full period between 12:00AM and 11:59PM or one full 24-hour period. CS/SB 234 proposes to define “day” as any part of a day. “A day includes any part of a calendar day.” (lines 119-120, 131-132, 141-142). Accordingly, a “day” can comprise of a period of one hour or even one minute, as these periods of time are “part of a calendar day”.
Under this proposed definition, any location an individual remains physically present for any duration four (4) or more times* during a year could constitute a “residence”. Therefore, the Sheriff’s office where an individual “is located” for an hour four times a year to complete registration would be registrable. If a person “remains” or “is located” at the same barbershop for a haircut, restaurant for a meal, store to buy groceries, neighbor’s home to watch a sports game, 4 days in the aggregate during a year, these places would all be registrable.
The fourth visit to any of these locations would require a trip to the Sheriff’s office (and/or DHSMV, as applicable under the statute) to register. Failure to do so results in a third-degree felony. If the registration office is not open within 48 hours of the fourth visit (for example, as in the case of this coming weekend which includes Presidents Day) and the person cannot register, it will result in a third-degree felony (or the inability of the person to visit the location). It would also add the location to the sex offender registry map even though the registrant might only be present there for one hour every three months.
Under no definition is a “day” an hour, a minute or “any part of a calendar day”. This Bill’s proposal to define it as such is absurd and unjust.
I implore you to oppose CS/SB 234.
Sincerely,
Gail Colletta, President
Florida Action Committee, Inc.
- The Bill provides that the first “day” does not count.
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This is absurd. One of the places one would have to register would be the Sheriff’s Office at which you register!! (since you would be visiting that location at least three or four times a year, for at least a couple minutes each time.) Let them put that on their website!!
I guarantee you the registering deputy at the Sheriff’s Office will balk you suggesting that. But it’s true!
But here’s an idea…. If the Bill becomes law: Every registrant from across the U. S. take a 3-day vacation in Florida, visit a couple places each day, and then go register at the nearest Sheriff’s Office….. listing each place you had visited for a few minutes every day. Law offices, post offices, politicians local offices, GOP or Dems local offices, bus stations, airports, malls, grocery stores, gas stations, etc, etc, etc. Be creative!!!
🔸OVERWHELM THEM!
🔸MAKE THEM REALLY WORK!!! 🔸OVERLOAD THEM WITH NEW REGISTRANTS AND LOCATIONS!!
🔸MAKE FL’s SOR EXPLODE & COLLAPSE!!
Go ahead and put ALL those 🔴 red dots on your sex offender map, Floriduh!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Maybe visit the State Senators’ homes each day for a couple minutes….. just stand outside, r ad your phone for a minute, send someone a text message, etc …. just so you have to add their home addresses as well!! Then their homes too can get a 🔴 red dot on the SOR Map!!
Sometimes the only way to prove the absurdity of a law is to enforce it fully.
If I’m ever forced to return to the labnd of ‘Duh, I’ll host a vigil in front of the home of Senator Book until I’m forced to register my location. After all, I’m one of those guys who follows the law to a T.
I agree. If this passes, we should register as many places as possible. Make a list of places you go often and even places you may go. If you take any time at all, you should have at least a page or two. Register them all at once as this saves you multiple trips. If we do this right, the red dots should be more places than not. At this point a map would become useless to anyone. And since we’re covering our butts, we’re can add places we might possibly be invited to. Maybe your judge would like you over for coffee so you can discuss these pros and cons of the registry. Hell, maybe even Lauren Book will invite you over, better make sure you are covered. Let’s make the map a red page. The dots on a Zillow map will have nothing on us.
Some sheriffs would welcome such a mass registration requirement. It would open the opportunity for mass arrests of the community’s least popular, followed by press conferences and increased budgets.
I think it should pass. Can you imagine me having to register Publix supermarket and now everyone who views the registry will not shop at publix because it is know to harbor sex offenders.
Publix would then sue the state of Florida and……………………..
Ok I don’t hope it passes but if it does, we might gain some new allies. Once we are banned from even going to the barber shop, then reasonable people like will have nothing else to lose. I won’t be passive like those in confinment that went on a hunger strike.
MAYBE the registry is the Mark of Beast the Bible speaks of :
Revelation 13:17
“And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name.”
Dear FAC,
Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you.
I am writing my senators now.
FAC, the examples you stated are wonderful. Maybe I will include that if I went to the office of any legislator (similar to the barbershop example), then I would have to register that legislative office under the proposed bill as written.
@ Concerned: Yes, that’s the idea!! Make it absurd and uncomfortable! And as CherokeeJack points out, what happens when those red dots are at Publix grocery stores?
And Legislators’ offices, political party headquarters, etc., then they might rethink it!
Publix could avoid red dots by simply banning registrants. In Brevard, they could do that today.
Jacob
That may be a GOOD thing. At that point, if the supreme court does not call the registry punishment, I do not know what is. If we can be banned or arrested for visiting the grocery store, we cannot have our rights to live as we HAVE to eat.
David
How about this scenario. Publix and others to follow, ban us from shopping there. We are then told to order online and have delivered. Of course the delivery driver will get a notice that they are deliverling to a violent, sick, sexual offender and to proceed with caution.
What do you that that driver / deliver person is going to do to our food?????
Most of these added amendments are added not by any constitional base, but by there personal feelings.when you make it harder for offenders to live a normal life by ridiculous laws that proved to not prevent a person or a offend.but has only brought them back to a stage of shame ,depression, worthlessness, hopelessness and why should even try mental state.in one or two words high-risk for relapse
Basically this Basically this has nothing to do with children or protecting them simply has to do with the fact that you just trying to find more more ways to lock every single one of them up regardless of what you have to do to do it and that is a recipe for disaster And a locking of care for children is far as I’m concerned
Thank you for doing this!
This bill (as so many others) is clearly intended NOT to keep anyone safer BUT rather to make it easier for law enforcement to violate more of those currently already listed using non-essential technicalities.
Keeping them vague causes not only confusion but also makes it impossible many times to comply even if the desire to do so is genuine.
We are being set up to fail as it is easier for law enforcement and politicians like Laura Book to use those biased stats to “justify” ever increasing punishments.
Register dogs – not human beings!
If you go to Google News and do a keyword search for “offender”, you will see that the great majority of headlines about sex offenders are arrests for FTR, not for new sex offenses.
Seriously, 9 out of 10 will be FTR violations.
It’s ridiculous.