NY Cops Gave Jeffrey Epstein A Pass While Making More Than 7,000 Arrests For Similar Offenses
The New York Police Department allowed wealthy financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to skip dozens of court-mandated check-ins with law enforcement for more than eight years before he was arrested and charged with the sex trafficking of minors, the Washington Post reported earlier this year. During roughly that same period, cops in New York state made at least 7,061 arrests for similar violations of the state’s complicated sex offender registration law, according to data obtained by HuffPost.
Several of those arrests include people who committed minor violations, like submitting paperwork days late, or who struggled to keep up with reporting requirements because they were living in homeless shelters or on the street, defense lawyers said.
Epstein’s ability to evade punishment for the same behavior that has resulted in felony convictions and imprisonment for less wealthy New Yorkers is a stark example of selective enforcement within the criminal justice system. The registration laws can make it difficult for convicted sex offenders who are not wealthy like Epstein to keep a job and find a place to live. Being unemployed and homeless makes it much harder to comply with paperwork and reporting requirements. Yet it was Epstein, not those less-wealthy offenders, who was granted an exception to the rules.
Epstein wasn’t even forced to follow the rules the rest of us must follow here in Florida if they had we wouldn’t hear reports of underage girls being flown and possibly shipped to his private island
I said it from the beginning. I said that I was certain the registry rules had not applied to Epstein. If he would have been expected to follow those same rules, he would not have been placed on the registry.
The registry has never been about protecting anyone. This is why they will continue to ignore all logic and reality about how it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter to them. As long as they can continue to fool people with it, they will continue to have it. It’s all about money and power. They make money off of it, and it gives them the power they need to keep the public distracted from other things they are doing, like covering for individuals like Epstein and maybe even for themselves. That’s what it’s really about. As long as that reality is not addressed, it’s going to continue being the way it is. Talking logic and reality to them doesn’t work, unless it lands on the ears on those who have just blindly been giving into these nonsense laws, but even then, it’s hard for them to do anything about it, because the evil ones tend to convince them to do what they want. It takes really strong people to stand up to the evil ones who don’t care about anybody but themselves and their own desires. Unfortunately, We do have evil people who are in control. That’s what needs to be fixed, and it takes great strength and courage to do that.
I sent a modified version of this to the Orlando Sentinel editor. We’ll see if a report gleaned from two ‘liberal rags’ will catch the Sentinel’s attention.
There is no evidence that sex offender laws like the ones in New York keep Americans safer. The laws are predicated on the false notion that sex offenders are exceptionally likely to re-engage in sex crimes. A recent Bureau of Justice Statistics study showed that rape and sexual assault offenders were less likely than other prisoners to be arrested after being released from prison. The laws also assume that sex crimes typically take place between a victim and a stranger — hence the idea that the identity and location of past sex offenders needs to be constantly policed and publicized. This also is not true. Perpetrators of sexual violence are usually people known to the victim.
Sex offender registration laws “aren’t based in any data,” said Erin Harrist, a senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “They’re just knee-jerk reactions to certain horrible instances.”