Cradling a heavy box of Budweiser against his flour-dusted apron, Mario Medina clicks open the door and greets two waitresses behind the counter at La Cascada, a retro Cuban pizza parlor in Northwest Miami-Dade. Besides the voice of a sports commentator on the TV and sporadic blips from arcade games in the back, the restaurant is quiet, and all five tables are empty. It’s 30 minutes into the lunch rush hour, but only three weary patrons in construction boots sit hunched over glasses of cold beer at the bar.
“Before, we got more than 200 customers every week,” says Medina, La Cascada’s husky, white-mustached 58-year-old manager. “Now it’s 90 at best.” Over the past few months, Medina has lost 40 percent of his regulars, including many families that are afraid to bring their children to the area or to park their cars out front, he says. Though the place used to make about $8,000 every week, it’s now down to $3,000, which must be split among the restaurant’s five employees.
Medina attributes the parlor’s drop in customers to one problem. Less than a block away, pitched along both sides of the road, are 28 camping tents. In them live scores of registered sex offenders.
The encampment is the result of a 2005 county law — much stricter than a similar measure passed by the state ten years earlier — that imposes restrictions on where sexual offenders and predators may live. It eliminated many residential neighborhoods, public housing complexes, and homeless shelters. So the offenders were exiled to live under a Dolphin Expressway overpass, then the Julia Tuttle Causeway, and a spot near the Miami River. In 2014, the colony moved to this block between train tracks in the warehouse district.
No one argues that their crimes, which include everything from sexting with minors on dating apps to raping children, aren’t serious. But critics of the camp consider it an outrage that human beings are forced to live in such horrendous conditions — in some cases, for several years. Although it’s been three years since New Times described the encampment as a sanitation and security nightmare where offenders are forced to defecate in public with no running water, occupants say it has only increased in density. Dozens of sex offenders now live there in donated tents, while an additional 20 to 40 drive in before dusk for curfew and sleep overnight in their cars. Residents and local business owners have filed complaints, yet county officials and local police departments have failed to act in any meaningful way.
“They’re there all day every day,” says Mary Grafton, whose family owns a custom furniture factory two blocks from the camp. “It’s affecting our business, but we’re at a loss of what to do.” Grafton and other business owners have filed complaints with the police and county commission, but she says the response is always the same: “Our hands are tied.”
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Photo by Isabella Gomes
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Initially, a 1995 state law prohibited offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, daycare centers, and playgrounds. Then, in 2005, a child-molesting drifter raped and murdered a 9-year-old 340 miles away in Homosassa, Florida. David Dermer, then mayor of Miami Beach, proposed an ordinance that increased the residency restriction to 2,500 feet, effectively making the entire city off-limits when it passed. Fearing that sex offenders would simply migrate from the Beach to the mainland, Miami-Dade commissioners a couple of months later unanimously agreed to extend the county’s distance to 2,500 feet as well.
For years, sex offenders struggled to find addresses that satisfied the harsh countywide ordinance. Even when they found a place, they were often evicted and relocated once a new school was built in their vicinity. By 2014, probation officers called the warehouse district in North Miami-Dade one of the last few places in the county where sex offenders could live. Since then, many have reluctantly called it home.
According to the Miami-Dade Police Department, 233 sex offenders are registered to the area of NW 71st Street and NW 36th Court. Eighty-eight are on probation with ankle monitors tracing their movement.
The area, which straddles the boundary between Hialeah and Liberty City, has no outhouse, so offenders squat outdoors behind an orange Schneider shipping container to defecate. The smell is rank in the summer heat. Without an active sewer line, muddy drainage collects along the curb, mixing with debris and waste. Local businesses have removed knobs from outdoor water spigots, and the only public bathroom is in a Walmart one mile away.
Though a Key Biscayne church group delivers hot meals, water, and snacks Tuesday evenings, it’s merely a Band-Aid on a festering wound.
Summer storms flood the encampment daily. Though most tents are mounted on plastic and wooden platforms, everything is constantly soaked. Brett Borges, a 49-year-old from Hollywood, shows the ripped seams on his tent. An entire side has been duct-taped several times. As he pulls out a green camo sleeping bag, water and sand fall from the fabric. “Every time it rains, we get flies and mosquitoes,” he says. “It’s ripe for disease… Animals live better than this.”
In 2014, Borges, then 46 years old, solicited nude photos and requested sex from an undercover cop posing as a 15-year-old boy on Grindr, a gay social networking app. At the time, he was making $1,200 a week as a senior sales clerk for Kraft Foods. After traveling to meet the minor at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Borges was sentenced to 21 months in prison. Released this past February, he says, “This was my first offense. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket.”
From morning to night, truck drivers passing the sleeping tent inhabitants taunt and honk their horns. Because offenders’ addresses are listed in the public registry, living on the streets has involved never-ending harassment and peril, Borges says: “We’ve had bottles and eggs thrown at us.”
Sigifredo Benitez, a 52-year-old from Cuba recently released after a 22-year prison sentence, acknowledges local businesses have been overwhelmingly upset: “They don’t want us here, and we don’t want to be here.” The former handyman has spent three months of his lifetime probation at the camp. “We can’t get jobs or see our families,” Benitez says. “The county law, it’s fucked my life forever.”
Luis Marcelo Concepcion Rosado, a 73-year-old from Miami Beach long ago charged with groping his niece, has lived at the encampment for three years. Suffering from a dislocated hip and a heart valve problem, he lifts a pant leg to reveal a blistering, inflamed skin infection below his ankle monitor. “Prejuicio,” he mumbles, as tears well up behind thin-rimmed glasses. Translating, his friend Benitez exclaims, “He says ‘prejudice’ because they refuse him medication. Now they put an ankle monitor and say to stay here. There’s no logic. He can’t even walk!”
Because there are no electrical outlets, a few offenders pooled their savings to buy a generator. Connected to it is a mess of USB cables, some connected to iPhones, others charging ankle bracelets. “We’re a family,” Borges says. “We look out for each other because no one else does.”
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Photo by Isabella Gomes
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Less than a block away, Juan Escobar, the 43-year-old manager of a collision repair business, says the camp is just as much of a health hazard to the people who work in the area. Bordering the right side of his garage are train tracks littered with rubbish such as half-eaten bags of cereal, soiled socks, and wet boxer shorts. “The city pretty much only comes out once a month to clear the tracks,” he says.
Most concerned are the small, family-owned businesses. Steve Grafton, Mary’s husband, inherited Grafton Furniture from his parents, who had bought the building in 1969. Inside, dainty swatches of brocade and velvet dangle in the showroom. “Our customers are high-end interior designers and architects,” Steve says. He points in the direction of the encampment two blocks down the road: “It’s an embarrassment.”
Steve says he worries about his store’s female employees, especially his wife Mary and their 25-year-old daughter Melissa. “It’s dangerous after dark,” he says. “I’ve had to make sure everyone goes home before 6 p.m.”
Yusein Musa, the 42-year-old owner of Florida Cold Services, a refrigeration export business, has found broken needles outside his building. Musa’s wife, sister-in-law, brother, and nephew all work in the office. His 11-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter often visit as well. “We’re law-abiding businesspeople who pay taxes, but now we’re watching our backs constantly,” he says.
Musa says he has called the Miami-Dade Police Department at least 50 times to report disturbances, but Det. Robin Pinkard, the department’s representative, claims “no more than a half-dozen complaints have been received.” She writes in an email: “We do not keep track of the living conditions of transient sexual offenders.” She also says the department makes weekly visits to the site, as does the Florida Department of Corrections. MDPD doesn’t elaborate on the contradiction.
Desperate, business owners have put up barbed-wire fences. Medina even hauled his restaurant’s dumpster into the gated area out back after offenders kept throwing bags of feces in it.
But the head of the county’s Homeless Trust, Ron Book, a major facilitator of the law in 2014, still abides by his original judgment: “The Constitution doesn’t guarantee where you can live when you break the law,” he says. Asked whether anything can be done to address the plight of business owners in the warehouse district, he says, “I didn’t suggest [offenders] congregate there.”
He adds that the county has housing where offenders can go, though he can’t name any. (Local shelters say they are too close to schools.) With no intent to reexamine or reduce the county restriction, Book says, “It’s not a question of will they reoffend; it’s a question of when.” Several studies, however, report sex offender recidivism rates to be less than 36 percent.
In 2014, County Commissioner Xavier Suarez told New Times: “That we restrict where [offenders] can live and not provide any facilities for them isn’t human or logical.” Three years later, he deflects responsibility to the local police: “I don’t know that there’s any political will to treat these people as homeless.”
Slumped in a chair in front of La Cascada, Medina adds, “One time, [the offenders] called the police on me.” He repeats the statement and then explains, “I had music in my restaurant for my patrons, but [the offenders] said it was too loud. They couldn’t sleep. Can you believe it? They come to my restaurant to use the bathroom — no shoes, no shirt — but the police came and told me to stop.”
God….
So often I am motivated to take a stand against these archaic laws but then I have to consider the negative impact my actions might have on my family and friends who would have to manage my affairs while I fight a legal system where justice is the least of concerns. What is Florida trying to prove or correct by keeping people on a registry for life? Mr. Book’s poor parenting should not be motivation to destroy the lives of thousands. It takes organizations such as FAC and the ACLU and their associated law offices to coordinate lawful stands against such tyranny. We need to support them with donations and be willing to donate our time as our situations permit. This destruction of lives and families needs to come to an end. So many RSO’s are productive individuals and the frustration of being denied their purpose in life is evident in much of their writing.
I’am a sex offender living in Jacksonville Florida . I got out of prison in 2014 after being in prison for 10 years. I had nothing when I got out of prison except the clothes on my back. My Brother pay one month rent for me at a sex offender house. I lived in a closet that was roach / rat infested, but had to make the best of it. I donated plasma for money to paid for things I needed & save what I could to find a better place to live. My probation officer was very respectable and did what every she could for me with-in the Law. I had read stories on how sex offenders lived in South Florida and decided I would never allow myself to be treated that way. I had worked for myself before going to prison and knew if I just could find some old friends , maybe I could find some work and support myself. The hard part was explaining to my friends my crime, but I wanted to prove to them I made a mistake and would never do this again. I was surprised when they all excepted me back into their lives. I worked for about a month and found better housing for myself , I saved money and got a Van . The work I once did for my friends was now back full force. I found one of my good old Friends and told him about my having a hard time finding good living conditions because of the 1000 foot rule. He told me he had some vacant apartments that have been that way for 10 years. I checked them out and it looked like a war zone . I told my friend he should fix them up and rent them out to sex offenders because they have a hard time finding a place to rent. He said to go for it !!! I lived w/o water and power for 4 months , except for a generator my brother loaned me to be able to use power tools. I found another S/O that was living on the street and housed him for helping me fix the place up. After 6 -8 months of hard work , it was done . My friend told me what he wanted for rent for both 2 bed room apts. and said what every I made over that was mine and I could live for free for doing all the work and collecting the rent. Now being here for 1 year , I asked him if he wanted to sell the place and he said yes. I now rent to own both of these Apts. I tried to rent to reg people , but they would not pay rent on time or was always short on rent and bitched about their problems. I had nothing to do with that…. I had to evict 3 people ! I now rent only to S/O’s and for the last 2 years had I ever had anyone late on rent ! I now trust S/O’s more than I do reg people. I have 5 ex-sex offenders living in MY APTS ….. and never have any problems. As of today 8/17/2017 I own 3 houses and I am trying to buy more just to rent to sex offenders . I furnish everything needed in the house to give these people another chance at life w/o all the BS they face because of their Label and mine. My P/O likes the fact that I help her make her job easier by helping others and making sure everyone is ok and safe. ( MY POINT ) here is that if I can do it, a lot of other can do it also and for those who can’t … we need to do what I did and buy and rent to them. I have had no problems from anyone who lives near by us. They know who lives here and are aware of the crimes committed by us, but now see us of who we really are… people just like themselves trying to lead a normal life. They have no fear that we will re-offend ! Want to help others ? Do what I did and get a few places to rent and then all the Sex Offenders will have a place to live. I know some have no means to pay rent , but can take care of other things around the house to pay their share by helping. I collect $2500 monthly now , pay for electric and gas , pay the payments on the place and now save the rest to buy other places. I plan to have 2 more places by the end of this year. I can’t see people living like they do in South Florida …. we need to help !! The Hell with the Government in Florida and the rules ! Lets pick up our own feet and start helping like I did ! Buy and rent to a SEX OFFENDER !! You have nothing to lose .. you can even make some money by doing this if you want.. The State of Florida is not going to help us do anything !! I have FDOC P/O’s asking me when I will have more rooms to rent. You want to help now … then do this as we fight for all rights in Florida ! Good Day and Bless all that help.. FAC : You are the best , but we have to help S/O’s now ! Buy a Hotel or Motel … fill it with S/O’s .. it will pay for itself real quick ! Lots of old places like this all over Florida .
Big E, I have a family member who want to do this type of project in Pensacola, Florida. Please contact me at 3216244576. Thank you.
its 2500′ not 1000′ in south florida and that leaves very few places for SO to live. I live in a restricted area but lived there prior to arrest so grandfathered back to live there, Ive never been approached by neighbors and really don’t think many if any know my status..
The problem here is Mr. Ron Book. He needs to realize he’s not making a difference. He needs to stop this nonsense.
What i want you to do is pay for a big sign near the airport with a picture of this crime and the words: Welcome to Florida the land where ex-sex offender are not considered human, and are only allowed to die here!
Ike, I have thought about collecting money for two bill boards highlighting the need to educated residents and visitors about the truth about RSO. Let’s work on it.
It’s a very sad experience for the sufferers and family members. Many of these gentlemen are well educated, military veterans, and have reputable families with ample homes they cannot live in. Many have confessed under policemen threats, and lack of criminal malice of a professional gangster that would remain silent until properly represented by an attorney. As a result, these people are ostracized, cannot get married, cannot gain employment, cannot vote, lost their citizen’s rights, cannot file petition for immigration, cannot pass the USA citizenship to their children born abroad, and their driver’s license identify them as “Dracula” for the police to get immediately rude.
I am not in favor if a violent crime was committed, however, in several of these cases, no contact had occurred with the alleged victim. Anyone could be labeled for lascivious acts if watched while urinating against a tree. Let’s remember a couple of years ago, singer Elvis Crespo was masturbating on a flight in the presence of other passengers, but nothing happened; several of these “offenders/predators” have done less than this.
We citizens must unite and raise a petition to Commissioners, Senators, and whoever it may concern for softening the limitations on a case by case basis. Please contact me to join efforts.
This is hard for me, but I’m at a loss for words. I consider my situation here in Duval County and consider myself to be soooooo blessed to have what I have. Yes, I still complain about the horrific nonsense we constantly have to put up with, but compared to the situation of those poor folks in Miami, my hardships are NOTHING!! Man, I wish I could do something by going down there to help them, but alas, I can’t venture out of Duval County until I file to get off this stupid probation next June. That will be my first trip. To go down there and not only see what’s going on down there, but to help those guys. Ridiculous. Ron Book needs to be exposed, targeted, and brought down for the disgusting human being that him and his daughter are. Forcing other people to live as lower than animals all because of your anger and guilt towards ONE PERSON. Why didn’t they just focus on making THE NANNY’S life as miserable as they could?? That, I could maybe understand. But now you’ve succeeded in making 800,000 people’s lives miserable all across the country. And profiting off of it in every way possible! Lauren’s kids license plates, state money funneled to your charities and having it found to be “ethical” by the state board—disgusting. “Homeless Trust” president, which I’m sure is a paid position too. You two just make me want to vomit. I hope you both have to live in the worst possible slum hell has to offer right next to a river of sewage with Hitler and Nero and Judas as your neighbors! …..ok, looks like I did have a lot to say. Oh well.
The problem is not the homeless, it’s Book. Hopefully soon the merchants in the area will wake up to that fact.
The NIMBY business owners need to quit complaining, see who really caused this situation and oppose Book and the ordinance.
Then the registrants will be free to disperse, go back to their families or at least find a place closer to facilities. Then the business can feel safe and profitable again. Simply.
I hope the people in these tents decide it is not acceptable and start hunting people who support Registries. Americans don’t support Registries. We don’t need to have any concern for anyone who does.
Can someone explain the logic behind passing residency restrictions after a drifter (i.e. someone without a residence) did something heinous? There’s absolutely no connection, let alone scientific data showing residency restrictions have any effect…at least as intended. They obviously have an effect on fellow human beings, and, in a twist of irony some would even say is poetic justice, innocent business owners and their employees through reduced earnings.
I’m also curious how finding needles has anything to do with the people in the tents. So now we’re assuming they’re all shooting up heroin, or what? Zero correlation. Perhaps it’s just a bad neighborhood. Perhaps some of those architects and designers decided to use. Nobody knows.
Finally, how can these fellow citizens not be considered homeless? Last I checked, living without a permanent residence, perhaps in a filthy tent, without cooking or bathing facilities, pretty much fit into the definition of homeless. I was unaware there was an asterisk behind the word to exclude former sex offenders.
Ron Book: “The Constitution doesn’t guarantee where you can live when you break the law,” he says.
But, everyone is entitled to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that includes living and moving anywhere one pleases at any given time, whether domestically or foreign. pinning down people to a certain location without movement – when their sentence has been served, is a violation of those rights and many more. What a hateful idiot.
Then he goes on with : ” It’s not a question of will they reoffend; it’s a question of when.” What is this guy living in a Minority Report movie with Tom Cruise?
He wasn’t a good father so now this is his justification. Future generations will remember him by this. It will be his legacy and he will be looked at with disgust within the same levels likened to many of the world’s historical oppressors of human rights.
I have a question ?? Hypothetically !!!!!, Of every ExOffender in the USA desided to stand up tomorrow and Refused to “Comply” with all these ILLEGAL LAW’S that VIOLATE OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS Everyday, And refuse to be treated as Garbage????, Could/Would the Government spend the time and money to Seek Out And Arrest EVERYONE ???. I mean, The CONSTITUTION is SUPPOSED to be PROTECTING EVERY US CITIZEN !!. So, Would the Government Violate it on a MASS SCALE ??. Or, Could this type of movement/Civil Disobedience cause some of these laws(Registery) to be withdrawn ????????. Just wondering ????
Well, the 250 at the tracks could refuse to. Then they would be incarcerated. The largest private prison group in Florida, Geo Group, has a substantial contract with the government to provide prison services for profit.
Their lobbyist… Ron Book.
Are you beginning to see the bigger picture?
It’s a shame there isn’t a lawyer out there willing to properly defend the Constitutional rights of these people.
It’s a clear violation of Bills of Attainder, Substantive Due Process and Separation of Powers to add restrictions on a named and politically powerless and hated group.
It is the job of the Judiciary to punish, rehabilitate, and protect the public when it comes to someone charged with a crime. If a judge, during the fair sentencing portion of the trial where both sides are represented, did not conclude that a person required a residency restriction, then there is none. Period.
For the city or state legislature to add additional restrictions not narrowly tailored to the individual and circumstances is about as perfect an example of trial-by-legislature that you can have. It’s not allowed.
These types of restrictions are only allowed during the period of incarceration and supervision by the parole/probation department with the order of a judge. Once supervision is over, rights, other than gun and voting rights, must be completely restored. That’s how are system was set up, and that’s the only way it works to accomplish its goals. Making “exceptions” because the populous is fascinated with punishing those that committed sex crimes, throws off the entire system and endangers the public.
It’s a shame we can’t just let Florida leave the union and see how it turns out without it thinking it has to follow a US Constitution for all of its citizens, and not just protect the most popular and influential ones that dictate policy.
What are you talking about, Chris?
There is a lawsuit pending in Federal Court. FAC sued the county over this! The ACLU is representing the plaintiffs. We had a victory in the 11th Circuit.
This has been in litigation for a couple of years already.
I applaud your efforts then, to get this resolved.
I am concerned though, that I see articles on this exact issue dating back to 2006. That’s over 10 years. I am not sure how this doesn’t qualify for an immediate injunction due to safety concerns, let alone how it hasn’t been addressed yet in the courts even without an emergency measure.
Can you elaborate on what is taking this long in the system?
Thanks
Those powerful images of human being living in tents with no electricity or running water might well have been taken in a war torn part of the 3rd world as they are horrific and conditions that no one in these “enlightened” times should be living in. They are also reminiscent of Japanese internment camps where 100,000 were forced to live segregated away from a fearful society.
They are not however – They are NOT take in a 3rd world country and they are NOT historic photos from WW2. They are photos of taken right now at this very moment in America of American citizens who have been legislated into social segregation from the rest of the American citizens!
Shocking images that years from now will be seen as not only inhuman but totally illegal and most certainly un american. These actions occurring right now will be viewed as fear based and shortsighted as those Japanese internment camps with the only difference being that instead of an ethnic label being this time around the label is an artificially created class that certain people are forced into – registered sex offender.
History will judge this inhuman treatment as barbaric and something that the Taliban might be capable of doing and yet it is American lawmakers behind this horrific treatment.
American lawmakers who use these individuals as pawns to manipulate the emotions of the electorate. Those who forget the past are destined to repeat it and clearly Americans have learned nothing at all about how their government has no problem at all lying to them and abusing segments of the population.
When did women get the right to vote? How long did Blacks have to ride in the back of the bus? When were gays allowed to marry…when will those who have paid their debt to society be allowed to rejoin it and move on?
The problem can be easily resolved if common sense is used. A multitude of federal, state, academia and criminologist studies show that people classified as sex offenders have the lowest re-offense rate other than murderers, show that where these people live have no bearing on re-offense (unless homeless in which case the re-offense rate is higher but still far below re-offense rates of other crimes), that 90-97% of new sex crimes are committed by those not on a registry and the best way to stop re-offense is to provide stable housing, jobs and family support. So allow the people to live with their families and the problem is solved.
Your “do-gooder” bureaucrats in action. Sex offenders didn’t create this problem, they did.