In Florida, not only vehicles owned or driven by a person required to register as a sex offender are on the registry, but so too are the vehicles of anybody living with them or visiting their homes for 5 or more days. That means your spouse, your driver-age children, even your roommate will have their cars registered and identified as being associated with a sex offender.
That’s a scary premise when they get pulled over for speeding or some other traffic violation. We’ve received dozens of complaints from family or roommates of registrants who were harassed because of this. But it’s an even scarier premise to have your vehicle flagged when you are doing nothing!
The city of Davenport, Iowa just approved a contract that will give their law enforcement officers license plate scanners – high-speed cameras mounted on police cars that capture thousands of license plates per minute, convert each license plate number into machine-readable text and check them against databases. According to this article, one of the express purposes of the readers is to “monitor that registered sex offenders are not violating restrictions that dictate areas where they cannot be”.
If your spouse is a teacher or your children drive themselves to high-school, they can be quickly flagged and it’s not arrest that we’re concerned about, but the humiliation and embarrassment that comes from being called out in front of co-workers and classmates.
License plate readers might be a bad idea, but being forced to register family members or roommates cars is a horrible and unfair.
I was a resident of Pinellas County and because my aunt/uncle/cousins lived next door I was charged with failure to register and failure to register THEIR vehicles. I fought this for over a year and finally settled with a $1,100 fine and “Obstruction of Justice (Misdemeanor) “Not a sexual offense.” The house I lived in was divided by an over pass – they lived in one house I lived in the other. I had my own electricity, water, door lock with it’s own key. Yet, the sheriff said because it was the same address I had to register them – even after 2 SPOT officers told me it wasn’t necessary. After the court-case the interviewer SPOT sheriff changed my address to my temporary address and basically kicked me out of Florida – so just beware – If the police/Sheriffs want you in jail – they will charge you with anything and all those judges are biased against anyone on the registry – oh! by the way; my bail was for $60,000 – what some crap.
Greg
Back in the 1980s, I worked in law enforcement. One of the numerous reasons I left was, some of the things you mentioned. There are some great men and woman in law enforcement, however there are also many corrupt officers. Many became cops because they were bullied as a kid and wanted power and some just wanted to have authority over others.
I saw many times an officer pull weed out of their pocket and plant it in someone’s car.
Why the Hell would you ruin someone’s life just so you can boost your drug busts? Since being a small boy I wanted to be a cop. After all of the things I witnessed in person, my dreams were crushed. The job went from one of respect to one of legalized Mafiosos. I finally could take it no long and resigned.
The whole thing is totally wrong. Your drivers license and plates have absolutely nothing to do with being accused of a sex crime. It’s just another way of GPS tracking. Unless you have been convicted of something that has been proven in court to deserve tracking they should have no reason or right to require that information. If you’re not breaking driving laws or your doing something that requires identification at the time, it’s nobody’s business.
Speaking of privacy “rights”, I hope you all can see this;
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CGiBonCHMgM/?igshid=1jlpkg1doc6ru
Now people can get a taste of what type of dictatorship goes on for those on the registry. This information about the CA governor dictating how people can spend the holidays should be used in comparison to the requirements of being on the registry. This is a FREE country. Not a dictatorship. When your sentence (probation/parole) is fully completed, off the registry for good. Period.
Conservatives don’t like being told how they can live, eh? Alright then. So let’s throw it right back at them and remind them that they’re supposedly so “Christian” and therefore they need to practice FORGIVENESS.
I do not understand the posts about being detained in a state park while an officer calls FDLE to find out what to do. If there’s no state law against being present in state parks, then what is the problem?
Confused
If you are talking about my posts, they happened in city owned parks. I have never been questioned in a state park.
The city cops, especially smaller cities where the cops are bored and just go looking for trouble is where I have been stopped and detained at least 15 times over past 20 years.
Every time they told me they ran my tags and then looked up my photo then went looking for me in the park. One time I saw their cruiser parked behind me and saw them walking around looking for me and I got in my vehicle and drove away lol
I fall under the old rules from when the registry first came out so law enforcement ( including the Florida Dept of Law enforcement ) has a hard time keeping up with the ever changing statues, laws, rules, ordinances and other no-no nay nay made up as they go along legislations.
While they detain me each time for 30 minutes to an hour, robberies and break ins and car jackings are taking place somewhere they could be patrolling and doing real police work. Guess I am the easy target. End up wasting my time and theirs. I am blessed that so far the FDLE didn’t tell them to go ahead and arrest me and let me and my lawyer figure it out.
I can see how the plate scanning thing could be an issue. My wife is a high school teacher for the past 8 years and her car has always been on the registry since I do drive it often. She has never had any issues with her work. She also just got a speeding ticket a couple weeks ago with no problems. If the school were to give her a hard time, depending what happens I would have to look into legal action against them. Discrimination is not something I tolerate well no matter what form it’s in. I’ve been in the FDLE’s system since ’95 and I’m pretty familiar with my rights.
I don’t register car of my spouse or cars of my teen children. I’ll win in court.
That’s your right, but don’t post that here. Tell your lawyer, or better yet, support the Non-Registrant Collateral Consequences Challenge.
“Vehicles owned” means any motor vehicle as defined in s. 320.01, which is registered, co-registered, leased, titled, or rented by me; a rented vehicle that I am authorized to drive; or a vehicle for which I am insured as a driver. The term also includes any motor vehicle as defined in s. 320.01, which is registered, co-registered, leased, titled, or rented by a person or persons residing at my permanent residence for 5 or more consecutive days” As much as it’s unfair, at this time it’s the law and why risk a 3rd degree felony.
I always park backwards everywhere I go and especially Walmarts with the rear facing some bushes or wall, nice and tight. If they want to scan my tag they’re going to have to get out of their car and really get that scanner in there.
Rick
I use to work in law enforcement in the 1980’s and whenever I saw a car backed in anywhere, that was a HUGE red flag to me and I always got out and check not only the tag but also looked inside the vehicle. About 15% of the time I got some sort of hit. I do not care if they scan mine, if I am shopping at walmart the law cannot stop me from doing so (Not yet anyway). So if you are not doing anything wrong, the Hell with them, let them scan away.
The only time I ever get harassed is when I am at a park. Most of the time they detain me. One Lt. stopped me in Winter Springs Florida and he was super cool. After checking me out with FDLE he said you cannot be at this park, but there is a county park down the road.
This is a good reason that every person in America should back into parking spaces. I do as often as I’m able. Just because. I always will if I go to someone’s house or somewhere like that, if the vehicle is visible from the street.
Honestly, I’ve been fairly surprised that the criminal regimes haven’t started requiring license plates on the front and back of all vehicles. Maybe one day they will make them very small and you’ll have to put them on the sides and top as well!!? Maybe QR codes that can be read from satellites!? I’m sure that could be done today. Never underestimate what the scumbags are working on to try to surveil and harass people.
The ongoing answer to all of this is to try to keep LE and big government de-funded as much as possible. All Americans should be working to keep resources from them. They obviously have many multitudes too much. If we fund them properly then they won’t have the time or resources to drive around parking lots and be getting out of their vehicles and looking at cars. They’ll have to focus on actual, real crime.
What is with you getting stopped in parks all the time, LOL? Either you are allowed to be there or you aren’t. Why would you be in a park where you aren’t allowed and then when LE finds out, they just tell you to move along?! Wouldn’t most people be arrested?
Where I live, I can go anywhere. I’ve NEVER had a LEC recognize me and talk to me, in over 2 decades. I wouldn’t talk to them anyway.
When our local LECs wanted to buy ALPRs they of course used the excuse of “sex offenders”. They tried to mislead the public that PFRs could not be in parks, etc., and that the ALPRs would help them find PFRs there. They mislead the public to the extent that it was lying. They are most concerned that the public THINKS they are doing something. Reality is not so important. I told everyone who would listen that PFRs could go anywhere they liked and further, many PFRs have families and all of their vehicles are also Registered. I’ve never had less than 4 vehicles Registered. I’m sure they were getting “hits” on my kids driving all over the place. If they wasted any time on those by looking for me there, then they are idiots who deserved it.
And of course, as always, if I were going to do anything illegal, I’d never use a vehicle that I have Registered. I’d never use any vehicle they could track. Their Hit Lists are a distraction for them and a waste of time.
Almost everyday I take my grandson to the park. We like to explore new parks (So he doesn’t get bored, he has autism) and we go to different cities.
Usually smaller cities like Winter Springs, Apopka, Longwood, Altamonte Springs etc have nothing better to do than drive through parks and either scan or type in license plates. 90% of the time they drive by and I just way hi.
On that 10% of the time, when I see them stop and get out, I know I am in for some fun. I always show them my police academy card (That can never be taken away) and let them know I support the police (When they are not jerks). About 70% of them are professional. Most of the time they just ask me to leave and I do. It is the 30% of the ones who just want to stir up crap that doesn’t exist where things get nasty and they end up calling the FDLE.
Not once has the FDLE told them directly to arrest me but told them it is there call. I assume they were told if they were wrong and I got a lawyer, it could cost them a lawsuit for false arrest?
My Mom told me to stop going to parks because I am pushing fate and getting my grandson put in foster care?
Heck I have dropped him off at School almost everyday for 3 years and never once been stopped at the public school.
These ‘registered citizen’ LEO’s have to do something to justify their existence. Unfortunately the public is fool enough to fall for this BS.
I find it is an invasion of privacy. Some of the labeled sex offenders are ashamed of themselves. Some of them maybe falsely accused and still labeled as a sex offender its not right.
Putting the license plates out there like that is making your vehicles a billboard or a target.
I think the sex offender registry should be destroyed.
Linking vehicles to an RSO has other consequences as well. Did you know that your spouse, driver-age children, and roommates cannot work for Uber, Lyft, Doordash, GrubHub, Uber Eats, or just about any other delivery service? The government has ceeded its authority to corporations which allows them to discriminate with impunity.
As a side note, do not donate to Habitat for Humainty. I recently got a letter from them requesting a donation. I searched the locale of the letter’s origin website and found:
“To be eligible for Pensacola Habitat’s Home Buyer Program, you must be able to answer “yes” to the following statements:
I am not a registered sexual offender and do not have a sexual offender who is or will be living in my home.”
https://pensacolahabitat.org/homebuyer
Where’s the humanity?
JZ
I use to send in donations to my local Christian radio station. They are completely listener funded. Each year when they did the telethon, I would go in and volunteer in person (With other adults) as a phone donation operator. On the third year I called to asked why I was not asked to come in and was told that we do not allow sexual offenders on our property. I said I was a sex offender 30 years ago perhaps but now am someone on the registry against my will. They could care less and hung up on me.
Well that was the last donation they ever got from me. I still listen to the station because the artist who sing the songs didn’t do that to me, the station did.
Whenever I see hypocrisy like you mentioned, I politely call them out on it, hoping it might prick their conscience. I just wrote to Habitat for Humanity on their exclusion of registrants for that very reason.
I’m reminded of Paul’s stern warning in Philippians 1:27-28 that those who oppose believers will be destroyed (and I believe that includes those in the church standing opposed to the truth of the Gospel) . Many in our churches today are unwittingly standing in place of the first century Pharisees, facing impending judgement for the same brand of whitewashed religion. It grieves me deeply that so many are that blind.
I don’t think People Forced to Register (PFR) should ever give money or anything else to any charity, organizations, or just random people. Unless you know it is not going to help any Registry Supporter/Terrorist (RS/T). I only give to safe organizations today like the ACLU, F.A.C., ACSOL, and NARSOL.
I haven’t given a dime or anything else to any charity or anything else like that for well over 2 decades now. I used to all the time. I used to volunteer my time and work all the time. Give blood as often as possible. Etc., etc., etc. …. very long list. I stopped ALL of that.
I doubt that I had been listed on the Registry for as long as even a couple of years before I figured out that I shouldn’t be helping ANY random people or charities. I was treated like a leper everywhere, of course, but what I recall really sealing it for me was hearing about some charity somewhere (believe it was in Texas) that was repairing homes for older people who couldn’t afford to do it. They had unknowingly repaired the roof of a old guy’s home and then the “community” found out that he was a PFR. People lost their minds. The charity said they would take steps to ensure that never happened again. It was around that time that I decided that I would never help random people again.
The other thing is that if you volunteer in the state where I live, you have to tell the criminal regime about it. I won’t ever be doing that. So I can’t volunteer.
But it’s no problem. I have found that it is incredibly easy to find decent, good people who need help. So that is how I do my charity. It feels a lot better that way as well. I know I’m not helping some douche bag who thinks Registries are fine.
Just within the past few weeks, I donated a lot of heavy equipment and workers to help a woman and her old father rebuild a retaining wall that was about to destroy part of their home. I read on Nextdoor about how her “neighbors” were harassing her about it and she said she was sorry but didn’t have the money to deal with it. The guy has cancer as well. I felt really sad about it, but I wasn’t about to help any RS/T. So I called her up and asked her what she thought of the Registries. We talked about it for 10 minutes and I felt good about it. Then I told her I was a PFR and I would help them. So I did.
Discrimination against our third-class citizen status is rampant and far-reaching. Without the registry, it would not be nearly as bad because companies would have to pay for criminal background checks. Now, they only need to do a free google search.
Almost every company does background checks nowadays. This isn’t 2000 or something.
The reason why registries make it harder to find jobs is because employers are concerned that other employees will find out about the registrant’s conviction and might quit their jobs. With non-sex crimes, the employer will almost certainly find out about the conviction, but it’s usually pretty easy to keep the crime a secret between the employer and employee. (Unless the crime was publicized in the news.)
Not sure about the “other employees” part so much. But I do know that a lot of companies don’t like their name and address showing up on the Hit Lists. It is trivial to get the Hit List data and see things like “oh, this big company X employs exactly N People Forced to Register (PFRs)”. They don’t want the stupid public to think their company is unsafe. I have been pretty surprised that some newspaper hasn’t written an article about what companies employ PFRs and how many.
Also, there is definitely a legal risk to employing PFRs. If the PFR did something and the company was liable, the liability would certainly be higher than normal. Even if somebody else did something, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if people would try to use the fact that the company employs PFRs to try to show that they are less serious about safety. It really is a bunch of BS. It is harassment that is fully sponsored, promoted, and encouraged by our criminal big governments.
I’ve seen numerous attorneys recommend to companies that they should never hire a PFR. Government sponsored hate segregation.
It was way better back when this first came out. Even when I was on probation, when my probation officer came to my job to verify I was there or actually worked there (I had to give her my schedule each week) and she would come in and pretend to be a customer and look around very discreetly.
She was not just looking out for me but also for the workplace. Between her and God, I would not have made it through probation otherwise. Sadly a few years after I was off probation, she was fired for being too easy on probationers. She was never easy on me or anyone, she just realized everyone deserved to explain why they should not be violated and if it was a legit excuse, she gave you the benefit of the doubt.
If more probation officers were like her, maybe more people would turn their lives around.
Universities are using these license plate scanners, too.
Examples: University of Florida and University of Central Florida
Private companies as well.
You can buy one yourself and scan every car going by your house and store all of the information in a permanent database. It would be extremely easy to do that and record how many times each vehicle went by, graph them out, etc.
I expect that subdivisions are going to start putting these at their entrances. Any day now. Once they start seeing that PFRs are driving in and out of their subdivisions, the stupid public is going to lose their little minds.
Will
I use to laugh at people for saying Big brother is watching us. I guess it took the situation I / we are in to open my eyes to the fact that it is really getting crazy and REAL.
Someone on youtube made a comparison of the Space ex satellites going up to the SkyNet system in the Terminator movies. Maybe they were not far off, at least on the monitoring us all with them aspect anyway.
They say they are only to provide internet to all around the World. Maybe so but it will also open up the World to more hackers, as if we do not have enough scammers already.
Bail bondsmen and repo men are hiring Bounty hunters with License plates readers now to drive through parking lots of shopping centers, Walmarts, apartments etc searching for felons, warrants or repo cars.
A few weeks back I saw one drive around the parking lot of walmart when I was there. There are 4 cameras two in front and two in back and when they get a hit, they block in the car or boot the tire once they get a confirm.
Depending on there abilities, they either wait for the person themselves (if they are a licensed bounty hunter) or if they are just a hired driver, they call in a tow truck.
Going a step further, the same goes with out drivers licenses. Many places now are scanning in our licenses, when we return at item at a store, when you sell something at a pawn shop or coin store etc. And it does flag and tell that person everything about you, including your statues as an offender.
Still calling yourself an “offender”? Yikes. Please stop offending.
Personally, I call myself a person who is harassed by immoral, illegitimate criminal regimes. A “Person Forced to Register” on their Hit List.
Yeah, the corrupt system of the legislature and all the agencies and counties, state, federal are all very corrupt. They can violate laws at unprecedented levels even murder by law enforcement agencies.
The demorats do nothing or do the republicans. We live in a very corrupt society. It is only getting worse and worse. I am no longer on the sex offender registry in the state to where it happened but florida and fdle do not respond and blame me for the incompetence. To which my charge should never have been a sex offense in the first place as their is NO victim whatsoever.
Good luck trying to change things as the corrupt elected officials do whatever they want when the get elected and think that they are above the law and do whatever it is they chose.
Horrible and unfair, yes. But it also violates rights to due process and privacy.
The magic word is right there: “dictate”. This has to be used in lawsuits since this is not a dictatorship country.
Have you ever been at Walmart and see a city police vehicle going up and down the aisles and you know they are scanning cars? Have you seen them block a car in waiting for the owner/driver to come to the car? Have you, in the process of exiting a state park with your grandkids, seen county police sitting at the exit? I have….
FAC Legal, is it illegal for a registrant to be present with their grandkids in a state park?
Or does that just vary by county?
Does state of FL outright ban registrants from state parks, in other words.
Or does it just depend on circumstances.
Varies by County and City
I have been stopped by the police almost 30 times in a park with my grandkids. I am always detained for at least 30 minutes while they contact FDLE. They always get the same answer from FDLE, “They just do not know since I was sentenced almost 30 years ago” so they always tell me to leave and not come back.
One time I had an officer hold me so long after hanging up with the FDLE I told him either take me to jail or let me leave because at this point I am calling dispatch to have a watch commander come to the scene. When they ask how I knew to call for a watch commander, I tell them, “Because I once was a police detective”
I had to demand to see the watch commander for my annual registration in May. Everyone else kept telling me to come back the following Monday because the registration officer wasn’t there. I refused that, saying I wasn’t coming on Monday for an FTR warrant.
Ditto the watch commander. Took out my phone and asked him to identify himself and the date and time, then that I wouldn’t be allowed to register that day for whatever reason. He left and came back 10 minutes later with the stupid forms.
He asked if we were good after filling them out and I told him, “No. I don’t see ANY reason why we couldn’t have done this the first time I came here FOUR HOURS AGO.”