News Sharing and General Commentary
Members, advocates, and all followers of Florida Action Committee’s news website:
Please use this post to bring our attention to fresh news or media content. You may also use the comment area on this post to leave comments on any topic relevant to FAC’s journalistic mission.
Question: Why does this post exist?
Answer: FAC comment policy for all other posts is that comments must be relevant to the post topic and cannot contain links. For this post and only this post, these policies are suspended. You may comment on any topic and may share links. Comments must still be news worthy or informative, as well as related to the registry in some way.
Discover more from Florida Action Committee (FAC)
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I believe that this is new
Another win in Michigan
https://www.myupnow.com/news/michigan-supreme-court-strikes-down-retroactive-sex-offender-registry-enforcement/article_392575eb-7961-4d8a-ab7b-10490fbe467d.html
Eugene
If I am not mistaken, Michigan has been flip flopping back and forth for years. Letting people off, then not, then changing things again. Sounds sort of like Florida where we had no path off, then we did, then they raised the time line.
We know the registry is not fair, but at least give us a path off without having to jump through hoops or having to spend your life savings for a lawyer. It should be automatic after a reasonable amount of time on the registry. (Most of us agree there should be no registry, especially retro-active ones).
It would be nice to take a supreme court judge on a challenge to live with us for just one month and see how we are treated, all the hoops we have to jump through just to survive and constantly wondering if “Did I remember to register” with an “Oh crap” moment. And we all make a joke of this but it is real, someone being arrested for an innocent paperwork mis-step that no other people in the Universe have to comply with.
And what happened to our “Pathway off the registry” while many either cannot be afford the fees to hire a lawyer, or we hire a lawyer, only to have the judge state that we are still a danger to society and only the registry is keeping us in check. Like a mysterious ancient registry is all that is keeping us from re-offending is laughable. We know it is the law makers who are holding us back, with mis-information.
The Michigan supreme court has not reversed themselves on this issue, if that’s what you mean by flip-flop.
📣 FAC Media here! More updates are coming to this page soon. In the meantime, check out the videos we’re posting on the Florida Action Committee YouTube channel
https://youtube.com/@floridaactioncommittee?si=v2fW7sGQ4vY7c9uq
▶️ Watch, like, subscribe, and share to help us reach more people.
⚖️ Please also consider donating to support FAC’s lawsuit and the fight for constitutional rights.
Thank you for watching, sharing, and standing with us!
— FAC Media
i wonder how many of these arrests should have never happened? i know i was arrested with 2 counts because a cop got upset about what someone told him on the phone and rushed arrest warrant through. i have audio and video on camera where cop where the cop made more than 1 incrementing statements. he was reprimanded I’m not sure of all the details yet if it was in my case or others that had problems with this cop for a long time but as the lawyer said it was always the felon’s word against a cop except now it is on video as well as an illegal search! if anyone knows any attorney that will assist with a section 1983 federal statue case i need an attorney or will be doing my best to file it myself!
See our attorney referral webpage.
I’m curious if anyone has received assistance from law enforcement due to harassment from the public?
I have been a PFR for over 5 years. I have owned a business for over 4 years, with relatively no issues. However, I recently purchased a house with my girlfriend. I believe a neighbor is now actively harassing not only me, but my business. This person has submitted a negative review against my business on Google. Their only reference was to “look me up” before doing business. After several attempts, I was able to get Google to take this down. This person has also made two separate attempts to post more specific information on my Yelp business account. They then put copies of a flyer in my mailbox (and maybe other neighbors too… I have not asked around), presumably to let me know that “they” know. And most recently, I received a notification from Google Maps that a suggestion was made to list my business as Permanently Closed. I was also able to shut that down. I believe I know who this person is, but I have not confronted them as I don’t have any concrete proof that it is them. So, I’m reaching out to see if anyone has received any support from police from filing a report about harassment such as this. We would greatly appreciate any guidance on the best ways to navigate the situation.
Sorry to hear this. Hopefully they have not caused any problems for your business or your girlfriend.
We tend to throw the term “harassment” around this site a lot. I’m not sure what the legal definition of harassment is in this state or whether there are any legal repercussions.
Posting a crappy online review, for example, is probably not illegal. And maybe that’s not a problem— most readers of the review can probably detect that the reviewer has an axe to grind, and they can decide for themselves.
And it sounds as though the google maps notification was promptly dispensed with.
Flyers are unlikely to alert your neighbors to anything significant that they haven’t already been told by the sheriffs office. Many people don’t care.
Whoever’s doing this probably has issues with multiple people. They want to spread their own misery on others.
Jacob
AND, they say the registry is not punishment. Hmmmmm! Can we get a clarification of what is not punishment because it seems nothing is punishment when it comes to those on the registry. We did the crime, so we did the time……..Forever, even after we have completed our sentences.
Operation Riverwatch Produced 59 Arrests—but Court Records Show No New Contact Sex Crimes
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says Operation Riverwatch resulted in 59 arrests after investigators conducted 535 compliance checks and devoted more than 230 detective-hours to the effort. But a Florida Action Committee review of Duval County court records found that the overwhelming majority of the identified charges involved registration, reporting, residency, or other status-based requirements—not newly alleged sexual offenses.
Operation Riverwatch was conducted by JSO’s Offender Tracking Unit and the U.S. Marshals Service from June 15 through August 14, 2026. Although one news report described it as a three-month operation, the official dates cover 61 calendar days, or approximately two months.
Using JSO’s reported figures, investigators averaged at least 25.8 detective-minutes for each check and more than 3.9 detective-hours for every announced arrest. There were approximately nine checks for each arrest, or 11 arrests per 100 check events.
Those numbers cannot be treated as a compliance rate, however, because JSO did not disclose how many unique individuals were checked or whether some people were checked more than once.
JSO declared that “the results speak for themselves” and described those arrested as being placed “back behind bars for breaking the rules.” Yet the agency did not publish a person-by-person list identifying the charges connected to each arrest.
FAC therefore reviewed publicly available Duval County Clerk records using the names and ages released by JSO. Researchers located apparent operation-period cases for 56 exact matches, one probable match, and two people whose cases could not be resolved without additional information from the agency.
Among 131 initial charge entries in the matched cases, 122—or 93.1 percent—involved registration, reporting, residency, or career-offender compliance allegations. The remaining nine were other nonsexual allegations. None of those 131 charge entries alleged sexual battery, child sexual abuse, or child sexual abuse material offenses.
Reviewing the fuller booking episodes showed that 40 exact-match individuals were booked only on compliance allegations. Fifteen had additional nonsexual allegations, such as resisting without violence, battery, burglary, loitering, or littering. One person faced a separate misdemeanor allegation of exposure of sexual organs, a noncontact sex-related charge. Including the probable match, 41 of the 59 announced individuals—69.5 percent—were provisionally classified as compliance-only.
Nine exact-match individuals were charged under Florida’s career-offender reporting law rather than the statutes specifically governing registration of sexual offenders and predators. Public court records alone do not establish whether those individuals also held another registration status.
These findings do not determine guilt or suggest that reporting requirements may simply be ignored. Nor do they minimize sexual victimization or question the need to investigate credible allegations of new crimes. They do show why arrests should not automatically be presented as proof that dozens of new sexual offenses were prevented or solved.
The taxpayer question also remains unanswered. The reported 230 hours cover only JSO detective time. They do not include U.S. Marshals Service labor, supervision, transportation, booking, jail stays, prosecution, public defense, court proceedings, or corrections expenses.
JSO also did not report how many records were corrected, warrants served, victims identified, children recovered, new offenses interrupted, cases ultimately dismissed, or convictions obtained.
Operation Riverwatch documents substantial enforcement activity. Whether that activity produced a measurable public-safety benefit worth its complete cost cannot be determined from the information released. FAC calls on JSO to publish the case numbers, complete charge breakdown, total agency costs, final case outcomes, and measurable safety results needed for taxpayers to evaluate the operation fairly.
If you like post please
What’s in a Name?
The names given to sex-offender enforcement operations may reveal more about the culture behind them than law enforcement intended.
There is something remarkable about the names some law-enforcement agencies choose for operations involving sex offenders. Government enforcement operations could be given straightforward, professional titles such as Registration Compliance Operation, Offender Verification Initiative, or Registry Enforcement Detail. Instead, agencies have increasingly chosen names that sound like military campaigns, manhunts, sporting victories, or even opportunities to make a little fun of the people being targeted.
Consider the names: Operation Offenders: Endgame, Operation Get ’Em Gator, Operation Bad Habits, Operation Spring Cleaning, Operation Silver Spur, Operation Riverwatch, Operation Match Maker, Operation Firewall, Operation Child Protector, and Operation Checkmate. Each name may have its own explanation, and certainly not every name carries the same message. But when these names are viewed together, a difficult question emerges: what do they say about the attitude of the people and institutions choosing them?
Take Flagler County’s Operation Offenders: Endgame. The word endgame is not neutral language. It describes the final stage of a contest or conflict, when the objective is to bring the opposing side to its conclusion. Calling a law-enforcement campaign Endgame creates the impression that authorities are engaged in a strategic campaign against an identifiable population and are working toward an ultimate victory. Perhaps the name was chosen simply because it sounded impressive. But the imagery is difficult to miss.
Then there is Alachua County’s Operation Get ’Em Gator. The phrase get ’em is the language of pursuit and capture. It doesn’t sound like an administrative compliance review. It sounds like a hunt. The alligator reference makes the name catchy and perhaps humorous to local residents, but humor directed at the target population raises another question: who exactly is the joke supposed to be on?
Marion County’s Operation Bad Habits takes the language in another direction. Rather than describing the location, investigative technique, or statutory purpose of the operation, the name characterizes the conduct of the people being investigated. A bad habit is something undesirable that a person repeatedly does. It is a judgment about behavior and, by implication, about the person exhibiting that behavior. Again, perhaps it was intended simply as a clever title. But it is difficult to describe the term as completely neutral.
Then there is Operation Spring Cleaning. Spring cleaning means removing things that are unwanted, unnecessary, or no longer welcome. It is an innocent phrase when we are talking about cleaning a garage or clearing out a closet. But when government officials apply that metaphor to an operation involving human beings, the terminology takes on a considerably different character. The people being investigated can begin to sound less like citizens subject to a regulatory system and more like things that need to be removed.
Other names are considerably less troubling. Operation Riverwatch sounds primarily geographic. Operation Firewall invokes technology and protection. Operation Silver Spur has a Western flavor without directly assigning a negative characteristic to the people involved. Operation Child Protector emphasizes the stated protective purpose of an investigation. These names demonstrate something important: there are plenty of ways for law enforcement to name an operation without making the people being targeted the punchline, the enemy, the bad habit, or the object of a cleanup.
That distinction is what makes the more aggressive names worth examining.
This is not an accusation that every law-enforcement officer involved in these operations personally hates sex offenders. We cannot know an individual’s personal feelings simply by looking at the title of an operation. Nor does a colorful name, by itself, establish that an investigation was unlawful or that an arrest was unjustified.
But institutional language matters.
When a government agency chooses a name for a public enforcement operation, it knows that the name will appear in press releases, television reports, newspaper articles, social-media posts, and public records. The name becomes part of the public narrative. It tells the community how officials want the operation to be understood.
And that is where the pattern becomes difficult to ignore.
There is a profound difference between announcing that law enforcement conducted a registration-compliance operation and announcing Operation Endgame. There is a difference between conducting an offender verification initiative and calling it Get ’Em Gator. There is a difference between investigating alleged criminal conduct and labeling the operation Bad Habits. There is a difference between conducting a compliance sweep and describing it as Spring Cleaning.
The underlying enforcement activity may be legitimate in each case. The language surrounding it is still a choice. And those choices create an atmosphere.
They create an image of pursuit, capture, defeat, elimination, and cleanup. They reinforce the idea that the people being targeted are not simply citizens subject to a set of legal requirements, but a population to be hunted, trapped, defeated, or removed.
That is where the word contempt enters the discussion.
Contempt does not necessarily announce itself through an officer standing at a podium and saying, “We hate these people.” It can appear through humor. It can appear through labels. It can appear through the way a government talks about the people under its authority. It can appear in the casual decision to turn an enforcement campaign into a game, a hunt, or a victory celebration.
When that language repeatedly appears in operations directed at the same stigmatized population, it becomes reasonable to question whether the terminology reflects a deeper institutional culture.
Perhaps these names are simply jokes between investigators. Perhaps public-information officers believe catchy names generate more media coverage. Perhaps elected sheriffs want their communities to remember their operations. There may be innocent explanations for individual names.
But collectively, the pattern raises a much more uncomfortable possibility: the language reflects how some law-enforcement personnel have come to view the people they are charged with monitoring.
And there may be another incentive at work as well.
Sheriffs are elected officials. Public safety is one of the most politically visible responsibilities of a sheriff’s office. Few things are likely to generate more immediate public approval than announcing that an agency has conducted a major operation against people whom the public has already been conditioned to fear and despise.
That does not mean that a particular sheriff created an operation for electoral purposes. Without direct evidence, that would be speculation. But the political incentive is obvious enough to warrant asking the question.
What better way for an elected sheriff to demonstrate that he or she is “tough on crime” than to announce a large operation with a dramatic name, a large number of arrests, and a press conference celebrating the results?
And sex offenders may represent an especially easy target for that kind of political messaging because they are among the most socially stigmatized people in America. There is little political risk in appearing aggressive toward them. In fact, there may be considerable political reward.
That creates a troubling possibility. When contempt for a despised population becomes politically profitable, the line between legitimate law enforcement and public-relations theater can become increasingly difficult to see.
Again, this is not an argument against investigating sexual crimes. Children deserve protection. The issue is something different…It’s the language.
Government possesses extraordinary power over the people it regulates. That power should be exercised with professionalism and restraint, particularly when dealing with a population that has already been subjected to enormous social stigma.
There is no requirement that a sheriff’s office make an enforcement operation entertaining.
There is no requirement that it sound like a hunt.
There is no requirement that the people being investigated become the punchline.
Yet we keep seeing names such as Endgame, Get ’Em Gator, Bad Habits, Spring Cleaning, and Checkmate. Maybe they mean nothing. Maybe they mean everything.
At the very least, they deserve to be noticed.
Because government rhetoric is not meaningless. The words officials choose help establish how the public perceives the people standing on the other side of the badge. When the language repeatedly portrays a particular class of citizens as something to catch, defeat, clean up, or bring to an end, it becomes legitimate to ask whether those words reflect an underlying contempt for the people being targeted.
And when those same officials are elected, it is equally legitimate to ask whether there is a political advantage in demonstrating just how aggressively they are willing to pursue that unpopular population.
We do not have to claim that every sheriff hates sex offenders.We do not have to claim that every operation was politically motivated. We don’t even have to claim that every operation name was deliberately chosen to demean anyone.
We simply have to look at the words. Endgame. Get ’Em Gator. Bad Habits. Spring Cleaning. Checkmate. These are not the words of a neutral bureaucracy. They are words of pursuit, competition, judgment, and victory. And perhaps that is the most revealing part of all.
What is in a name? Sometimes, quite a lot. Sometimes a name isn’t just a name. Sometimes it is a window into the culture of the people who chose it.
Charles
You pretty much said it all and then some. You are correct that they cannot just be professional and do their jobs, but they have to embarrass people and drag their faces across the news for humiliation, come up with nicknames for the operations and even sometimes the individuals like “This DoDo bird fell right into our trap”.
So much unsolved crime in the state, and yet they use up resources going after registered folks who just made a simple mistake that no other group of people could be arrested for. In my lifetime I have never heard of arrests for things only a “Certain group of people” could be arrested for. But there it is, some on the registry have been arrested for a paperwork mistake, and sometimes being harassed for not being home when they get a compliance check like myself with a banner on my front door stating I was not home for my “Sex offender check” for everyone who drives past my home can see.
Who else in the entire U.S has to put up with these draconian rules, laws and requirements except for us on the registries that often last for a lifetime, well after our sentences have been completed. And the judges rule it non-punitive, which we all know that is not correct as we all live it each day and know for a fact all of it is punitive in nature, otherwise, we would be free of these daily worries and pressures on our families.
Yes all this definetly right check out
https://youtu.be/HQqTxkBuytI?is=aS2BYQnth8oBBz5s
Oh, it’s intentional alright. It’s all tribalistic rabble rousing and veiled shade designed and engineered to reinforce the “us vs them” narrative. The target audience for these operation names (which are carefully curated) are meant to rally and put smiles on the faces of the insecure individuals with zero critical thinking skills and no emotional intelligence. These operations are used to create a PR effect between the media and LEOs which are both complicit in this clown show. The media plays along for easy ratings and views, while LEOs reap the benefits of exposure and the “we’re protecting ‘our’ children” narrative.
We’re being used and monitized as content.