Oh come on!!! School placed on “lock out” during compliance check.
After a person required to register as a sex offender registered a new address in Nebraska, a local school placed their students on a lockdown preventing them from leaving the building. The sheriff’s department checked the address and discovered it was inside the exclusion zone, the man agreed to immediately leave, end of story.
There are two completely absurd things that came out of the event. First, that a school was placed on “lock out” during this period while police were checking the address, and second, the headline from this Nebraska news station read “School placed on “lock out” during sex offender investigation. I don’t know about you, but if I was a parent of a child at that school, I’d be thinking they were investigating a sexual assault at the school and be stressing.
Another case of a news station trying to sensationalize nothing and unnecessarily frighten parents.
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Yesterday, a rep from Nebraskans Unafraid contacted the town of Genoa to inquire about the ordinance. They told her they’d have the ordinance copied and emailed to her by 10am, then they bcked off and said they can’t do it.
I did a sweep of Nebraska’s local ordinances and so far, I’ve checked 66 municipal codes, including the laegest (Omaha) and the smallest town being of only 400 people. Of the 66 ordinances, all but 18 of them have an ordinance in place.
Nearly all have the same wording, as if someone made a template law and the other downs copy-pasted it. Nearly all start with this:
“The Nebraska Legislature has found that certain sex offenders present a high risk to commit repeat offenses and has enabled municipalities to restrict such persons’ place of residency as provided in the Sexual Predator Residency Restriction Act.
Sex offenders who prey on children and who are high risks to repeat such acts present an extreme threat to public safety. The cost of sex offender victimization to these children and to society at large, while incalculable, is exorbitant.*
It is the intent of this ordinance to serve the Village’s compelling interest to promote, protect and improve the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of the Village by creating certain areas around locations where children regularly congregate in concentrated numbers where certain sexual predators cannot reside.”
There are a few things of interest to note:
Nearly all the existing ordinances were passed in 2005/2006, leading me to believe these ordinances were a reactionary response to Iowa’s 2005 restrictions, the 2000 foot laws that were so onerous, many fled Iowa to surrounding states (Nebraska borders Iowa to the west; Omaha, NE’s largest city, borders Iowa).
These ordinances were made to specifically target “Sexual Violent Predators”, but the state stopped making that determination in 2009.
I’m thinking that either the Genoa ordinance does not exist, or if it does, it may be using language that aopplies to nobody currently listed on the registry.
Lots of Corn-Huskers with Nothing Else to Do….
THERE IS NO NEBRASKA STATUTORY LANGUAGE TO SUPPORT THE AFOREMENTIONED….IT SIMPLY DOES NOT EXIST..
…..So Fcking Sad!
Nebraska Statutes 29-4017.
Political subdivision restrictions on sex offender residency; requirements.
(1) A political subdivision may enact an ordinance, resolution, or other legal restriction prescribing where sex offenders may reside only if the restrictions are limited to sexual predators, extend no more than five hundred feet from a school or child care facility, and meet the requirements of subsection (2) of this section.
(2) An ordinance, resolution, or other legal restriction enacted by a political subdivision shall not apply to a sexual predator who:
(a) Resides within a prison or a correctional or treatment facility operated by the state or a political subdivision;
(b) Established a residence before July 1, 2006, and has not moved from that residence; or
(c) Established a residence after July 1, 2006, and the school or child care facility triggering the restriction was established after the initial date of the sexual predator’s residence at that location.
(3) Any ordinance, resolution, or other legal restriction prescribing where sex offenders may reside which does not meet the requirements of this section is void, regardless of whether such ordinance, resolution, or legal restriction was adopted prior to, on, or after July 14, 2006.
There IS no statewide law, only the allowance of local ordinances, and as far as I know, only Omaha has such an ordinance in place. Genoa is not a suburb of Omaha. It isn’t even in the same county. It is a small town of about 1000.
So either the Nebraska State Patrol is flat out lying, ot they are ignorant. I can find no ordinances for Genoa or Nance County that addresses this at all.
Nebraska is a lovely state….It is a Cornhusker State….Very Nice Down-Home People, UNTIL YOU GET THE SCARLET LETTER, than they back away from you, distance themselves, and Rescind their Business Contracts and you are left in the Omaha DUST! That is my take about Omaha, wherein I spent 9 years as a consultant to one of the largest employers in Omaha……
Omaha, WAS, one of my favorite cities….I saw the downtown grow and mature…the eateries were FANTASTIC…the People, very charming!
Oh, how I miss those days!