Where do we draw the line between public safety and over-criminalization?
In North Carolina, a man was arrested after authorities alleged he was “present” near a Sonic and a Burger King in Goldsboro — both locations reportedly considered prohibited under NCGS 14-208.18 because they have children’s play areas.
According to the arrest report, officers alleged McMillan was within 300 feet of these locations. There are no allegations that he approached children, spoke to minors, acted inappropriately, or committed any sexual misconduct.
The alleged violation? Simply being near the premises.
At some point, people have to ask whether laws like this are actually making communities safer or just creating endless technical traps that make ordinary life impossible.
In this economy, fast food is one of the few affordable options available to many people – especially registrants. If your local Sonic or Burger King are being treated as forbidden zones because they happen to contain a play area on the property, then what’s next? Grocery stores with arcade machines? Shopping centers with a kiddie ride? Gas stations with claw machines?
There is a major difference between predatory behavior and buying a hamburger.
If someone is stalking children, attempting contact, or engaging in sexual conduct, arrest them all day long. But criminalizing everyday activities with no allegation of misconduct turns the registry into a system of perpetual exclusion rather than targeted public safety.
These kinds of cases fuel growing concerns that presence restrictions are becoming so broad that registrants can unavoidably violate them simply by trying to live normal lives. I’m sorry, but Olive Garden is simply unaffordable for many of us!
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It’s crazy when I got out of prison I had a small floor cleaning company, my probation officer wouldn’t let me do work at a chik fila because it had a play area!!! But the kicker is I was supposed to do the cleaning on Sunday when they are closed. The system still wouldn’t allow me to do the work. This money grab of a system will never change!!
Personally, I think it’s his own fault. He was warned and already had a monitor on. I didn’t get any sympathy from anyone when I was on GPS monitoring. I actually almost got violated because their equipment malfunctioned. Luckily, I was reporting at the sheriff’s office at the time, and the arresting officer called my probation officer to confirm I was standing right there with him.
That same week, another PFR on GPS cut his monitor off, and they caught him with 14 officers and 2 K-9 units just 33 minutes after the initial tamper alert from the ankle monitor.
Again, he was given warnings. Usually in Florida, as a PFR, you don’t get warnings. So honestly, I don’t feel bad for him. With a 300-foot restriction while on a monitor, he was lucky he got to see anything at all. I only got to see my house, and I had to pay for that privilege.
These laws bypass the need to prove intent. Because willful knowledge and motive are excluded from the requirement to convict.
That should be grounds alone to overturn
This gets more interesting if you read the arrest form. This person is a local, apparently known to police, and is on GPS, so they have his exact location at all times. He had been apparently warned about the 300 ft rule previously.
I completely disagree with the 300 foot law, and GPS monitoring, especially when off supervision, but we can learn something from this, and that is, when LE give you multiple warnings against certain conduct, if the law backs them up, you should heed their warnings if you like being free. That said, for those under these rules like this individual, the burden should be on the law to make it very clear when a person is somewhere they should not be, rather than leaving it up to the individual to figure out. Perhaps this law will be struck down for vagueness, especially in this instance.
What is NCGS 14-208.18 and how does it apply to people? In state? Out of state?
What is even more interesting if you pull up a map view of the Sonic listed, which is the same drive thru across the country, you cannot see any playground. How can he be too close to a playground at that point. Seriously, look up the location at 404 N Berkeley in Goldsboro on Maps. There is no indoor area to Sonic for a playground! There is a McD’s three doors down (no, not the band) on Graves and Berkeley from it that may have a indoor play area though. This goes to the point of the post, it over does it.
If you go to the Google My Business profile for that location and look at the images, there’s a playground. But that’s not the point, nor whether there’s a clown at McDonalds. The point is that it’s a fast food restaurant, not a preschool. A gas station that has a claw machine is still a gas station. People need to eat, people need to get gas. People need to live their lives. I’m reading the comments here about people not being allowed to go to movie theaters because they have video games, etc. and it’s proving the argument made in the post that this is overcriminalization.
How did we come to the point that a fast food chain is associated with sex offenses (other than Subway, because of that whole Jared debacle, but that’s not the point)? And the 300 foot exclusion zone?!?! That’s the distance of a football field! This is like living in the Jim Crow era, where Black patrons needed “The Green Book” to know which restaurants and barber shops they could safely stop at. Is that what this has come to?
I am not aware of the Google My Business listing but did take a relook at the map from overhead and do see the outdoor play area now to the side of the lot which I didn’t catch before. Never seen a Sonic with a play area, but neither here or there, you are correct. The point of it and the distance of it is beyond any sense of sensibility. Does one need a “green book” to know where they can go, sadly? I hope not but it sure looks that way.