New Jersey’s acting governor signed into law yesterday a $3 million pilot program to use global positioning tracking devices to keep tabs on the worst paroled sex offenders. Florida, Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma have similar laws.
(Trenton, New Jersey)
Reynaldo Flores, a 39 year old previously convicted sex offender, was arrested for public lewdness and endangering the welfare of a child. Flores, of Middle Island, was wearing an electronic ankle band as a condition of his release after several public lewdness convictions, was charged with exposing himself to an 11 year old girl in a Border’s bookstore in Bohemia. It was Flores’ seventh arrest for the same kind of crime. A court order, issued July 12, 2001, that banned him from public libraries expired in 2002. He has two
When Richard Russillo returns from prison Tuesday, the convicted sex offender is likely to move back into the same Ridge house where he was arrested, right next door to the boy he fondled. The boy, now 15, said yesterday at a hearing on whether to bolster Megan’s Law, He will be back in only a week…That makes me kind of scared. I don’t wish what happened to me to happen to any other kid, he said. Russillo, 60, could again live among families unaware of his criminal background, he had
Governor Jeb Bush yesterday signed a law imposing tougher penalties on child molesters and requiring many of those released from prison to wear satellite tracking devices for the rest of their lives. The measure gives Florida one of the toughest child-sex laws in the nation. The Jessica Lunsford Act was quickly drafted after Jessica’s death was discovered in March, and was pushed through by lawmakers outraged that the man accused of killing her was a registered sex offender. It passed both the Senate and House unanimously. The law requires sentences
The Longwood school district is the first to adopt an e-mail alert system that notifies subscribers when a sex offender moves to any Long Island community. The postcard mailing service, which the district discarded last week, only advised residents when sex offenders moved into the district. The Parents for Megan’s Law sponsored e-mail program increases the information parents can access about convicted sex offenders because the no-cost method informs subscribers when a registered offender moves into the school district or any other community. It is estimated that the district spent
Newsday/Jennifer Smith
If a bill proposing the use of GPS monitoring systems passes the county legislature today,some convicted sex offenders in Suffolk County could wind up wearing one. The bill would authorizethe county’s probation department to set up a pilot program, in conjunction with the courts,requiring selected high-risk sex offenders to wear GPS equipment as a condition of their probation.The offenders’ movements would be tracked so they stay away from areas prohibited by theirprobation, such as schools. Of the more than 800 registered sex offenders in Suffolk County, onlythose under the supervision