SUFFOLK COUNTY:  BILL WOULD LIMIT SEX OFFENDERS’ HOUSING

Ronald Stores, a convicted rapist, was placed in temporary housing in Centereach in February by Suffolk County.  Police were required to go door-to-door to tell neighbors that a sex offender was in their area but police and angry neighbors could do nothing about where the county had found him housing, across the street from North Coleman Road Elementary School.  Legislator Joseph Caracappa (R-Selden) announced yesterday a resolution designed to prevent the scene in Centereach from repeating itself.  It would prevent the county from providing housing to sex offenders within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, day care center and other areas where children congregate.  It's not a mass epidemic of sex offenders being placed within these vulnerable populations, said Laura Ahearn, the executive director of the Stony Brook-based Parents for Megan's Law.  But when it happens just once, that's too many times.  At a legislature Public Safety Committee meeting yesterday, legislators unanimously approved Caracappa's bill.  It will be considered by the full legislature in Riverhead on Tuesday.  Ahearn said Stores, who was released from prison in June 2001 after serving a 10-year sentence for raping a woman in a New York City subway station, was relocated to another facility in Medford late last month.  

(New York)