GESTAPO ALERT Etowah County compliance sweep

Again with the catchphrases. "Its for the children (tm)." Hitler did it "for the children" too, you know. 

http://www.gadsdentimes.com/article/20120517/NEWS/120519839/1016/NEWS?Title=Authorities-verify-Etowah-County-sex-offenders-8217-residences

Authorities verify Etowah County sex offenders’ residences


By Lisa Rogers
Times Staff Writer
Published: Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 10:07 p.m.


It’s for the safety of the children.

Sex Offender Verification Roundup
Gadsden Police Chief John Crane said a sex-offender compliance check is an important measure in verifying the location of convicted sex offenders in Etowah County.


More than two dozen law enforcement officers from several agencies spent Wednesday and Thursday verifying the locations of 178 convicted sex offenders living in Etowah County.


Of the 178, only one was not verified.

Not only does he share the Hitler philosophy,
he has the matching mustache. 

“It’s for the protection of the children,” Crane said of the sex-offender checks. “We need to know who’s out there and where they are at.”


Crane said working with the different agencies, including the Etowah County Sheriff’s Office, U.S. Marshals Service, Alabama Bureau of Investigation, FBI, ATF, state probation and several municipalities, makes an operation like this one successful.


“This is what can be accomplished when we work as a team,” he said.


The officers worked in teams of two and filled out a verification form for each person registered in the county.


“This is the meat and potatoes of what we’re doing,” James Nolan, an agent with the U.S. Marshals Service, told the officers about the verification form as he explained the laws and the necessary paperwork required in the compliance checks.


“Slow down and think about what we’re doing,” he said. “If you make contact with the offender and they are in compliance, you are pretty much done.”

COMMENT: Remember when the US Marshals were called in for drug cartels and violent situations? Today, their job consists of harassing people at home to see if they are on the useless registry. 

He said it’s important for the officers to get a look inside the house. “If they don’t to let you go in, there’s probably something going on that they don’t want you to know about,” he said. There also is a law which makes it a felony to harbor a sex offender. He said even if all the sex offenders are found and verified, that does not mean they are in compliance, such as living in a house with children. Of the 177 verified, 154 were in compliance and 23 were not. Two offenders had died and three were in jail.

COMMENT: Did you catch that? Now if you don't allow them into your home you are automatically suspected of wrongdoing. 

By Thursday afternoon, a few of the sex offenders verified were found not to be in compliance, Sheriff Todd Entrekin said. He said the sheriff’s office verifies the residence of registered sex offenders monthly, but the unified effort sends a strong message that sex offenders living in Etowah County must stay in compliance or pay the consequences. “It’s important to keep a close eye on sex offenders,” Entrekin said.

COMMENT:  Monthly? They must have nothing better to do in Gadsden County. 

Sheriff Todd Entrekin

Entrekin said he believes by checking the sex offenders more often, there will be more accountability. “Nowhere in the law ... says we can check them too many times,” he said. Entrekin said most of the time, someone convicted of a sex crime against a child will re-offend. That’s why it is so important to keep track of convicted sex offenders, he said.

COMMENT: The sheriff is a full-blown idiot. Again with the "most will re-offend crap. That is a bold-faced lie, as statistics have proven consistently that recidivism rates are extremely low, but the registry has NO impact on recidivism.

Feel free to CONTACT THE SHERIFF and give this clown an education:

Sheriff Todd Entrekin Email: tentrekin@etowahcounty.org -- Phone: 256-546-2825

Here is the Gadsden city PD info, and they even have a handy page for filing a complaint against them. How nice!

Mailing Address: 90 Broad St., Gadsden, AL 35904 Phone: (256) 549-4500 Fax: (256) 549-4547

Court to decide if RSOs must have a home [to be free]

I am hoping the courts uphold the ruling striking down the practice of re-incarcerating sex offenders for not being able to obtain housing before their release dates. I am passionate about this one because I was five days away from being charged with "Failure to Register." If it was not for a church in Cincinnati, who knows when I would have found a place to live. I am hoping to have a letter from an Alabama inmate who was sent back to prison for being homeless soon.

[http://www.gadsdentimes.com/article/20100828/APN/1008281024]

Court to decide if sex offenders must have a home

By BOB JOHNSON Associated Press Writer

Published: Saturday, August 28, 2010 at 9:14 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, August 28, 2010 at 9:14 a.m.

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals is deciding four cases that will determine if convicted sex offenders must provide a permanent address when they are released from prison.

Montgomery County Judges Truman Hobbs and Tracey McCooey ruled last year in separate cases that a law requiring inmates convicted of sex offenses to have a permanent address before they are released from prison is vague and unconstitutional.

Alabama Attorney General Troy King has appealed and asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to reinstate the law. King says the statute is necessary for law enforcement officers to keep an eye on people convicted of sex crimes like rape.

All briefs have been filed and arguments made in the four cases. Attorneys say the court could rule at any time.

This article is a longer version of the same story, courtesy of the Anniston Star:

[http://annistonstar.com/view/full_story/9311105/article-Alabama-court-to-decide-if-sex-offenders-must-have-a-home?instance=news_lead]

Alabama court to decide if sex offenders must have a home

by Bob Johnson
Associated Press Writer

August 28, 2010

MONTGOMERY — After serving his prison sentence for rape, Jeffrey Seagle tried to find a place to live. But with no fixed address and no family or friends able to take him in, Alabama's sex offender law kept him behind bars.

When it came time for him to leave the Kilby Correctional Facility near Montgomery, he was re-arrested. The reason: He couldn't give officials an address where he would be living.

"This is essentially an eternal prison sentence. It could be a life sentence," said attorney David Schoen, who represents Seagle and three others in similar situations. "It is the ultimate scarlet letter."

Challenged by Schoen, the law was later declared unconstitutional by two Montgomery circuit judges, but the state attorney general has appealed to have it reinstated. State's attorneys say the four inmates could have complied with the law by listing a park bench or even a street corner as their permanent address.

Montgomery County Circuit Judges Truman Hobbs and Tracey McCooey ruled last year in separate cases that the law is unconstitutionally vague. The ruling struck down charges that the four inmates violated the law when they declared that they were homeless and did not provide an address for where they would be living outside prison.

Seagle and the other three inmates were arrested for violating the notification law when they started to leave prison at the end of their sentences. They have since been released after the law was ruled unconstitutional.

Alabama Attorney General Troy King has asked the state Court of Criminal Appeals to reinstate the law, which he said is necessary for law enforcement officers to keep an eye on people convicted of sex crimes like rape. The four men — Phillip Handley, Thornal Adams, Richard Coppage and Seagle — argued in court briefs that they were unable to find a homeless shelter, halfway house or other permanent home.

Under Alabama law, convicted sex offenders are not permitted to live within 2,000 feet of an elementary or high school or college or university.

Although they are now out of prison, Schoen said his four clients are still having a hard time finding a place to live. He said they have stayed in homeless shelters and other temporary locations.

Many states that adopted stringent community notification rules for sex offenders are now grappling with the issue of how homeless sex offenders can comply.

Last year, probation officers in Georgia had to find temporary housing for nine homeless sex offenders who were kicked out of a makeshift tent city they had built in the woods behind a suburban Atlanta office building. The men said the tent city was the only place they had been able to find where they could live and comply with state law.

In a similar case, almost 100 homeless sex offenders in Florida were forced to move earlier this year from a makeshift camp under a bridge on a Miami causeway.

Mississippi has a law similar to Alabama's, but it gives sex offenders 10 days to find a permanent residence after they are released from prison. In California, sex offenders are allowed to register as "transient" if they can't find housing.

Schoen has argued that the Alabama law violates the Constitution because it requires a convicted sex offender, who has "paid his debt to society," to have a roof over his head.

But the attorney general's office has argued in court briefs that the law does not require a specific address and that inmates can say they are going to live on a park bench or under an interstate overpass, as long as they remain the required distance from schools and police know where to find them.

"You can say 'I'm going to live under the overpass on Ann Street," King said, referring to a Montgomery street not far from the Capitol.

Virginia law allows homeless sex offenders to list a street corner, parking lot or other vacant space as their home.

Deputy Attorney General Pete Smyczek denies claims that the Alabama law is an attempt to give homeless sex offenders life sentences.

"We just want them to give us something definitive enough to allow law enforcement to locate them," Smyczek said.

The law passed the Alabama Legislature in a special session in 2005. The House sponsor, former state Rep. Neil Morrison, D-Cullman, said King and some legislators were concerned that "predators were disappearing back into society" as soon as they were released from prison before law enforcement officers could find out where they were living.

"I felt strongly about this. We owe protection to our children," Morrison said.

Schoen said he believes the Legislature intended to require sex offenders to stay in prison if they lack a permanent address and that the argument about living on park benches is being made to improve chances of winning before the appellate court.

But Morrison said that's not the case.

"Nowhere did we say in the law that they have to stay in prison. The intent was to protect children," Morrison said.

In court filings, attorneys for the sex offenders say their clients went to great lengths to abide by the law.

Seagle, who was initially convicted of rape in Montgomery County in 1995, had been in prison for 14 years when he was told he would have to provide an address before he was released from prison and at that time didn't have any relatives or friends he could live with, according to his filing to the appellate court. The filing said Seagle wrote to a number of halfway houses and was only accepted to live in one in Oklahoma City.

But that halfway house later informed him it was full and he could not live there. The filing said Seagle did not have money to rent a house or an apartment and he did not have access to the Internet in prison to help his search. It said Seagle "did not think he could put down that he would be living on a park bench and that if he did, he would probably get arrested again."