Tallahassee, Florida - There's a new law to help protect your kids against sex offenders.
School safety is top priority for many parents. Some schools already have security systems like the "Raptor" which can do quick visitor background checks to identify sex offenders.
But there's a new and faster way authorities hope to keep your little ones safe.
"Starting August 1st, anyone with a Florida driver's license or identification card will have a new designation on their driver's license or identification cards if they have been convicted as a sexual predator or offender," said Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Public Information Officer Ann Nucatola.
That new driver's license has a marking on the bottom right-hand corner with a special number identifying the law that particular sex offender violated.
Hmm... This is a little old now, but...
Okay here are some thoughts.
Once anyone is on that registry their life is over. You may as well shoot them as put them on that registry. If they're such a risk to society that they must be monitored like a good little Soviet for the rest of their life may as well be locked up for that time.
As a deterrant, it's useful, don't get me wrong. But not even murderers get the kind of treatment after they have served their time that sex offenders get. Those convicted in the Nuremburg trials didn't go on a registry after release (for those who were). What's worse, is that the range and breadth of that offense and subsequent monitoring is only ever going to grow.
Let's take this news story from a couple of months ago:
Family says I-4 rage led to mooning
SANFORD - A family driving west on Interstate 4 in a silver Mercedes-Benz on Sunday evening made the men in the black Chevrolet Tahoe mad.
The Mercedes had cut them off, the Tahoe's driver later told a Seminole County deputy, so front-seat passenger John Thomas Taylor dropped his pants and mooned the family, including their 14-year-old son, according to a Sheriff's Office report.
[...]
If convicted of the charge alleged by the Sheriff's Office, Taylor could face up to 15 years in prison and forever be identified as a sex offender.
So, if the first article is true, by the time the I-4 "mooner" goes to trial, if convicted, he will end up with a permanent mark on his driver's license for everyone to see. These days you need your license to travel, buy cigarettes and beer, pick up a prescription, heck here in New Park Slope you can barely use a dry cleaning service or return an unwanted gift to Ann Taylor without having to provide your license. Everyone's going have him labeled as a flasher. He won't be able to live near a school or a park with a playground, which in many places means he can't live in a town. If he has kids, he can't pick them up from school, or attend his children's graduation. And I'm using the term "his" interchangeably.
I was thinking about not posting this as I don't want to come off as defending sex offenders, as I'm not. There are a group of people out there that are vile and should go to jail, directly, without passing go or collecting diddley-squat. I just hate the registry, and wish there was some better way we could protect people rather than lumping anyone caught peeing behind a tree in the same bucket as child-molestors and having them tagged, filed and monitored like pound dogs for the rest of their lives. Kill them, lock them up until they die, or let them free, but this bizarre half-freedom we've given them doesn't help anyone, IMO.
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