Fla. Official Wants Public Warned About Sex Offenders in Their Midst
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
May 2, 2005
(AgapePress) - A county official in Florida has proposed posting signs in neighborhoods and communities where a sexual offender or predator resides. The idea proposed by Marion County Commissioner Randy Harris came in the wake of recent brutal killings of children by sex offenders in Florida.Harris believes residents can do a better job of policing their own neighborhoods than law enforcement can. The reason, he says, is because the sheriff's office does not have enough personnel to watch out for the more than 600 sex offenders in Marion County.
The commissioner believes most law-abiding residents will appreciate being warned that there are sex offenders and predators in their midst. "These are people who labeled or branded themselves when they committed a crime against an innocent person," he notes, "in many cases with force, and in many cases grown adults forcing themselves on very young children. It's a horrible tragedy, and it isn't one the public takes very well in most cases."
Still, Harris says he has received some opposition to his proposal from the political Left. "I think there's a small percentage of people out there that are supporting these sex offenders that simply want us to back away from this and be quiet," he explains. "I haven't run into as much red tape as I have the flaming liberals who disagree and are worried about hurting the feelings of the convicted felons."
The Marion County official says these liberals are apparently worried about hurting the feelings of convicted sexual offenders and about continuing to punish them after they've served their time. "But this isn't an issue of punishing," the commissioner insists. "That's not the intent. The intent is public information -- warning parents and single women who need to know the proximity in which they live to these people, these convicted felons."
Marion County Sheriff Ed Dean initially disagreed with Harris' plan. However, after the proposal received heavy publicity, the sheriff reluctantly decided to circulate the warning flyers in all communities where convicted sex offenders and sexual predators were known to live.
Criticism of the plan intensified recently after a man in Ocala, Florida, apparently committed suicide in despair over signs posted in his neighborhood that identified him as a child rapist. The father of Clovis Claxton, 38, found his son dead with one of the signs beside his body less than a day after his release from a psychiatric hospital.
Claxton, who was convicted in Washington state in 1991 of molesting a nine-year-old girl, had seen the posters in his neighborhood and complained to the sheriff of being frightened that people would try to harm him. After threatening suicide, the distraught man had been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility and released the following day.
Claxton's mother, who claims her son was developmentally challenged due to a brain injury, blames Harris for his death because the county official proposed the warning signs that drove the ex-convict to despair. Sheriff Dean was quoted in a WTVJ-TV news report as saying the man's suicide was a "clear example of an unintended consequence, which can occur when we go beyond what we call police protocol when handling sex offenders."
Harris, on the other hand, does not blame Claxton's death on the signs and contends that sex offenders need to take responsibility for their own actions. Also, the Marion County commissioner says citizens across the U.S. have the right to produce their own warning flyers and to circulate them in their neighborhoods, instead of sitting on their hands and waiting for a sheriff or county commission to post the signs.
