CURSOR:Citizens UnitedTo ReevaluateSex Offender Registries

2008-02-20: Manchester Daily Express: Aldermen kill residency restriction proposal

By Dan Magazu (original article)

A proposal to restrict where registered sex offenders can live in Manchester was unanimously killed by a committee of aldermen on Tuesday following testimony from members of the police department.

The proposal would have restricted sex offenders from living near public areas in the city where children gather, such as schools, day care centers, churches, parks and libraries. It was being pushed by former Ward 4 Alderman Leo Pepino.

Several members of the police department were at the meeting to voice their opposition to the residency restriction ordinance, including Sgt. Scott Fuller, who spent 7 years in the juvenile division.

Fuller said that during that time, there were only four reported cases of a sex offender in Manchester re-offending. He said that in each case, the repeat offender already knew the victim.

“There are very few stranger attacks,” Fuller said.

He said previous studies on residency restrictions have concluded that there is no correlation between where a sex offenders lives and the recidivism rate. Fuller said the studies did show that residency restrictions increase the number of homeless sex offenders, making it more difficult to track them.

“Whether we like it or not, Manchester is an attractive place for sex offenders,” Fuller said. “We have a halfway house, low-income housing and other options not found in every community. They’re not going to leave Manchester if residency restrictions are in place.”

Members of the Committee on Public Safety, Health and Traffic voted to kill the issue. The committee also made a motion to have Mayor Frank Guinta increase funding for the police department’s compliance check program, which aims to ensure that sex offenders are registering properly.

The program has helped the city maintain a 97 percent compliance rate.

“I’m led to believe that our efforts would be better spent supporting a program that’s worked in the past,” said Ward 4 Alderman Jim Roy.

Pepino tried to argue that residency restrictions have worked in other communities, but did not have statistics on hand to back up his claim. He said that talk of sex offenders going underground due to such restrictions is just “rhetoric.”

2008-02-19: New Hampshire Union Leader: Aldermen reject sex-offender housing ban

By Scott Brooks, New Hampshire Union Leader staff (original article)

MANCHESTER — Aldermen yesterday said no to a proposal that would have banned registered sex offenders from living near schools, parks and other places frequented by children.

The measure was unanimously rejected by the Public Safety, Health and Traffic Committee at the urging of the city’s police department. Deputy Police Chief Marc Lussier and officers in the juvenile division argued the restrictions would not prevent offenders from committing another crime, and could drive some offenders into homelessness.

“Having residency restrictions is not going to be the answer,” Sgt. Scott Fuller said.

Leo Pepino, the former alderman who has lobbied hard for a measure that would keep offenders away from children, said he plans to take the fight directly to the full Board of Mayor and Aldermen. [We’ll be watching. —Ed.]

“I’ll keep working to get a couple more [votes],” he said yesterday.

The committee’s vote was yet another defeat for anti-crime activists who hope to restrict the number of places where registered sex offenders can live. A similar proposal in Nashua was recently vetoed by the outgoing mayor, Bernie Streeter.

At least five communities in New Hampshire have adopted residency restrictions in recent years. Officials in Derry have said they would consider a proposal to keep offenders out of certain neighborhoods after it was revealed a man convicted many years ago of killing a child was living near a school. The man has since moved out of the state.

Pepino said the scare in Derry should convince people that restrictions are needed.

“If they had had a residency [restriction] like this, he wouldn’t have been there in the first place,” Pepino told the aldermen.

Roughly 300 sex offenders on the state’s registry are living in Manchester, police said. Fuller said the department currently requires each offender to come by the station twice a year to update his or her registration.

In addition, he said, officers in the juvenile division try to stop by each offender’s home as many as three or four times each year to confirm he or she is living at the listed address.

With a compliance rate of 97 percent, Fuller said, “the current system is working.” Police say as much as 90 to 95 percent of all sexual assaults are committed by people who know the victim.

In seven years with the juvenile division, Fuller said, no more than four convicted offenders were arrested for committing another sex crime. In all cases, he said, the victim was known to the assailant.

“There are very few stranger attacks, per se,” he said.

All five members of the public safety committee voted to receive and file. Members are Bill Shea, Russ Ouellette, Dan O’Neil, Jim Roy and Peter Sullivan.

“I don’t think the citizens and young people of Manchester can be protected more than what our police department is already doing,” O’Neil said.

Committee members said they hope to find extra money for the police department, so officers can do more compliance checks than they already do. Fuller said the department currently averages about 15 compliance checks a week, depending on its case load.

2008-02-19: Public Safety Committee meeting

• Meeting agenda — Item #8. Information about this bill is no longer attached; see earlier agendas (below).

After lengthy testimony from Deputy Police Chief Marc Lussier and Sergeant Scott Fuller of the Manchester Police Department, who attended with two other police officers, followed by equally lengthy testimony by this bill’s still-sole supporter, former alderman Leo Pepino, the Committee finally voted to kill the bill, unanimously, once and for all.

We had created another information handout for the aldermen, briefly outlining everything that’s wrong with residency restrictions, which we distributed to them beforehand.

Sgt. Fuller testified that:—

• He has worked in the Juvenile division for seven years, and has overseen the sex-offender registry in Manchester for four years.

• The current registration law (RSA 651-B) is working well.

• The Legislature has rejected residency restrictions on the State level.

• The fact that someone is on the sex-offender registry does not prevent assaults.

• The purpose of the sex-offender registry is to educate the public as to potential safety threats: It lets the public know “when a sexual offender is living in [their] midst.”

• In all his years covering the sex-offender registry, he has only had 3–4 offenders reoffend—and they offended against a known victim, in no relation to where they were living.

• Sex offenders commit assaults against family members, caregivers, babysitters, &c.; there are “very few stranger attacks, per se.”

• Studies are coming in from everywhere that show there is no correlation between residency restrictions and recidivism rates.

• Residency restrictions have been enacted in other states, and they have led to a dramatic increase in homelessness. Manchester’s sole homeless shelter prohibits registered sex offenders from living there.

• However, if they become homeless, they’re not going to leave Manchester, because our city has the best public services, public transportation, access to counseling, and so on.

• The Manchester Police Department maintains a 97% compliance rate, due to strict enforcement, a zero-tolerance policy for infractions, and a compliance-check program. The compliance rate was 92% prior to the implentation of their compliance-check program.

• Compliance checks involve an officer going to an offenders residence four times per year and confirming, in person, that they do in fact live there.

• There are five communities in New Hampshire that have residency restrictions, but their population ranges from 3,000 to 30,000, meaning they are no comparison to Manchester, with over 110,000 people.

• He stated bluntly, “The current system is working.”

Pepino responded with long, rambling testimony in which he spent more time attacking the people opposed to his bill (mainly us) than he did defending the bill itself. Our animated logo that cycles between reevaluate, reform, and remedy apparently confused the eighty-year-old ex-alderman, leading him to believe that one day we were called one thing, but we were calling ourselves something else the next time he visited our site. Annoyed by our assertion that the bill was on its last legs in December, he went on to rebut our constitutional arguments on a completely separate issue by saying “what the states are trying to do is help the children.”

After dropping “for the children” rhetoric several times into his speech, he went on to call all our arguments “boilerplate rhetoric.”

At one point, he said he agreed with the police testimony, but that they didn’t speak of this ordinance directly. He then went on to talk about the Adam Walsh Act, Megan’s Law, that we can’t change the State registry law because it’s federally mandated, a sex-offender named Coolidge who committed his crime in 1964, and various other sex-offender topics that weren’t related to this ordinance directly.

Then it got weird.

He claimed that CURSOR was behind HB 504, a bill before the State House in early 2007 that Laurie, herself, had been working on—months before CURSOR had even come into existence, months before Jeremy had even moved to New Hampshire.

Finally, it was over, and Aldermen Jim Roy asked Pepino if there are any reports or studies that prove that residency restrictions do, in fact, lower recidivism. Pepino mumbled through this, saying that there is “all kinds of stuff on record … where it’s working” and that there are “studies all over the country.” When asked if he actually had any numbers to back this up, he said he could get them if they needed them.

O’Neil, Sullivan, and Oullette then discussed the bill, concurred with the police testimony completely, and finally the aldermen voted 5–0 to receive and file the bill.

Afterwards, Jeremy and Pepino were interviewed by Dan Magazu of the Manchester Daily Express.

2008-02-18: New Hampshire Union Leader: Sex offender residency to be discussed

By Scott Brooks, New Hampshire Union Leader staff (original article)

MANCHESTER — City officials are girding for yet another debate over a proposal to ban registered sex offenders from living near schools, parks and other places in Manchester.

The measure is expected to go before the Committee on Public Safety, Health and Traffic tomorrow afternoon. Its lead proponent, former alderman Leo Pepino, said he plans to answer critics who dismiss the proposal as nothing more than “feel good legislation.”

“I mean, come on,” Pepino said. “Of course it’s ‘feel good’ legislation. It’s for the kids.”

Opponents have argued the proposal is overbroad and would drive offenders “underground.” At least one police official, Deputy Chief Marc Lussier, has argued against the measure.

The committee meets at 5 p.m. in the aldermanic chambers. Alderman Bill Shea, committee chairman, has not taken a side in the debate.

“I really still have an open mind,” he said yesterday.

A draft ordinance prepared last year would have banned registered sex offenders from living near schools, day-care centers, parks, playgrounds and libraries. Some aldermen suggested the radius should be set at 500 feet. One proposal floated last year would have set the radius at twice that distance — which, for sex offenders, would effectively make much of the city off limits.

Pepino has said the ordinance should only apply to offenders whose victims were younger than 18.

The proposed restrictions met with some resistance from committee members in December. Since then, however, circumstances have changed.

The committee now has three new members, all freshmen who were not part of the debate last year. They represent a majority of the five-member committee, whose only holdovers are Shea and Alderman At-Large Dan O’Neil.

O’Neil opposed the measure last year.

A local group that has tried to block residency restrictions in both Manchester and Nashua has urged city residents who oppose the measure to attend tomorrow’s meeting. The group, known as Citizens United to Reevaluate Sex Offender Registries, or CURSOR, said on its Web site, “We think this bill is finally on its last legs.”

CURSOR argues residency restrictions are ineffective, and sometimes counterproductive. Members say the restrictions often drive sex offenders into homelessness, where they cannot be tracked at all.

At least five New Hampshire communities have approved residency restrictions for sex offenders in recent years. A similar proposal is currently being debated in Derry.

Aldermen in Nashua recently voted in favor of restricting where some sex offenders can live, but the outgoing mayor vetoed the measure just before leaving office.

2008-02-18: Manchester Daily Express: Sex offender registry remains on the table

By Dan Magazu (original article)

City officials prepare to discuss proposal again this week

Former alderman Leo Pepino continues to pressure city officials to copy a few other New Hampshire communities by establishing residency requirements for registered sex offenders.

Pepino’s proposal would restrict sex offenders from living near public areas in the city where children gather, such as schools, day care centers, churches, parks and libraries.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen will consider the proposal during a meeting on Tuesday.

In 2007, the communities of Tilton, Northfield, Boscawen and Franklin adopted ordinances that restrict sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of areas where children congregate. Violators are required to pay fines.

Late last year, aldermen on the Committee on Public Safety, Health and Traffic had city staff plot a map that showed where sex offenders would be forced to live in Manchester with a restriction of 500 feet. But the issue has remained tabled at the committee level ever since.

A few aldermen, however, have already expressed their opposition to the proposal.

Alderman-at-Large Dan O’Neil believes the best way to keep kids safe is to put more money into the city’s sex offender compliance program.

“These restrictions could drive sex offenders underground,” O’Neil said in December. “We currently have a high registration rate because of our compliance program.”

Deputy police chief Marc Lussier agrees with O’Neil’s assessment, pointing out that his department has a juvenile detective that goes out and performs compliance checks.

Pepino said yesterday that he has been very frustrated by the unwillingness of the committee to move forward.

“If this ordinance protects just one child, it will be worth it,” Pepino said.

Pepino said he does not understand why the police department is opposed to the ordinance. He dismisses the idea that the restrictions will drive sex offenders underground.

“This is all rhetoric,” Pepino said. “There has been no record of anyone going underground in other areas with residency restrictions.”

It’s likely that at least a few city residents, including Laurie Peterson, will appear at Tuesday’s meeting to voice their opposition to the proposal.

Last August, in response to Pepino’s proposal, Peterson created a group called CURSOR, or Citizens United to Remedy Sex Offender Registries. Peterson’s husband Michael is required to register as a sex offender after a 1997 conviction for statutory rape when he was nineteen years old. Peterson said the woman Michael slept with had claimed to be 17 years old but was actually 15.

Peterson argues that residency requirements will do nothing to protect children.

“If you want to molest a child, you will,” she said during a committee meeting in December. “It doesn’t matter where you live.”

Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen begins at 7:30 p.m.

2008-01-15: Public Safety Committee meeting

• Meeting agenda — Item #11. See pages 9–21 for information about this bill.

As usual, the bill remains tabled. The meeting began at 17:00 and adjourned at 17:29, with all tabled items left untouched.

As a result of the 2007 municipal elections, the Public Safety Committee is now composed of Aldermen William P. Shea (chairman), Daniel P. O’Neil, Peter M. Sullivan, Jim Roy, and Russ Ouellette.

2007-12-05: Union Leader: MPD’s deputy chief warns against sex offender residency limits

By Scott Brooks, New Hampshire Union Leader staff (original article)

MANCHESTER — Deputy Police Chief Marc Lussier warned aldermen yesterday against a measure banning registered sex offenders from living near schools, parks and other places where children gather. “I’m concerned that it’s not going to be effective,” Lussier said.

An aldermanic committee tabled the proposed ordinance yesterday, four months after former Alderman Leo Pepino urged its passage.

The committee expects to hear testimony from detectives with the police department’s juvenile division within a month.

Three aldermen on the five-member Committee on Public Safety, Health and Traffic expressed some reservations about the proposed residency restrictions. Alderman At-Large Dan O’Neil said he has spoken with several police officials, including Chief John Jaskolka, and found little support for the measure.

“The common theme coming back from the police department is that this is feel-good legislation,” O’Neil said.

Pepino said residency restrictions are the only weapon the city has for “controlling” sex offenders.

At least five New Hampshire towns, he noted, have passed similar measures in the past two years. “This is a crime. It’s a crime against children,” Pepino said.

As proposed, the measure would ban registered sex offenders from living near schools, daycare centers, parks, playgrounds and libraries.

Some aldermen said they would consider setting the radius at 500 feet.

Another proposal would set the radius at twice that distance. Offenders already living near properties covered in the ordinance would be exempt. A 500-foot ban would cover much of Manchester.

Lussier said he is concerned the measure “is effectively going to ban people from living in the vast majority of the city.” He said he also believes the measure would open the city to litigation.

Roughly 340 registered sex offenders are currently living in Manchester, Lussier said. By law, he said, all of them are required to register with police twice a year. They are also required to notify the department within five days of registering a vehicle.

Members of the police juvenile division do compliance checks regularly, Lussier said. Aldermen O’Neil and Pat Long said they would prefer to give the police more money so the department can perform more compliance checks.

“Enforcement and auditing is going to go a longer way than setting a radius for where (sex offenders) can move in,” Long said.

Two Manchester residents at yesterday’s meeting spoke against the proposal. Laurie Peterson, whose husband, Michael, is on the registry for committing statutory rape when he was 19, said the measure would not stop sex offenders from traveling to commit crimes. “If you want to molest a child, you will,” she said, “It doesn’t matter where you live.”

2007-12-04: Public Safety Committee meeting

• Meeting agenda — Item #4. See pages 5–17 for information about this bill.

This bill continues to remain tabled and looks like it’s finally circling the drain.

Former alderman Leo Pepino, the primary proponent behind this bill, finally got to speak in front of the aldermen during this meeting. Pepino’s attempts at justifying the need for this ordinance would be laughable if this issue weren’t so serious—resorting to the usual tactics of fearmongering and emotionalism, he claimed that not passing the bill would be a “crime against children” and implied that all sex offenders are the same—dangerous child predators—saying that the only different kind of sex offenders are “registered” vs. “unregistered” ones. Early in the meeting Pepino asserted that only the ACLU (whom he felt the need to point out supports flag burning and… baggy pants) would oppose his bill, but after Laurie and Mark spoke against it, his argument became that everyone opposing it was doing so for “personal reasons.”

All of the aldermen on the Committee have serious reservations about the bill at this point, and they grilled Pepino on a number of issues that we and others have brought to their attention. Pat Long again pointed out that all other cities’ residency restrictions are currently under litigation (which is what prompted Pepino’s odd tirade against the ACLU). Ed Osborne stated that 1000′ would be simply unworkable, forcing all sex offenders out of the city. Daniel O’Neil actually described the ordinance as “feel-good legislation” that would “drive sex offenders underground” and make it harder for the Manchester Police Department—who already do extensive compliance checks for registered sex offenders—to track them. William Shea cautioned that this bill would lead to unintended consequences and finally made the motion to re-table the bill, requesting that the police present a report about their current system of compliance checks at the next Committee meeting.

Pepino went on to claim of sex offenders that “this group can’t be controlled”—but that his pet ordinance would be “the only way we can control these people.” Finally, seemingly out of desparation, he exclaimed that “they’re all over the city now … everywhere you can imagine” and that failing to pass this bill would be a “crime against children.”

Mark Warden urged the Committee to kill the bill, asking how sex offenders would ever be able to figure out where the off-limits zones are, and that it would be a “nightmare for the police to have to enforce.” Laurie also spoke against the bill, reminding the Committee that this bill has lingered for four months now with no action—but that we will be there next month if that’s what it takes to kill it. She went on to remind the aldermen of all the points we initially brought up months ago, and also added how, for sex offenders still on parole or probation, residency restrictions will seriously interfere with the parole officer’s ability to do his job. She ended her speech by requesting that the aldermen “start dealing with real answers” and a plea to finally take this off the table and let it die.

2007-10-30: Public Safety Committee meeting

• Meeting agenda — Item #12. See pages 24–36 for information about this bill.

This bill continues to remain tabled.

Unlike the last meeting, in which the bill wasn’t even mentioned, it came up for discussion today—for about thirty seconds. Upon seeing that Leo Pepino, the bill’s major proponent, hadn’t shown up at the meeting today, they immediately re-tabled it, pending the next Committee meeting. The status of the map that they requested be drawn up remains a mystery.

Laurie, Jeremy, and Mark were in attendance.

The remainder of the meeting was spent discussing mostly traffic-related issues.

2007-10-02: Public Safety Committee meeting

• Meeting agenda — Item #15. See pages 50–62 for information about this bill.

This bill remains tabled.

The aldermen adjourned this meeting early, leaving all tabled items from last time—which included the sex-offender residency restriction ordinance—tabled. Apparently the aldermen wanted to get out of there in a hurry tonight. The meeting was spent receiving updates from the police and fire departments, discussing new E-ZPass–like tracking devices that can be used at parking meters, and replacing the large number of small signs in downtown Manchester with a small number of large signs.

Laurie and Jeremy both attended, along with Mark Warden, another Manchester resident concerned with this, and other, issues of liberty. Even though she didn’t testify to the Committee this time, the aldermen were definitely aware that Laurie was there in order to witness the proceedings, and will doubtlessly be following up with them individually later this week.

Leo Pepino, former alderman, showed up to speak in favor of this ordinance, but didn’t get to do so as a result of their early adjournment. He was quite angry at this, calling them a “bunch of idiots” and grumbling about them being more concerned with dogshit than sex offenders. This was most likely a reference to last month’s meeting where the aldermen spent most of their time going over the finer points of dogs fouling Manchester’s city parks.

From where we’re standing, however, if the aldermen want to waste their meetings discussing dogshit, instead of passing it, in the form of new anti-freedom laws, that’s just fine with us.

2007-09-04: Public Safety Committee meeting

• City considers sex offender restrictions like those adopted in other towns — Union Leader, 2007-08-14.

The bill to pass residency restrictions in Manchester was tabled pending further discussion.

Laurie and Jeremy both attended this meeting, where Laurie presented a speech describing all the things that can go wrong with residency restrictions. Mark Roy (ward 1) was most strongly in favor of the residency restrictions, while the other aldermen—Ed Osborne (ward 5), Daniel O’Neil (at-large), William Shea (ward 7), and Patrick Long (ward 3)—voiced various concerns: The draft legislation prepared by the city solicitor, Thomas Clark, did not specify the specific restriction radius that would be drawn around schools, nor was it clear whether or not current residents would be grandfathered in, or if they would be forced to move. After lengthy discussion about preparing a map demonstrating either 500′ or 1000′ restriction radii, a motion to table was presented by Shea and seconded by Long, which passed unanimously.

Afterward, Laurie was interviewed by WMUR channel 9 news and WGIR 101.1 FM radio.

Prior to the Committee meeting, an information handout and letter were mailed to the aldermen.