Florida Sex Offenders

Excellent reporting and follow up from Isabella Gomes of the Miami New Times. Her story follows:

Beneath a shredded blue tarp, 58-year-old Claudia Baker takes a swig of A&W root beer. “Imagine your faucet dripping at night. That’s what life is like for us—except instead of just hearing the drip, we feel it,” she says.

After serving nine years in prison for child pornography, Baker now lives at an encampment of sex offenders near the train tracks near Hialeah. There, residents sleep on wet cots, endure massive storm floods and openly defecate behind a storage container. Nearby business owners say they’ve scared away customers. “My dog in Texas lives better than I do,” says Baker.

How Florida Sex Offender Registry Effects Citizens

Because of a 2005 county law, sex offenders in Miami-Dade are prohibited from living within 2,500 feet of any school, daycare center or park — a restriction that essentially banishes them into homelessness. After New Times chronicled their conditions in August, Homeless Trust Chairman Ron Book declared the site a “health crisis” and announced that the county would shut it down as soon as possible.

However, two months later — even after Hurricane Irma tore through and flooded the site — the camp is bigger than ever. Why? Book says he’s working on closing it but needs more time.

“It’ll be sooner rather than later,” Book says of when the sex offenders will be relocated.

The County has struggled to find a permanent home for sex offenders since passing its restrictive laws in 2005. For years dozens lived under the Julia Tuttle Causeway until a national outcry erupted over the situation; they were shuffled around the county and by 2014 ended up near the railroad tracks in Hialeah. As of August, 233 sex offenders are registered to the area of NW 71st Street and NW 36th Court. Eighty-eight are on probation with ankle monitors tracing their movement.

Despite Book’s promises in August to close the camp, dozens of sex offenders still lived there a month later when Hurricane Irma took aim at Dade County. Police forced the offenders to evacuate, says Baker, and many fled to shelters, including Baker who hunkered down with 2,000 other people in the basketball court of Miami Central Senior High School on NW 95th Street.

Upon returning to the encampment, Baker found that her cot, tent and rubber pallets had become wet and mosquito-infested. So, she slept in her moist, molding tent, as rats scurried beneath the rubber pallets. “The rats…they’re big suckers,” says 72-year-old Eladio Morales, who started living at the encampment just two days after Irma. “That’s why I don’t sleep on pallets. I’d rather sleep on the ground.”

Since the hurricane, residents say that persistent storms and showers have flooded the premises, ripping tents from the ground. “One tent ended up on the other end of the railroad track,” Morales says, resting his arthritic legs.

A few former camp residents have been relocated since August. Baker says three offenders have been relocated to real housing. Among them, 49-year-old Brett Borges, who once solicited nude photos and sex from an undercover cop, posing as a 15-year-old on Grindr. He says he’s found an apartment near 81st and Biscayne Boulevard.

Hundreds of others remains at the camp. “Ron Book keeps telling us he’s shutting [the camp] down, but he won’t give us a date,” says Baker, “When this is happening [and] where we’re going, we don’t know.”

Book says, “It will happen, but we haven’t set a date.”

Where exactly will the offenders be relocated? “No comment,” Book says. “But they’ve had ample time and opportunities to seek housing alternatives.”

Baker says in the meantime, residents have tried to make the camp more liveable. They’ve acquired heavy-duty generators, a portable shower, a microwave, a speaker system, and a wide-screen T.V. and reinforced tents with water-proof camping tarps, sheets of industrial-grade plastic and even large event-style canopies. The additions, however, have only further pushed the encampment’s boundaries further into the street where trailer trucks and pickups regularly drive.

“That’s what we’re afraid of,” says Mary Grafton, whose family owns a custom furniture factory two blocks down the road. “The county said they’d clear out the camp, but it’s only getting bigger,” says Grafton, “now there’s more tents and more tarps, but still no one’s picking up the garbage.”

SOURCE