It’s simple! Install a park.
It was 2009 and in the few years since the City of Miami and the City of Miami beach had passed a sex offender residency restriction (SORR) hundreds of people required to register found themselves displaced to a parcel of land under the Julia Tuttle Causeway, essentially a bridge that spanned Miami and Miami Beach. The tent city was so large and unsightly that it began to garner international media attention. The Julia Tuttle was one of two access points to Miami Beach, one of the worlds largest tourist destinations, from the airport. It wasn’t a good look for the Cities. The lobbyist who spearheaded the ordinances that caused the problem and for which “Bookville” was named, had a solution. He very ceremoniously had the area fenced off and evicted everyone.
Shortly after, a new encampment emerged in another of the limited pockets of compliant land in the County. The area along 79th Street and NE 10th Avenue in the Shorecrest neighborhood quickly swelled to more than 150 people with nowhere to go but the sidewalk. Just like the Julia Tuttle Causeway, the street corner, which was the gateway to the John F. Kennedy Causeway that separated Miami from North Bay Villiage, became that area’s problem. So to fix it, then Commissioner Marc Sarnoff stuck a couple spring toys into a vacant lot and christened it a “pocket park“.
The decrepit “pocket park” did nothing for the children in Shorecrest other than expose them to tetanus from the rusted spring toys and miscellaneous litter, but what it accomplished was the displacement of the cluster of registrants who scrambled to simply stay in an area that was compliant with the SORR. Now that there was a park, another exclusion zone was created.
If you click on the link two paragraphs above and read the Huffington Post article, you should notice three things. First, it was written 10 years ago. Second, Ron Book (the lobbyist who created this issue) was ironically also the person quoted as in charge of finding the solution to it. The third thing you should notice is his specific comments: “There are places that meet the 2,500-foot law, Book said, but many freed offenders may not be aware of their locations. He told HuffPost the Trust is willing to help lead them in the right direction.”
Great! Housing options!!! So, as if leading the slaves from Egypt in biblical times, this modern-day Moses was going to show the people all the available residences in Miami-Dade County where they could live in compliance with the SORR (which was incidentally named after his daughter). Wonderful! There was a savior willing to “help lead them in the right direction.”
Well it’s been 10 years, Mr Book… The homeless registrant crisis is worse than ever! There are HUNDREDS of homeless registrants in South Florida still wandering in the proverbial desert waiting for you to deliver the solution to this problem you created.
Now people have to understand Mr. Book’s hatred of registrants. His daughter was the victim of sexual abuse. If his daughter had been the victim of a school shooter or drunk driver, I’m sure we would have much different gun or DUI laws today. But with that in mind, we’re not questioning the justification for his anger. We are merely asking whether he was ever the most appropriate person for this job? If during a County meeting one of the commissioners asked for a volunteer to spearhead the racial sensitivity program and David Duke stood up and said, “I’ll volunteer!” someone should have recognized that’s probably not the best idea. Same situation here.
We trust nobody reading this post actually believes that Ron Book will deliver a solution, that Ron Book should be the one charged with finding that solution, or that Ron Book ever cared whether a solution would ever be found. Nobody is that gullible. But it’s been more than 16 years since SORRs were enacted and people are dying because of them.
And it’s not just in South Florida. Like dominoes, no municipality wanted to become the dumping ground for this public relations nightmare, so as soon as a city passed an ordinance, so did the neighboring city, and the one next to that, and the one next to that one, and so on. And one city’s ordinance became the template for the next city’s. And one city’s strategy for displacing the cluster became the next.
It’s been 10 years since Marc Sarnoff’s “pocket park” but even now, Joliet, Illinois “Mayor Bob O’Dekirk announced Tuesday that the city will create a park within 500 feet of an apartment building where six sex offenders live in an effort to drive them out.” It’s that brazen! It’s literally the first sentence of this article and “… the first action we’re going to take,” O’Dekirk said.
Back in the days, SORRs were passed under the premise that it was done to protect the children. Today, nobody buys that anymore. A law that prevents people from sleeping within 2500 feet of a school between 10PM and 6AM is asinine. KIDS ARE NOT IN SCHOOL BETWEEN 10PM and 6AM!!! You have a better chance finding a kid within 2500 feet of any registrant at 10PM than on a school campus.
Today, politicians are much more shameless about their intentions. They openly announce they are passing a SORR because the neighboring municipality passed one and they are putting in a park to banish registrants.
Back in the days, SORRs were able to withstand constitutional scrutiny because the legislative intent was argued to be public safety. I wonder how such a challenge would fare when the Mayor’s stated intent is to drive out a class of people? Perhaps some food for thought for Illinois Voices?
While a realize this article isn’t intended to criticize Ron Book, Karma is a fickle witch. Didn’t he just get throat cancer? That’s almost a death sentence for a lobbyist. God don’t like ugly. Ron Book certainly didn’t turn the other cheek. I’m inclined to agree with joker. They all do it to ease their own minds for their failures. But we’re the monsters.
Whats really @#$%&% up is that even if they would have had the registry and proximity restrictions it would not have saved his daughter as the nanny had nothing in her background (I’m sure he did a background check). If not and she had something in her past then shame on him and as you said if he would have been more worried about his daughter then money and power to start with it might have never happened. But to use his money and power to ruin other peoples lives to ease his own mind for ruining his daughters life is just plain wrong. But then because of what happened to her look at all the sympathy and support and money she’s made. the books make money off of us every way they can they are nothing but glorified pimps.
The point of the article is not to criticize the Books. There is nobody on either side of this issue that doesn’t wish every day that what happened to Lauren Book had never happened. Certainly they wish it hadn’t for obvious reasons, and if Lauren hadn’t been victimized we would not be living under these torturous restrictions. Direct accountability for her abuse lies squarely with the nanny. Not with Ron and not with any of us.
“If he hadn’t done XYZ…” or “if we hadn’t done ABC” is not going to change the present circumstances. We can point fingers at him all day long for enacting completely ineffective legislation, for using his money and influence to exercise vengeance, for testifying to false recidivism statistics in order to advance his agenda, for being an opportunist and a general ass, but we should not point fingers at him for what happened to Lauren. That ship has sailed and if he knew then what he knows now, I’m sure he would have had two armed guards supervising everyone within 5 feet of his kid. Similarly, he should not point fingers at us for what happened to Lauren. None of us touched her and many of us never touched anyone nor intended to. The ship has sailed in our past too and I’m sure if we had the benefit of the insight we have today, all our lives would be different.
The only points the post was intended to make are:
SORRs don’t work. Enough time has passed to determine that.
Book is not the right guy to find a solution to the homeless registrant problem in South Florida. Keeping him in that role is stupid. and
The shenanigans that started here have spread across the country and it’s become more blatant. It’s time politicians stopped getting away with it.
The post was a subtle nudge to our sister affiliate in Illinois that what happened here could happen there. If you let the Mayor get away with this BS park without even attempting a lawsuit, this ABSOLUTELY WILL spread like a cancer and God forbid you find yourself in the same situation Florida is in 16 years from now.
If anyone reading this is a member of IL Voices, lives in IL or has any contact there, please step up. We only have enough bandwidth and resources to deal with our own debacle, but can certainly help in any limited way we can.
If we are not to hold Ron Book accountable for what happened to Lauren, then why is he holding a whole group of Floridians accountable? We had nothing to do with what happened to Lauren. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander!
Agreed 100%. We should not hold him accountable and he should not hold us accountable. These SORRs should not exist.
Because of the other shadiness Ron Book is involved in and/or orchestrates in Florida politics, I’m not entirely sure Ron Book would be any different absent Lauren’s abuse. His anti-registrant advocacy is the perfect cover for them. Ditto Lauren – she defers to her victim-hood every time she is opposed on anything.
Read the comments of any news article related to the Books, particularly those that have nothing to do with the registry or sex crime. Either they or their trolls answer every opposition or criticism with accusations of sex criminals or sympathizers.
Lauren’s lack of response to the Parkland High shooting in particular.
Lauren Book betrayed the survivors of the Parkland shooting and their families.
The survivors did NOT want Sheriff Israel reinstated. But Sheriff Israel is a friend of the Book family, so Book voted to get him reinstated. One of the survivors took to Fox News to criticize Book and said, “Something I’m so disgusted about the last few days is Florida Sen. Lauren Book, someone who has served on the MSD commission. She knew all the facts, watched my sister get murdered, but still voted to reinstate Sheriff Israel. She sold out the community of Broward county and put our children at risk. I’m completely disgusted with Florida Senator Lauren Book.”
“Gary Farmer, Perry Thurston, Oscar Braynon, they were laughing. They were eating candy while these parents are begging them, ‘Please vote in our favor. Please vote in the interest of Broward County.’ But to these Broward senators, it was just a joke.”
“And Lauren Book is the worst out of all of them, because she sat on that commission, and she watched these people get shot, she watched these children die. But simply sold out her community for her own political ambition, and that’s just something that makes my stomach sick. I’m up here in Tallahassee tying to honor my sister, and this girl had the audacity to just go behind our backs and vote against the community of Broward County.”
Instead, Book wasted time trying to compare ME to the Parkland school shooter.
I want to sue her into oblivion, but the Books know that no FloriDUH attorney would oppose them.