Two Weeks After New Times Story, Ron Book Wants to Close Sex Offender Camp Near Hialeah
For nearly three years, county officials and police in Miami-Dade failed to respond as a tent city of sex offenders grew along train tracks near Hialeah. The squalid camp is just the latest consequence of a 2005 county law that banned sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any school, daycare center, or park, effectively banishing them into homelessness under highway overpasses and the Julia Tuttle Causeway until they were forced into this remote industrial corner. More than 300 offenders are now registered in the area — living without running water, electricity, or plumbing.
Furious local businesses and property owners have repeatedly begged the county to do something, but their grievances fell on deaf ears. That is, until this past Monday.
About two weeks after New Times published an in-depth story about the deplorable conditions in the growing encampment, calling it a “sanitation and security nightmare,” Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust workers, city officials, and police officers visited the site. Now they’ve announced a new campaign they claim will finally find housing for the long-transient sex offenders.
Among those supporting the move is Homeless Trust chairman Ron Book and his daughter, state Sen. Lauren Book, who both visited the camp after New Times‘ story was published. Book, whose day job is an über-influential lobbyist, has long backed the county’s harsh restrictions on sex offender housing. And when New Times contacted him earlier this month, he argued that “the Constitution doesn’t guarantee where you can live when you break the law.” At the time, he insisted he had no intention of reexamining or changing the county’s rules, asserting that “it’s not a question of will [sex offenders] reoffend; it’s a question of when.”
So has Book changed his tune? “This has got to close,” he said of the camp Monday in an interview with the Miami Herald.
The lobbyist insists that, in fact, nothing has changed. Book says the county is simply allocating resources to the sex offenders for temporary rental assistance, such as first month’s rent and security deposits. But he says that service has always been available to the offenders and blames them for lacking the initiative to arrange proper housing.
So why is the county finally stepping in now? “It’s become a health hazard and a health emergency,” Book says. Even though he had no response when New Times asked him about the tent city’s sanitary risks two weeks ago, Book claims, “I was only notified a week ago. Before that, nobody ever said this was a health crisis.”
He admits local property owners have filed complaints over the years but argues that the taxpayer-funded Homeless Trust “[doesn’t] operate based on people complaining.” Instead, Book states that the role of the Trust is to “provide assistance equally to the homeless” but that it is “not [his] job to find housing for sex predators and offenders.”
Because offenders are prohibited from living in most subsidized federal housing and homeless shelters due to the restriction, it is their responsibility “to avail themselves to other funding paths for housing,” Book says. “It’s not a free lunch.”
Even so, many county officials, such as Commissioner Xavier Suarez, insist there must be a better legislative solution to deal with the tent city. In a 2014 interview, Suarez told New Times: “That we restrict where [offenders] can live and not provide any facilities for them isn’t human or logical.”
Regardless, Book says the county will soon announce a deadline to shut down the encampment, essentially evicting the sex offenders once again.
Where will they go when this tent city is closed? That’s up to them, Book says.
I would like to personally invite Mr. Ron Book to come and “walk in my son’s shoes” and while he is at it he can step into my shoes, my husband’s shoes, my son’s twin sister’s shoes and the shoes of his other 2 sisters, my grandson and granddaughter’s shoes, and everyone else in my family. This whole registration thing is the most unconstitutional thing that I have ever been exposed to. I am disappointed in the fact that those that have learned their lesson and have done their time can not be rehabilitated back into society like others that have done their time have been able to. Just as much as he supposedly loves his daughter and wanted to do everything he could to basically clear his conscious of not being there for his daughter and hiring a nanny to take care of his kids, I love my son just as much and would do anything to clear his name from these ridiculously, emotional based laws. I refuse to let Ron Book destroy thousands of families just because he couldn’t pay attention to his.
If I’m not mistaken he wasn’t at ABC News that really got things going with the causeway didn’t they make a story about it on national ABC News? Have they been contacted at all?
What a load of bull shit…….”Book claims, “I was only notified a week ago. Before that, nobody ever said this was a health crisis.”
He’s known for years and so has his daughter Sen. Lauren Book. They are running around trying to fix the problem only because they are getting bad press.
Will someone please take everything, and I mean everything, from this POS, all his money, homes and restrict him from seeing his family and make him live as a homeless sex offender with all it’s restrictions for a yr? Then maybe, just maybe he will get a clue. HELL has a special place for this POS.
I applaud your perfect statement and fully agree that this soulless piece of human trash has no place dictating the fate of others. He is unworthy of any respect as he clearly is not sane.
Unless he is a sociopath…how can a human being treat other Human Beings this way? Does he feel so superior perhaps? I really want to know what the FU$K is wrong with this person!
Lee
What’s the penalty for violating the county ordinance? Arrest? What’s Miami Dade going to do if they refuse to leave, refuse bail and request indigent counsel?
It worked at the Seabrook nuclear facility 😕
Arrest, probation violation for those on probation, lose your job, family suffers.
Sure, for those on supervision the consequences would be swift, and that would not be in their best interests. But for “free” people how long is the penalty?
At the Seabrook nuclear plant, protesters effectively doubled the price of the facility by interrupting the construction peacefully and the county was hit hard paying to lock them up and appointment them attorneys.
Someone would be hurting if the county jail had to admit even 100 unexpected homeless inmates who declare their prescriptions, complain of chest pains, admit to suicidal thoughts and none of who could post bail.
These laws stand because it’s cost effective to enforce them.
Imagine the footage of 300 men in handcuffs under a sign that said “Bookville”
Someone besides the local news is going to want to talk to Ron, and the Council and any number of those offenders. Rick Scott wants America to think of Disney World and Oranges not a roving bands of homeless criminals that the sheriff rounds up by the hundreds.
We expressly and vehemently discourage any conduct that might expose any individual to arrest.
Rick Scott is as big a problem as Ron Book. Remember that he was the one that signed the “new and improved” internet identifier law that went into effect 3 days after he designed it in order to thwart the court case against the “old” law. He is also the guy who the minute he got into office, reinstituted the old Jim Crow era clemency rules that pretty much guarantee that folks like us will never be able to vote, etc. in Florida.
That’s what I kinda said in another post !!!. I was just wondering what the “Police/Government” would/could do to EVERY Ex Offender if we ALL desided to stand up “Tomorrow” and refuse to “Comply” to all these ILLEGAL LAW’S that have been Forced Against Us ???. Like going home where we belong, Not reporting our every move ?? Definitely not going out and commiting any crimes of any kind !! But just deciding to be treated like any other Human/Citizen !!!. Would/Could the Powers to be, Spend the time and money to arrest every one of us ?? Would the CONSTITUTION Allow them to Mass Arrest EVERYONE for doing”Nothing” but what our Civil and Constitutional Laws says we can ?????.
That’s the thing (Tired of being mistreated), you can’t get all of the registrants across this nation to come together as a whole and peacefully demonstrate against this punishment, because the law enforcement will threaten you with more punishment. So Sad! It’s like they took all the men in prison for sex offenses and cut their (castrated) them because nobody has them anymore. I know women (no disrespect intended) who have more balls(there, I said it) than former SO’s do. If we could only get these guys to grow a pair or stop standing on them, we could get something done.
What a POS this Book guy is. “It’s not a question of if, it’s when”….oh really? Tell that to the many people who have never re-offended please. I have so many F-bombs going through my head about this guy, I hope I never run into him on the street. What walking garbage this guy is.