Bellone and Ahearn are taking their dog and pony show to the Suffolk County media in order to drum up support for their previously failed campaign to extend registration periods of registered citizens as well as allowing municipalities to create and enforce local residency restrictions.
Bellone and Ahearn are both misleading the public, as evidenced by the articles previously posted here. This program costs the county nearly a million dollars just in the main contract between the county and PFML, not counting the lawsuits. By their own admission, recidivism was so rare in Suffolk County BEFORE the implementation of this CONTROVERSIAL contract that the alleged reduction in recidivism could easily be explained as the law of averages or simply their program is actually driving people to report less.
PFML is costing taxpayers even more by the number of lawsuits that they are involved in, and with the county attorneys now involved in defending Ahearn from the lawsuits her harassment campaign has initiated, the taxpayers are footing the bill for far more than that initial $900k contract. (Your taxpayer dollars are going to sue a man living in Ohio on a fixed income and no assets, for protesting PFML and their controversial contract. Your tax dollars at work.)
They're also paying more for that liability insurance that went from $4500 annually to $25k annually, and the county was more than happy to dip into the actual fund for crime victims to pay for that, meaning less money for crime victims and more money for the criminals.
Speaking of criminals, were you folks aware that disgraced politician Dean Skelos was one of Ahearn's "Champion for Children" award winners? Lets not forget Laura Ahearn's connection to that disgraced convicted criminal James Burke. These two folks were once proudly listed at the top of PFML's list of contributors.
Phoney Belloney and PFML makes the dubious claim that this contract saves taxpayers lots of money because they say a detective for Suffolk County costs $200k annually. That would be only if the county sent the officers with the highest seniority to conduct these compliance checks, and no police department in the USA does that. Starting pay for a Suffolk Co detective far lower than that (maybe $50k or so) and it takes decades to each that cap, and that includes overtime hours. PFML claims they only hire those with decades of Law Enforcement experience. They hired six ex-cops to do this job. How much do they really make, do they work the amount of overtime a police detective can, and would the Suffolk Co PD even need six dedicated officers for a task they are supposed to be doing themselves? For comparison, here in Cincinnati, where I live, the Hamilton Co. Sheriff's Office handles more registrants than Suffolk Co. NY, yet has only three dedicated officers and can boast a compliance rate equal to, or possibly better, than the Suffolk County contract, with half the personnel. (Just an FYI, compliance is rarely an issue even where registration laws are allegedly lax.)
In regards to s*x crime rates, both of recidivism and of arrests of those with no prior record, read the NY study by Sandler entitled "Does a Watched Pot Boil" (it is easy to find online). It found about 95% of s*x crime arrests are of first time offenders and Megan's Flaw has NO impact on arrest rates or recidivism rates. What a waste of YOUR taxpayer dollars!
The solution here is not to give in to Phoney Belloney's fearmongering to justify giving more tax money to his political cronies at PFML. Instead, PFML should be defunded and this controversial contract should come to an end. Bellone and Ahearn should be investigated AND CONVICTED for human rights violations and share a cell with Burke and Skelos.
Below is Phoney Bellonne's propaganda:
https://www.suffolkcountynews.net/3963/We-must-protect-our-children-from-sex-offenders
https://www.islipbulletin.net/3958/We-must-protect-our-children-from-sex-offenders
We must protect our children from sex offenders
Story By: STAFF WRITER
12/15/2016
By SUFFOLK COUNTY EXECUTIVE STEVE BELLONE
I am writing to you not only as Suffolk County Executive but also as a parent of three young children to discuss an issue of the utmost importance: protecting our kids and families from sex offenders.
During my time as Babylon Town Supervisor, we took a leadership position on the sex offender issue. We sued to end the terrible practice of housing more than a dozen unsupervised sex offenders at the former Brook Motel in North Babylon. We created the first GIS mapping system in New York State to track sex offenders living in the Town of Babylon. We also became the first municipality to utilize town code enforcement officers to verify whether sex offenders were living where they reported on the Megan’s Law Sex Offender Registry. In advancing these protective measures, we worked closely with one of the leading advocacy organizations in our state and nation on this issue, Parents for Megan’s Law and its longtime director Laura Ahearn.
When I took office as Suffolk County Executive in 2012, I took all of my experiences in Babylon and all the lessons learned and worked with Suffolk County Police Department and Parents for Megan’s Law to develop the Community Protection Act (CPA), the toughest sex offender enforcement, monitoring and verification program in the nation. Adopted in 2013, the CPA created a public-private partnership with Parents for Megan’s Law, who utilize retired law enforcement officers to ensure the sex offender registry is up to date by verifying home address registration information for sex offenders living in Suffolk County and enforce laws to prevent sex offenders from preying on our children online.
Since passing the Community Protection Act:
• Nearly 300 social media accounts belonging to sex offenders (over 200 of them Suffolk County registrants) have been removed by Facebook
• Over 10,000 in-person home verification visits for Level 1, 2 and 3 registrants have been executed
• Nearly 95 percent of Level 2 and Level 3 offenders were brought into compliance through home address registration
• Recidivism has been reduced by 81 percent for Suffolk County eligible sex offender registrants against Suffolk County residents.
The Community Protection Act is working!
That’s why I’m so alarmed that the Community Protection Act is currently under assault by sex offenders unhappy with the level of monitoring that we do in Suffolk County. Multiple lawsuits have been filed by sex offenders and organizations supporting them in an effort to strike down the Community Protection Act.
We need New York State to enact legislation that will give the authority back to Suffolk County to enact reasonable residency restriction laws, prevent certain dangerous registrants from dropping off the registry, and protect critical sex offender management programs such as the Community Protection Act to allow Suffolk County to continue our work protecting kids and families from sex offenders.
Please go to www.facebook.com/SteveBellone to sign our online petition urging New York State to protect the Community Protection Act and close the sex offender loophole by prioritizing passage of sex offender legislation in the next legislative session.
We want to arm our state representatives with the grassroots support they need to fight for this important legislation in Albany.
Under the Community Protection Act, Suffolk County funds the coordination of educational presentations offered by Parents for Megan’s Law in schools across our county in an effort to arm parents with the tools and knowledge they need to help protect their families and children, and awareness they need to help prevent victimization. We strongly support the delivery of these programs to help protect our most vulnerable. To learn more about this important work, please go to www.parentsformeganslaw.org.
We owe it to our children to do everything we can under the law to keep them safe. Please join me in calling for the strengthening of our sex offender laws in New York State by signing our online petition at www.facebook.com/SteveBellone. If you are interested in collecting signatures for our petition, please contact my office at 631-853-5027.
Thank you for your support.