Posted on 03/27/2009 6:05:46 PM PDT by Steelfish
Miami sex offenders still living under bridge 52 people call it home, say they're ostracized and can't find housing
Florida officials say offenders chose the bridge because it was among the few covered places in compliance with the local ordinances.
The American Civil Liberties Union is studying the issue before deciding how to push for a change to the rules in the Miami area. David Adame / AP
MIAMI - A sandy shoreline runs outside Patrick Wiese's front door. A white crane toes through gentle blue-green waters as the sun beams overhead. The view of downtown is spectacular, the fishing good and the rent free.
Yet he'd give it all up for a bed in a warehouse.
Wiese is among 52 sex offenders living under a busy bridge over Biscayne Bay that connects Miami to Miami Beach. The state insisted two years ago it would urge them to leave, but the community has only grown.
It has become a makeshift town of parolees and others who struggle to find affordable housing that doesn't violate strict local ordinances against sex offenders living too close to schools, parks and other places children congregate.
In the angled area where the bridge meets a concrete slope, residents have put up domed tents, a shack housing a makeshift kitchen, a camper, even a weight bench.
They've spray painted the slope and the pillars supporting the bridge: "We 'R' Not Monsters." "They Treat Animals Better!!!" "Why?"
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Sex offenders deserve condemnation, but they can’t hold down jobs if they have no place to live.
“We ‘R’ Not Monsters.”
Hmm. Yes, you are.
“They Treat Animals Better!!!” “Why?”
Because you are.
If ya ask me, they've got it too d#@& good.
Sucks to be them, I guess.
Well. Having lived in the area, I would say there should be an alternative. There are plenty of warehouses in the South Broward area that might suffice. Maybe the law should be amended.
"Many of the residents work. On a recent afternoon, some were fishing. At night, they watch TVs powered by a generator and play dominoes and cards. Leaders have emerged in the community, and while parole officers visit, offenders mostly police themselves."
Well, apparently they can.
Sympathy for the devil(s) bump.
“Miami sex offenders still living under bridge”
One word here is the problem “living”.
If they've harmed a child, they should be dead.
Not all sex offenders are really sex offenders. The guy who is 18 and has a 17 yr old girlfriend and is charged is stupid and shouldn’t be having sex until married, but he isn’t the same as an incurable guy who can’t control himself and molests children or rapes women. Same thing with the older girlfriend/younger boyfriend of a year or two, versus an older schoolteacher who uses their position of power to seduce teen boys or girls they study and select in their place of work.
There is a likelihood that they were mostly old drunks. As a student I remember that there was a bridge on campus over a railway. Students in the nearby dorms took great glee in dropping cherry bombs from the bridge on the durnks in the middle of the night.
Today they are “homeless’
Rope is recyclable..... and has a low carbon footprint.
Some registered sex offenders urinated in public, such as in the woods at a golf course.
Some mooned someone else and got caught.
Some were involved in consensual relations at the wrong place and wrong time.
I’m not defending these bridge dwellers, but the sexual registry isn’t all child molesters and rapists.
I didn't say all of them were.
NOW, JUST GO TO THE TOP OF THAT BRIDGE AND....JUMP!!!
Good Idea.
If you don’t want the name, don’t play the game.
You're absolutely right.
The usual reaction is to say, "Yeah, sure you didn't, buddy" but realize that accusations of molestation are now a common tactic in ugly divorce and custody hearings. Often the men are offered the choice between "bad" and "even worse" of pleading to a lesser sex crime, serving a few months or a couple of years tops and registering as an offender or going to trial, being found guilty and facing decades of hard time.
Some of these guys just might be telling the truth. Not all of them or even most of them but some of them.
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