Georgia Government Officials Celebrate Halloween By Engaging In Pointless Hassling Of Sex Offenders
from the your-tax-dollars-being-made-stupider dept
Across the state of Georgia (and in other places around the nation), idiots in power are scoring points with the idiots in the electorate by engaging in "for the children" bullshit targeting sex offenders. The Sheriff of Butts County (not a typo) decided to plant signs in the yards of all registered sex offenders, which should ensure only pleasant things happen to parolees following the terms of their release.
As Sheriff, there is nothing more important to me than the safety of your children. This Halloween, my office has placed signs in front of every registered sex offender's house to notify the public that it's a house to avoid. Georgia law forbids registered sex offenders from participating in Halloween, to include decorations on their property. With the Halloween on the square not taking place this year, I fully expect the neighborhoods to be very active with children trick-or-treating. Make sure to avoid houses which are marked with the attached posted signs in front of their residents. I hope you and your children have a safe and enjoyable Halloween. It is an honor and privilege to serve as your sheriff.
(These signs are placed In accordance with Georgia Law O.C.G.A. 42-1-12-i(5) which states the Sheriff shall inform the public of the presence of sexual offenders in each community)
Sheriff Gary Long isn't making anyone safer by doing this, no matter what his self-congratulatory post says. The law he cites doesn't require the placement of signs in sex offenders' yards. If it did, these signs would already be in place and there'd be no reason for Sheriff Long to brag about his pointless waste of time on Facebook.
The state already has a law in place banning sex offenders from decorating their houses, handing out candy to children, or even turning their outside lights on. All of that should be enough to deter trick-or-treaters from visiting sex offenders' residences. The planting of signs is an unjustified additional punishment handed down for specious reasons that provides an opportunity for everyone who agrees with Long's self-serving idiocy to hurl invective, garbage, or whatever else in on hand in the general direction of property bearing these signs.
This won't make the kids safer. A 2009 study showed no spike in sex offender activity around Halloween.
States, municipalities, and parole departments have adopted policies banning known sex offenders from Halloween activities, based on the worry that there is unusual risk on these days. The existence of this risk has not been empirically established. National Incident-Base Reporting System crime report data from 1997 through 2005 were used to examine daily population adjusted rates from 67,045 nonfamilial sex crimes against children aged 12 years and less. Halloween rates were compared with expectations based on time, seasonality, and weekday periodicity. Rates did not differ from expectation, no increased rate on or just before Halloween was found, and Halloween incidents did not evidence unusual case characteristics. Findings were invariant across years, both prior to and after these policies became popular. These findings raise questions about the wisdom of diverting law enforcement resources to attend to a problem that does not appear to exist.
Law enforcement resources are better used ensuring children are safe by patrolling neighborhoods and increasing law enforcement presence in heavily-trafficked areas. Children are hundreds of times more likely to be hit by cars than snagged by a sex offender on Halloween (and, indeed, any day of the year). Additional officers deployed to neighborhoods might also deter something that actually happens far more often on Halloween than other holidays.
According to the National Safety Council, children are more than twice as likely to be hit by a car and killed on Halloween than on any other day of the year. And as for keeping the general pubic safe, vandalism spikes by 24% on Halloween, making it the night with the most vandalism of the year.
Even more absurd than Sheriff Long's plan is Grovetown, Georgia Mayor Gary E. Jones' idea. He just going to lock the "problem" up for the night.
Paroled sex offenders won’t have the chance to encounter trick-or-treaters in Grovetown, Ga., this Halloween.
That’s because Mayor Gary E. Jones plans to round them up. Jones this week revealed his plan to keep 25 to 30 local paroled sex offenders under the watchful eyes of five law enforcement officers at city hall for three hours next Wednesday as kids go door to door for candy.
Technically, this may be legal under the state's expansive sex offender laws. It doesn't sound all that Constitutional, which may result in a courtroom challenge in the near future. Mayor Jones has a perfectly good reason to do this, though: a long history of zero incidents on Halloween in his town. Jones claims this is being done "across the state," but WQAD reports "no other surrounding counties" are engaging in this technically-legal roundup.
If Jones was really concerned about safety and crime during Halloween, he would have his law enforcement out on the streets, rather than sitting guard at City Hall. And if criminals who've already paid their debt to society can be locked up for nebulous reasons, why isn't Jones tossing everyone ever picked up on vandalism charges into the ad hoc lockup for the night? It seems like they might pose more of a safety issue than the sex offenders Mayor Jones believes -- without a shred of evidence -- would kidnap trick-or-treaters if not otherwise detained.
And all of this doesn't even get to the problems of the sex offender registry itself and the fact it contains people who did nothing more than have sex with a 17-year-old when they were 20 or engaged in sexting with another teen. Or the fact that kids are far more likely to be abused by someone they know and trust, rather than some stranger offering Halloween candy on Halloween. All of this is willfully ignored by law-and-order types like Sheriff Long and Mayor Jones to score points with constituents who are equally as oblivious. It's just another form of security theater -- one that has a lot to say about safety, but actually does nothing to make anyone safer.
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Filed Under: butts county, for the children, gary jones, gary long, georgia, grovetown, halloween, moral panic, sex offenders
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Appropriate place of work
There's just something fitting about the sherrif of Butts County being such a public ass.
Rather than do something productive but that wouldn't allow him to brag, he instead goes out of his way to waste time ensuring that just because someone's out of jail doesn't mean the punishment stops, because clearly that's the best way for someone to integrate back into society and become a product member of it.
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Tim, and three other people on this site, are objecting to what the rest of the population would see as a good thing.
Welcome to mob mentality. Now, little article, go sit yourself in a corner because no one's going to give a shit about your message of wrong doing.
PS: I agree with you Tim, but you can't fix fucking stupid.
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https://www.wired.com/2010/03/sex-offender-databases/
Georgia's Supreme Court is upholding the government's right to put non-sex offenders on the state's sex-offender registry, highlighting a little-noticed (but growing) nationwide practice.
Atlanta criminal defense attorney Ann Marie Fitz estimated that perhaps thousands of convicts convicted of non-sexual crimes have been placed in sex-offender databases. Fitz represents a convict who was charged with false imprisonment when he was 18 for briefly detaining a 17-year-old girl during a soured drug deal. He unsuccessfully challenged his mandatory, lifelong sex-offender listing to the Georgia Supreme Court, which ruled against him Monday.
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No, it means they are guilty of violating society's norms in such a way that some of that society believe they should be punished indefinitely for their actions. It also means that society has decided that habeas corpus is irrelevant in the modern age, as is any attempt at criminal reform.
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If sex offenders are really so dangerous to our communities that we need to keep them on lists, them maybe we should just give life sentences to them if they're really that heinous so that we don't have to worry about how dangerous our neighbors might be.
Letting actually dangerous sex offenders free and putting a ton of restrictions on them & the non-dangerous people on the list that make it super difficult to live a normal live (such as bans on 'social media sites' which the SCOTUS struck down a few years ago for being too vague) doesn't help anyone.
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Dangerous in a sexual way. Had someone simply murdered a child, they could return to a normal life some decades later, and nobody will tell the neighbors.
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Yeah, society in general has it's priorities completely shot when it comes to sexual content, especially compared to other stuff.
Graphic violence on tv? Eh, no biggie.
Flash of a nipple on tv? Shit-storm of epic proportions.
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It reads like I read this off of a right wing nut site, right wing nuts are typically religious, religious leaders do a lot to children but right wing nuts will continue to defend those religious leaders tooth and nail. Gaslight, hand wave, anything and everything.
You don't care about sensible policies, you don't even actually care about pedophiles, you just have some insane Christian fetish to punish people that aren't you and you don't identify with. Which is why you would defend family, friends, religious and political leaders for doing what you seem to abhor but turn on a dime to condemn and try to punish harder and faster for anyone you can identify as a stranger.
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You can't ignore this non significant number of people 'practicing' Christianity and financially supporting it.
I assume a real Christian doesn't go to church... which would be rather true. Churches have no place in Jesus's teachings.
But they clearly aren't in any significant majority nor in any place to hold people accountable.
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It's not our place to hold people accountable…
…so those who do are obviously serving "the God of this world."
Yeah. Guess who that is, according to scripture.
Hint: He's also identified as "The Accuser." ; ]
[ And though Jesus didn't personally build churches, the apostles and Paul did, in fact, start many; and it was explicitly laid out in scripture that we go there, do that, how they are to be run and by who. We still follow that simple plan, which doesn't look much like Corporate Churchland; and our numbers are still as few as ever. ]
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a) offender actually opens the door and violates parole.
b) offender doesn't answer the door and "child" vandalizes their property.
The signs might, maybe, help to reduce the first case. I suspect the vandalism would probably be a wash with people encouraged to damage the property of an "animal".
With a little more thought, this could have been a useful service. Change from a "WARNING" to a "NOTICE", remove the "community safety" blurb, and have the signs available for pick-up by any citizen who doesn't want to participate in trick or treating, not just the offenders.
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How about:
c) child knocks on door and yells "police officer (etc)" and offender either opens door and violates parole or risks having door busted down ...
(Door peepholes are of little help, as children may be below the viewing range, while cops who knock on doors generally stand off to the side of the door while they wait.)
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"Butts County"?
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By the way, how many sex offender live in that county with less than 25.000 people? Just an imaginary one?
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Registered sex offenders. Not actual ones. Let's say you used a phone camera (which are pushed at children in kindergarten age already these times) in connection with your adolescence's consensual doctor games. That can easily net you a sex offender registration.
Or you were 17 with a girlfriend aged 15 and you turned 18 before she turned 16 (something like that, I forgot the details) without breaking off with her.
Or somebody suggested you did anything like that and you did not have the money to defend yourself in court (and pay bail and whatever else) and had to accept a plea deal.
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Or you filmed your daughter acting out a fully clothed scene from a movie that someone deems too sexy. Years ago it was decided that child pornography didn't have to include nudity or sex to qualify.
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in front of the police station.
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protecting the children
State Sex Offender laws sprang up just after the last of the anti-sodomy laws were dying off, but it would have been interesting if the two had coexisted, and convicted homosexuals would have had to have signs posted in their yards, or maybe even being required to wear some sort of identifying mark in public.
Though it wouldn't require much thought to figure out how that situation probably would have played out in rural Georgia back then (or probably even today, despite the recent trend of "intersectionality").
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Re: protecting the children
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And once again, in the name of "protecting the children" since these people were known to occasionally kidnap young Christian children and drink their blood ... or something like that.
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Nobody is going to assault your kid on halloween
Cases like these signs and other draconian and far reaching sex offender laws are really about pandering to fearful people. It's the easiest political score to say you're being tough on perverts. In actuality, authorities are often doing basically nothing at all. There hasn't been much in the way of legitimate studies to prove that common sex offender penalties do anything at all to reduce recidivism or assault rates at all. If we don't know if these kinds of tactics are effective, why do them at all? There's no point. But it makes people who don't want to think very hard feel better.
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Re: Nobody is going to assault your kid on halloween
Well, isn't that the point? It's such a hassle raising your own family that you deserve first pick rather than have some stranger joyriding them. There's a reason for the number of sex offenders getting registered while still underage.
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Much ado about ... nothing...
State law already forbids RSO's from participating in Halloween at their homes. The signs mean and do nothing other than give the Sheriff "points" come election season.
The disturbing part is the way the Mayor's "lock 'em up" idea is misrepresented in the article.
He's NOT trying to lock up RSO's, but *PAROLEES* convicted of sex crimes.
People on parole don't have much in the way of Rights. They're voluntarily forfeited as a condition of Parole. Cops can sweep them up and hold them on a whim.
There's zero Constitutional question on any of this. Much like there's zero tech involved....
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Re: Much ado about ... nothing...
Patrolman Biff sees little Joey peeing on a bush in the park ... little Joey is now on a list and thank god we are all protected from that little shit.
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Getting put on an RSO list is a big deal. Lawyers plea bargain people into higher sentences to get around it. A stupid "public indecency" incident CAN be pushed to a child offense, but they're rarely upheld.
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I suggest you do the same, my little apologist friend.
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Sheriff Long, on the other hand, didn't distinguish those on paper and those whose sentences were completed. In fact, his sign idea was probably because he knew he couldn't legally do anything about the latter. Contrary to the article and the Sheriff's claim, there is no state law regarding registrants on Halloween; it's merely a parole/probation rule and doesn't apply to those who have completed their sentences.
Long and his deputies were basically trespassing and vandalizing. They had no cause to enter those properties and leave anything there. I hope those registrants press criminal charges and sue them in civil court. Also hope the Sheriff's next opponent in reelection can highlight Long's ignorance of and/or disregard for the law for nothing other than political purposes.
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But I'd put Tim Cushing up there with Radley Balko as a writer who really cares about the things he writes about, as both took a special interest in the topic of police injustice long before it became "cool."
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We should all have “issues” with authority figures. Accepting their authority with no questions asked is basically kissing their ass and thanking them for the privilege.
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Hey, a cop or politician does something questionable, I'm all for questioning it. But I if I find out it's NOT questionable, I don't make a big deal of it.
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Do not shove words in my mouth that did not first come from it. With that said…
Yes. If you dislike an article you see on this site, you can either ignore the article itself or you can stop visiting the site altogether. You have precisely zero authority to make editorial decisions for blogs you do not operate/websites you do not personally own—and that includes Techdirt.
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Finally! An easy way to spot sex offenders (at least in Georgia). Just look for the houses without decorations, and there you go! If by some off-chance you're not some kind of sex offender creep (probable pedo) and you haven't yet decorated, you better do so immediately to let people know you're knot! Maybe even put a sign in your yard reading "I am NOT a sex offender!" (Hmm, I wonder if there might be a market for such signs)
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Based upon law enforcement's track record of being able to identify and locate proper addresses, I do not think this is a good idea.
Imagine a fine upstanding non-sex-offender family being subjected to the self righteous indignation of neighbors who having seen said misplaced sign now think all sorts of silly things. This will end up in court no doubt.
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Debt to society
This actually hits on the exact, core problem: the very concept of "paying one's debt to society", with its associated implication that once the debt is paid normal life can resume, is fading into unpopularity nowadays.
It's being replaced with the idea that "once you have done X, you are tarnished forever, and can never redeem yourself", where X can be any of an increasing number of things - sex offenses (an extremely broad category, and worthy of a rant all its own) being just one subset of them, albeit the one that carries perhaps the most severe tarnish.
Look at the "convicted felons lose their right to vote, and can rarely if ever regain it" angle, or at "convicted felons lose their right to bear arms" (similarly), just for two additional examples.
(I think I want to say more here, but I'm running out of time to get ready for work, so at least for the moment I'll leave it at that.)
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Re: Debt to society
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2820068/
In a nut shell it has to do with mental illness which drives some to offend again.
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Re: Debt to society
There is at least a historic basis for this. There is a not-so-subtle bias in felonizing misbehavior, and prosecuting felonies, in order to reduce the risk of darker-complected persons voting. In Florida, the 1968 constitution brought this forward into the ``modern'' age.
The war on drugs and Nixon's southern strategy arise from the same motives. It is not entirely arbitrary to more heavily penalize crack cocaine than powder cocaine. At least perception helps to explain agriculture theft laws, too.
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Who are we protecting
"engaging in "for the children" bullshit "
WOW, Tim are you in favor of ignoring the offenders who raped children because some of them had sex with a 17 year old or have a sex conviction for something you deem unfair?
What a sick way to get clicks. IMO anyone trying to lessen the sting of being a child sex offender has plans, get some help.
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Re: Who are we protecting
Sex offenders are being used for the benefit of grandstanding politicians without the expense of really ensuring they can't commit another crime. It's violating somebody's rights without actually doing anything of value.
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It's your own fault if you get caught up in this juggernaut because peeing in public is absolutely the same thing as rape ... right?
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The weight your argument holds is nothing compared to the point here, trying to stop anything that removes sex offenders from kids to defend adults who did something stupid is a partisan tantrum.
I emailed a friend at the NOPD to inquire about what people are charged with when caught peeing in public during Mardi Gras. Which from experience is anyone whos not standing in front of a house they have access to. I'll post his response once I have it.
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- Complaining about word usage rather than addressing the point(s) made, I'm not surprised.
"You are reaching on this peeing topic"
- You deny it happens?
"the 'little johnny' comparison is ridiculous"
- You deny it happens?
"The weight your argument"
- is that the law should not turn public urination into rape ... you know, that sort of thing.
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- Complaining about word usage rather than addressing the point(s) made, I'm not surprised.
The word you used paints a picture of an unstoppable force of law enforcement and judges labeling outdoor peeing as a sex offense which is 'pahlease' worthy and overdramatic.
I was not going to ask for numbers on these offenses because your responses will be
1. Law enforcement is hiding those offenses to lower the numbers
2. If there is 1 in 1000 sex offenders that was labeled due to something like urinating in public it is 1 to many and all sex offenders need to be treated like that 1.
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Several states have laws on the books defining public urination as public indecency and defining public indecency as a sex crime.
Also, what about the well publicized practice of charging teenagers who take naked selfies of themselves as sex offenders? Or of charging 18 year olds who have sex with their 17 year old girlfriend/boyfriend as statutory rapists? Or in some states, charging both teenagers as sex offenders under a strict interpretation of the law that says sex with a minor is a crime?
Are you trying to say that this stuff isn't happening?
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Re: Who are we protecting
People get put on the sex offender registry for a lot of reasons other than committing a true sex crime.
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Self-Serving Grandstanding
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Re: Self-Serving Grandstanding
"When you have a baby in Alabama, the death of you and/or your baby is a risk that has increased, not decreased over time"
Let me fix that for you
When you live in a 'pro life' state and are looking to get an abortion your choices of who can perform that abortion are dangerous because of the laws on the books.
Now that you have endorsed more rights for sex offenders and misinformation about prenatal care in 'pro life' states maybe you can add a plug for euthanasia. I'm feeling lucky now, let's hear your spin on Capitol punishment.
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They do not care about life as evidenced by their policies.
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What does that say about the site itself?
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That it has more than a few people who are able to see past the 'sex offender' label to see grandstanding sherrifs and mayors as doing nothing to actually protect kids in a cheap PR stunt, no matter who it's targeted.
You might as well ask why, in articles where detestable people(James Woods comes to mind) are mentioned people are sticking up for their rights under the law. Because even if they are detestable people twisting the knife and/or abusing the law to go after them is still something to object to, for you own sake if nothing else.
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Gullible fools who see the words 'sex offender' and immediately jump to 'kiddy diddler', are willing to ignore public shaming of anyone on the list as though everyone on it falls under the 'child molester' label, and praising anyone who sticks it to someone on the list so long as they claim to be doing it 'for the children'.
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Trapper John
MASH
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The wisdom is I'm gonna get reelected with my tough on crime policies.
Everyone hates sex offenders so no one cares about if the signs or rounding them up will cause them problems. Some of them might have peed in an alley once, but we slapped on a label so we can treat them as subhuman & not think about it. So what if making their lives tougher only serves to increase the chances they will end up breaking the law to survive b/c we won't let them ever forget their crime.
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LOL - This sounds very similar to the sending of combat troops to the border to help support the border patrol who is facing a horde of women and children a thousand miles away.
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So they have extra money and all the crime I guess has been solved.
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I mean, are they going to grab a kid and drag them inside? Seems like their parents or their friends would notice. Not to mention that doing it out of their home wouldn't exactly provide the best cover for their activities. If they're that depraved they'd most likely go out on the streets and look for a child to grab.
Trick or treating is usually a well supervised activity. It's not really conducive to child molesters looking to abuse kids who come to their door.
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This 'for the children' is no more than a political rally cry.
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Re: anti-vax
"Untime proven vaccinations pose substantial threats to children."
Any data you have access that supports your claims would be of interest to myself and a bunch of scientists and medical personal. Hiding this data is putting children at risk, I eagerly await your post.
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Or put another way, the one who makes the claim has the burden of providing evidence for it, and attempts to shift the burden of doing so should be seen as evidence that the claim is baseless.
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Nanny Big Government Lies
These criminal regimes might get away with putting signs on government property but if they put any on private property, the people who own it should destroy the sign and sue them.
These criminal regimes love to brag how they are "monitoring" Registered People (RPs). That is completely false. It is trivial for any RP to do whatever they like. The fact that the criminal regimes TRY to visit their homes occasionally does nothing at all. Nothing. Except perhaps make the RPs want to retaliate and/or harm people.
I know for a fact that many, many RPs leave their homes on Halloween and go wherever they like, completely anonymously. This is all nothing but Nanny Big Government lying to everyone. Quite typical.
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Would this be ok?
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Re: Nanny Big Government Lies
However, a minority of the people who are listed on Georgia's Registry are on probation or parole. For those people only, I do expect that the probation/parole office could tell them that they must allow the sheriff to put such a sign on their property. The sheriff would not have any authority of their own to do it. If a person refused, I expect they could have probation/parole problems. But they can always tell the sheriff to F off.
The other alternative is if it is legal or not for the sheriff to put signs on government property. I know the Georgia DOT says that signs along roads are generally not legal and they WILL remove them. So are the sheriff's signs exempt? How? By what law? The sheriff says that he has authority for the signs from O.C.G.A. 42-1-12 (i)(5), which says in its entirety: "[The sheriff's office in each county shall:] Inform the public of the presence of sexual offenders in each community;". These signs are not doing that, they say nothing about "sexual offenders".
So I'm not sure. May a sheriff just put up any signs that they like anywhere on government property just so long as they say it is for "public safety". No idea. I'd say more that these signs are election campaign signs and they are illegal, but that's just me.
Regardless of all that, I don't think anyone should think it is okay to pick up a government sign from anywhere (other than your own private property). I can't see how that would ever be legal. And it would surely not be legal to put such a sign on someone else's property.
What I think would be much more fun would be if a person who was targeted by such a sign put up their own, much, much larger sign that said, "Butts County Sheriff Gary Long is much more likely to molest children than the occupant of this house is." That is likely a true statement for just about anyone so there would be no concern for liable.
Or a person who is not on probation or parole could put up a huge sign that said, "Please trick-or-treat here. We have great treats. No big government lovers allowed. F*ck Gary Long."
Another fun thing to do would be to build some gallows in your front yard and hang a bunch of effigies there. You could put the sheriff there of course, along with a sign on him that says "Traitor", "Douche Bag", or "Un-American". A person could have all sorts of fun with that.
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Re: Re: Nanny Big Government Lies
Apparently they can do whatever the hell they want and lie their way out of it later.
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Re: Re: Re: Nanny Big Government Lies
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Protection of citizens
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Re: Protection of citizens
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