Can a Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners' ban on sex offenders in local parks be enforced?
Commissioner Valerie Woodard, the one person to vote against the ban that passed Aug. 5, thinks not. "You just can't look at someone and say, 'That's a sex offender, let me go up to them,'" Woodard said.
Commissioner Bill James, the driving force behind the ordinance, feels otherwise. Police were involved in drafting the measure and have "broad powers under the act to identify and detain suspects," he wrote in an e-mail to Creative Loafing.
Police can detain someone they believe is an offender or has committed a crime, James wrote. Also, police can cross-check car registrations in parking lots with the sex offender registry. "They can stop and question and ask for the 'papers' of those in the park that they suspect and reasonably believe might be a sex offender," James wrote.
The ordinance, which prohibits sex offenders from entering county parks, is based on a similar measure passed by the town of Woodfin. County and police attorneys worked with the head of the Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation to draft the ordinance. Registered sex offenders can attend public meetings held in local parks, and they are allowed to vote if their polling place is there. Otherwise, they face a $500 fine and up to 20 days in jail if caught in a park.
Woodard has several concerns about the ordinance. County officials didn't have data about sex offenses against children in public parks. Had statistics indicated a problem, her vote would have been different, she said. She's also worried if the measure will mean more people are harassed in the parks. "Just to make a policy to make a policy doesn't make much sense to me," she said.
But James, known for his condemnation of gays and lesbians, said sex crimes are a "significant problem in the parks."
Kilborne Park "was infested with homosexual men soliciting and engaging in sodomy in public," he wrote. "The County had to come in and cut down trees and bushes and the police sent in a sting squad pretending to be homosexual men looking for a little action. While the homosexuals say they are there for 'consensual' sex (in public, sodomy is still a felony), doing 'it' in a park also can result in a sex offender registration because there are children at the parks."
Woodard also is concerned how it will be monitored and fairly applied.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department spokeswoman Julie Hill said people won't be stopped without probable cause or reasonable suspicion. Most park-related calls for service that police get involve larceny, not sex crimes, "Fortunately, we've not had a lot of reports on that kind of thing in our parks," she said.
Woodard said that most children in county parks are safe because they don't go to parks alone, they are with their parents and or friends. James, however, said that there was an assault of a 13-year-old girl in Double Oaks Park. According to published reports, the incident happened in late June.
If the measure opens the county to lawsuits, James said, he isn't worried: recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the N.C. Supreme Court back him up.
Nor is he done. "Often they will show up and look at porn in public libraries," James said. "With this new decision, we are evaluating extending the ban to libraries so we can remove these pervs from there as well."
The Public Library of Charlotte-Mecklenburg County already complies with the federal Child Internet Protection Act, which requires libraries to have filters on computers that prohibit patrons from accessing pornography, spokeswoman Sarah Poole said. The library can -- and does -- ban patrons for behavior that violate its computer use policies.
James said he's suggested other towns in the county adopt the ordinance. "It is just a matter of time before the pervs move from Mecklenburg County's parks to ones in Mecklenburg owned by the various towns," he said.
Perhaps, Woodard suggested, re-election politics could be at play here. "It gives the community [the impression] that these people are tough on crime," she said. "I think for the most part, that is what this was about."