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Thursday, July 17, 2014
Not in My Neighborhood
Not in My Neighborhood!
Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to approach the subject of
having a sex offender in the neighborhood.
I suppose I could have used the “S” word in the title and received a lot
of hits.
It all started when I picked up the mail on Saturday. In the box along with a Blu-ray for Steve, a
Time magazine and a couple of credit card offers (thank goodness no bills!) was
“an IMPORTANT sex offender notification”!
In all my 56+ years-I’ve never received one of these
before. But this one had the information
that this person had “tied up and bound 3 juvenile females for a period of time
and then released them.”
Now our neighborhood watch leader is researching this
information-because we all seemed to think it was illegal for a person such as
this to live within a certain amount of square footage of a park and/or school. We have 3 pocket parks and a school up the
street.
The entire situation alarmed us all-whether we had young
children, no children or grandchildren who were visiting with any amount of
consistency.
Personally, while I’ve interviewed Lenore Skynazy (the
free-range mom) several times and agree with her on many points-I just can’t
feel comfortable allowing my grandsons to go across the street to the pocket
park unless I’m right there with them.
There’s an entire desert wash which houses everything from rattlesnakes
and bunnies to teenagers using the poor saguaros as target practice for their
bb guns.
Sorry, not this grandma!
Obviously this means the chances of the boys wandering the
neighborhood on their own is 0%.
But a lot of kids do wander around. Several parents were very vocal about this
flyer on our personal website. Hence the
leader checking into what, if any, options there are to keep this person away
from all the kids.
Intellectually we all know we can’t throw this person out
because of his history-unless Arizona also states that he can’t live within a
certain amount of feet of schools and parks-but we also don’t feel our children
should feel threatened by who lives around them. The adults feel uncomfortable with the new
information as well.
This news also arrived just as I received a writing
assignment for, what else, how to keep latch key kids safe while walking home
from school (or getting home from their bus stops)!
I think what we all fear the most is that for many of us,
moving to the outskirts of the burbs was in some way a stand to make sure our
kids could play outside without fear and now the fear is real and overt.
For the moment all of us are keeping that flyer in plain
view of our phones-we have this man’s name, his address and his parole
officer’s name and phone number.
What we hope is that he stays to himself; away from the kids
and that we NEVER have the opportunity to use the information.
