FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 7, 2006
Contact: LORA GELLERSTEIN, CHIEF LEGISLATIVE AIDE -- #(631) 854-4500

PLAY GROUNDS, NOT PREY GROUNDS
Cooper Law Prohibits Sex Offenders from Residing Near Schools, Day Care Centers and Playgrounds

With almost a quarter million of Suffolk County schoolchildren halfway through another year of reading, writing and arithmetic, Suffolk County Majority Leader Jon Cooper (D-Huntington) has taken a major step forward in preventing them from being preyed upon by society’s most dangerous criminals. With Parents for Megan’s Law Executive Director Laura Ahearn at his side, Cooper commended his colleagues on both sides of the aisle for agreeing to prohibit all registered sex offenders from taking up residence near places where large numbers of children learn or play.

Earlier today, the Legislature unanimously approved Cooper’s resolution (I.R. 1025) to create a local law that would protect Suffolk County’s most vulnerable and precious residents by making it illegal for any convicted sexual predator to reside within one-quarter mile of schools (public, private and parochial), day care centers and playgrounds. This is the first countywide residency restriction law enacted in New York State.

"Residency restriction laws are a natural extension of Megan's Law. While these laws won't eliminate child sexual abuse, they will certainly reduce the potential for sexual victimization by restricting a sex offender's access to possible child victims," says Ahearn. "They provide statutory guidance and clarity to communities and to sex offenders as to what residency restrictions actually are."

"Given the recidivism rate of these offenders and the ghastly nature of the crimes they commit, it is just insanity not to keep them away from where our young people are mostly likely to congregate," says Legislator Wayne Horsley (D-Babylon), a cosponsor of the bill.

"As a parent of five myself, I know that you can never guarantee your kids are one hundred percent safe," says Cooper. "But I also know that society’s sexual predators are no different from their animal counterparts. They stalk their quarry in areas where they realize there are abundant opportunities. Knowing that a sexual predator will not be able to live near a school my children are attending or a park where they are playing provides me greater comfort in knowing they are that much more secure."

Cooper’s law will punish any sex offender who moves within the quarter-mile buffer zone by making them guilty of an unclassified misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail. County Executive Steve Levy is expected to sign the bill.