Secret Sex Offender Homeless Camp Broken Up in Florida

Apparently there's a spot near the freeway in Florida, a little homeless camp that you can't see unless you walk through some bushes.

It's behind an area owned by DOT where people can pull over to change tires or whatever they need to do.  It's quite near a residential and shopping area.

The reporters were able to interview a number of men who live there, most of whom were wearing ankle bracelets.  They were all sex offenders.

They said more or less the same thing:  their parole officers had told them to stay back there in the woods, behind the DOT area.  It's probably either a state or county-owned, wooded area that isn't routinely patrolled by law enforcement, in terms of not having them constantly rousted, not having shopkeepers calling on them and so forth.  Because you can't see it unless you walk beyond some bushes that I would never pass through.  It's a more upscale area.  And they have to stay in a county that they can't really afford to live in, because they're on parole.

Of course everybody the reporter interviews, all of the DOT officials are shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover gambling in Casablanca!  But these men are all on ankle monitoring.  So their parole officers know exactly where all of them are, all together in this little camp behind the DOT area where they're all saying they were told to stay.  It's a more upscale area.  And they have to stay in a county that they can't really afford to live in, because they're on parole.

The issue is that it's not where any of them are stated to be staying on the sex-offender registry.  It's a good ways from their listed address.  And that exists for a very good reason:  so that these guys can't continue to violate everybody else.  Because they're known to have boundary issues.  It's a significant safety problem.

MY OPINION

On the one hand, putting them behind this DOT area is an obvious, all-around failure.  If your daughter is having car trouble, this is where she's going to pull over to wait for you to come help her.  This is not the right place to put the secret creeper village behind the bushes, for God's sake! How did Florida become the serial killer capital of America?

Also, these are still human beings.  And they are allowed to live somewhere.  How about a halfway house?  Like someplace indoors with an address, maybe?  Stop freaking out about drag queens reading books, who are usually not shown to be any problem at all -- how often do you see a drag queen in an ankle monitoring bracelet?  Let's prioritize and focus, Florida.

There's no excuse for not having these homeless sex offenders in some kind of actual halfway housing where they can be (a) monitored and (b) getting therapy for whatever makes them sex offenders in the first place.  Florida has money to spend on all kinds of foolishness, like over $1 million in swamp buggies to search for Brian Laundrie after letting him walk away.

People go to halfway houses for getting out of prison after they rob banks.  I feel like you can let bank robbers go straight back to living with their wives after prison, and put these jokers in the halfway houses.  Just focus and build more halfway houses.  The secret creeper villages are ridiculous.