County’s controversial trailers for sheltering homeless sex offenders to close this weekend

The trailer in the parking lot at the Riverside jail, which has for more than six years been used to provide emergency shelter for Suffolk County’s homeless sex offender population, will be closed up and towed away before the end of Memorial Day weekend, County Executive Steve Bellone announced in a news conference at Riverhead Town Hall this afternoon.

A second trailer in Westhampton will also be removed this weekend, he said.

County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, whose Second Legislative District has been the unwilling host of both trailers since early 2007, and who has fought to have them removed, was jubilant today.

“We’ve been fighting long and hard to see this day arrive,” Schneiderman said. “It’s been the toughest political fight of my career. We are so happy it’s over and I thank the county executive for being true to his word.”

Bellone announced at a press conference at Southampton Town Hall in May 2012 that the trailers would be shut down by the end of the year.

“We will make sure that by the end of this year the Town of Southampton and the East End won’t be shouldering the whole burden,” Bellone said.

Early in 2013, Bellone announced that he wanted a more comprehensive policy and had tasked the county’s police department with developing and overseeing its implementation.

Bellone pushed through a law unanimously adopted by the County Legislature in early February aimed at enhancing monitoring, verification and enforcement measures for the county’s 1,000-plus registered sex offenders. At a news conference yesterday in Yaphank, the county executive announced the first eight arrests made as a result of that stepped-up monitoring and enforcement effort.

All registered sex offenders in Suffolk — including the “3 or 4 percent that are homeless,” will have closer tabs kept on them under the programs established by the new law, dubbed the “Community Protection Act.”

The men currently housed in the two trailers will be placed in men’s shelters, with no more than one offender per facility, Bellone said. “The aim of the law is to prevent clustering of offenders in facilities and clustering of them in communities,” he said.

Bellone calls it “the strongest and toughest [sex offender] monitoring, verification and enforcement program in the nation.”

Under the new program, Stony Brook-based nonprofit organization Parents for Megan’s Law is charged with helping police monitor the whereabouts of registered offenders by verifying that they are living and working at their registered home and work addresses. The $2.7 million, three-year contract between the county and the organization also requires the group to enhance its website to make it easier for residents to report failure-to-register and other crimes by offenders on the state registry.

Suffolk County Police have been equipped with technology to allow patrol officers, via computers in their cruisers, to have access, updated daily, to information in law enforcement databases on the whereabouts of registered offenders in their patrol sectors.

Neither Bellone nor county police officials present at today’s news conference were able to say whether the East End police departments will be able to deploy the same technology system.

“We are coordinating with the East End police departments,” Bellone said. “Police know exaclty where they are,” he said of the registered offenders living in the five East End towns.

“We are working closely together with the town,” Bellone said. “That is largely happening now.”

Supervisor Sean Walter said after the press conference he has not heard anything about how the new information system or monitoring program is being implemented locally. “I fully intend to find out if there has been discussion with Riverhead police,” Walter said. “This is a very serious matter.”

Southampton Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said Southampton Town is planning to purchase the software and equipment necessary to deploy the new system within the Southampton police jurisdiction. Speaking after the press conference at Riverhead Town Hall today, she could not quote the exact cost, but said it was in the low six figures.

“We would hope the county would be able to assist the East End police departments with deploying a similar system out here,” Walter said.

Photo captions, from top: (1) County Executive Steve Bellone, at podium in Riverhead Town Hall Friday, announcing the anticipated closure of the county’s two trailers used for sheltering homeless sex offenders since at least early 2007. He is flanked by local officials, from left: Riverhead assessor Mason Haas, Legislator Al Krupski, County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, Southampton Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst and Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter. RiverheadLOCAL photo by Denise Civiletti (2) The DSS trailer parked in the lot at the county jail in January. RiverheadLOCAL file photo by Emil Breitenbach Jr.

VIEW LOCAL SEX OFFENDER DATABASE INFO, PHOTOS, INTERACTIVE MAP HERE

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