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The New Port Richey City Council needs to rethink how it wants to keep kids safe.
The council recently gave preliminary approval to a 2,500-foot buffer to prevent some sex offenders from living near parks, libraries, churches, schools, day care centers and school bus stops.
Just one problem: Forcing offenders to live the equivalent of nearly seven football fields from where children might congregate bans them from the city, a St. Petersburg Times analysis shows. As a consequence, the city ordinance makes sex offenders a problem with which Pasco County and the city of Port Richey must deal. That is hardly a solution.
And, as Times staff writer Phil Davis reported, even absent the bus stops, the nearly half-mile buffer around schools, parks, churches, day care centers and libraries covers all but the fringes of the 4.5-mile city.
Enacting such a ban invites a legal challenge of its constitutionality. Though sex offenders might not have the financial wherewithal to fight such a battle, the city would be smart to avoid the potential for costly litigation.
State law requires released sex offenders to register with police and for the public to be notified. The state also does not allow sex offenders to live within 1,000 feet of a school, playground, park or day care center. The New Port Richey ordinance extends the reach by 150 percent and adds school bus stops, churches, the library and linear parks to the list of prohibited locations.
The rush to legislate is understandable. Nobody wants the city's youngest residents at risk. But such an ordinance creates a false sense of security.
The ordinance includes bus stops, but it does not account for children who walk or ride their bicycles to school each day. A preferable safety strategy is for adults to wait at school bus stops with their children.
The ordinance also does not consider that pedophiles are mobile and can easily snatch children at other locations. Consider the city's recent history. In late March, a 16-year-old girl reported to police that she had been abducted from Candice Lane by two men driving a gray or silver vehicle. A friend found her about four hours later about a block away from where she had been taken. The traumatized teenager could not recall details of the encounter, but she told police she believed she had been raped. Several days later a 12-year-old girl fled the same area after a man in a similarly described automobile offered her $50 if she would go for a ride.
Don't expect residential buffer zones to curb such brazen behavior.
City Council members are scheduled for a final vote on the ordinance next week. They should retreat from this ban. There are ways to protect children beyond knee-jerk legislation of questionable value.