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Column
Recalling Jessica, sheriff fights homes for sex offenders
By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published September 23, 2007
You're not going to believe this one. In the same county where sexual deviant John Couey abducted, raped and murdered little Jessica Lunsford, a developer reportedly wants to open a mobile home park for convicted sex offenders. You can hear the uproar from here. Of all the places. Memories in Citrus are still fresh. Emotions raw. "It's still an open wound," said Sheriff Jeff Dawsy, who has been leading the charge to sound the alarm. "It traumatizes a community forever." A probation and parole officer dropped the news on Dawsy about two weeks ago. Several convicted sex offenders would move into a trailer park neighborhood south of Inverness. Word and worry spread. The local newspaper got hold of it. The project is the work of HAR-COR Development Inc. and its president Harris Dobkin. He owns the Palace, a St. Petersburg mobile home park that houses dozens of sex offenders. Dobkin told the Citrus County Chronicle this weekthat he hasn't made up his mind what he wants to do with the seven properties, whether to sell or renovate them. He made it sound pretty harmless. But he really got Dawsy's attention. He's treating this issue like a threat to homeland security. He plans to send bulletins to sheriff's offices across the state warning them to be on the lookout for any HAR-COR project. Dawsy convened a community meeting Friday night at a nearby Methodist Church to warn the neighbors. John Couey slipped through the monitoring cracks in 2005, and the sheriff doesn't ever want to see that happen again. In a perfect world, there would be no sex offenders. But just check the registry on the Web. It's frightening sometimes, and some could argue that it might be good to have all the creeps in one place. Dawsy said he's heard that point of view. But he's not in the mood to accommodate. Not now. Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.
[Last modified September 22, 2007, 20:27:11]
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by dawn
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09/23/07 08:39 PM
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thats an outrage, also very disrespect to the lundsford family, why dont they just put them all together and let the families of the victoms take care of them themselves,sitting in jail they get alot of privliges,that just doesn;t seem fair!!!
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by Alvin
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09/23/07 08:09 PM
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The place will probably end up in Pasco. Our Sheriff would not fight it.
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by Erik
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09/23/07 06:05 PM
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Homeland Security wouldn't move terrorists into a mobile home park so they could plan exploits and share in their glories of community terror.
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by alaiando
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09/23/07 07:14 AM
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well ther are new sex offenders made every day and i figure that there is millions of them ,,yet still to come,,,and what are we to do ,,well we must figure out that teaching our young is the first step towards protecting them .and thats it .
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Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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