Dear Editor:
Allowing registered sex offenders to live close to schools or daycare centers is an open invitation for disaster. A child’s innocence is precious, and once lost, cannot be regained. As you read this, the Texas Legislature is meeting in Austin, and we have the opportunity to pass a law which would allow small towns the freedom to create safety zones for children. Right now, general law cities (meaning towns of population less than 5,000) don’t have that freedom; a registered offender can live right across the street from your schools or daycare centers, and we cannot stop it. However, if HB 384 passes, each city can determine how it wants to protect its children.
Austin is far away, but what you can do is close at hand because Rep. Stuart Spitzer has filed this bill to help us. If you email or mail a note of support to his office, you will go a long way to showing the legislature that the safety of children in small towns is just as important as the safety of kids in large ones. I am asking, begging really, for any Texan who sees this to send a letter to Rep. Spitzer expressing support for his bill, HB 384.
Five minutes of your time can help protect many local kids and tens of thousands of children across the state, and you don’t have to be the next Shakespeare to make a difference. A simple message with your name and the city in which you live saying, “I support HB 384,” will do the trick. I have included Rep. Spitzer’s contact information below to make it easier for you to make your voice heard.
If we miss this chance, we won’t be able to try again for another two years. God help us if even one child were to be violated in the meantime because we didn’t defend our kids when we could have. Please take a quick moment to contact Rep. Spitzer’s office with your support.
Email Address: [email protected]
Mailing Address: PO Box 2910 Austin, Texas 78768
Respectfully,
Elicia Sanders
Mayor
City of Eustace
((Editor’s Note: We posted about HB 384 here.))
I would like to say that, on this issue, Mayor Sanders is absolutely correct. I want to publicly support her push for this legislation. While it is no secret that the Mayor and I are now on adversarial terms with one another, what’s right is right, and her backing this law is right for everyone in the State of Texas. In my time as Chief of Police in Henderson county from 2008 until 2014, I was always amazed at the amount of sex crimes against children in this county, it seemed there was something that attracted them to our small county, I used to think it was meth. I fought for aggressive prosecution and put in every resource I ever had at my disposal to make solid cases for the DA to prosecute. My wife also worked diligently on these cases as a prosecutor, and we both saw this as a calling, not simply a job. Over time I realized that perhaps th reason all of these sex offenders gravitate to our rural county is because in the larger cities and counties they were monitered much more closely with restrictions on where they were able to live and work. That’s the reason I joined with Mayor Sanders to craft a proposed bill that would afford our communities the same opportunity to restrict where theses offenders live and work. I can testify from personal experience that many of the sex assaults might have been prevented had the authority to moniter these offenders activities. In Eustace we had offenders move into town right across from our schools, and they were often seen outside whenever our kids were moving around on foot to school and back…
The ot options I had them to deal with them was to issue them criminal trespass warnings from public properties in an effort to keep them away from mixing into the public in areas with access to our children.
Please make your voices known both for your children and mine. While I am no longer a peace officer, I feel strongly that I have to make my voice heard for a cause that has been the calling of my life, a cause obviously near the heart of Mayor Sanders, the protection of our children, what could possibly be more important? I’ll go back to being quiet now, but I pray everyone will give this issue the attention it deserves and be proactive instead of leaving injured children, their families and law enforcement officers to react after the fact…please give our stakeholders the tools they need to help reduce this threat from our families,
Thanks for taking the time to read this…now it’s time to do more than read!