Talk:Julia Tuttle Causeway sex offender colony

A fact from Julia Tuttle Causeway sex offender colony appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 28 July 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that a colony of sex offenders forced to live under a highway bridge in Miami, Florida, numbered approximately 140 members as of July 2009?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/July.

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Shocking

The fact that such an encampment is condone if not prescribed by the gov't is shocking. Thank you for bringing this story to the light. I do not condone what the sex offenders have done, but surely they do not deserve to live in such conditions. Dincher (talk) 00:38, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I heard this on NPR the day I wrote the article. What was odd, and probably the reason I wrote it, is that as soon as I get out of the car my memory empties, blissfully, and I'm on to whatever I'm on to. But after I got home after listening to this story,it was a brief intermission of post-work toodling, then this story started to sneak back into my mind. Truly, it's a very challenging dilemma. --Moni3 (talk) 00:56, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am glad that you wrote it. Hopefully others will read it and have a similar reaction. Dincher (talk) 01:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)r[reply]

Conflicting laws?

The article currently says:

The colony has existed since 2006 when Florida state laws regarding where sex offenders are allowed to live conflicted with local Miami ordinances

however this isn't supported by the ref used and from my reading of the article isn't an accurate description of the situation. For example the article later says:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also filed a lawsuit against the City of Miami for imposing the 2,500-foot rule for sex offenders when the State of Florida's law restricts them to 1,000 feet (300 m) within where children congregate.

It doesn't sound to me like there's a conflict of the laws. Rather the Miami law is extremely (some may say overly) strict. Even without the State of Florida law, the same situation would I presume arise except perhaps there's a greater chance of them being able to live at the edge of the boundary. An example of conflicting laws would be for example if the Miami-Dade law said they had to live within 1000 feet of a church and the Florida law said they couldn't. Or if the Miami-Dade law said they had to live 2,500 feet away but the Florida law said they had to live between 1,000 to 2,500 feet. In some cases, if there are two sets of laws there may be some dispute/conflict over which one applies but this doesn't appear to have been the case here and is a situation more likely to arise when the more local law (e.g. county in this case) provides greater allowances then the stricter wider law (e.g. state in this case) or when there's some guarantee provided by the wider authority that the local authority is resjecting and in both cases that's more of a consitutional/deligation of powers issue. I.E. the questions are does the local authority have the power to override the wider authority and does the wider authority have the power to make such a law. A situation that commonly arises in the US I believe in conflicts between the state and federal government. It appears there has been some dispute over whether the local government involved is allowed to make such a law but that's a different matter and again one which will likely arise regardless of whether there was a state law. In other words, the dispute is solely over the legality of the law and not which law should apply (since that's clear cut as the local law is not conflicting with any state law simply providing much stronger restricitions, therefore you can comply with both) Nil Einne (talk) 02:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sections

This article has a problem: it should be divided into sections, as required by WP:MOS. Any suggestions about how to proceed? --M4gnum0n (talk) 08:17, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are sections required?

Actually, I'm ambivalent about sections. I do care very much, however, about editors who spend seconds looking at an article and moving on after they tag it. That's how article quality degrades, by passing on the onus of fixing any perceived problems to someone else. So if you think the article needs sections, add them. --Moni3 (talk) 12:22, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done - Not sure about the result, though. --M4gnum0n (talk) 07:20, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think most of the revisions added yesterday needed to be removed. At best, most of what the guy added was opinionated. Some of what he said, such as the claim that the colony got no attention from the U.S. media, is outright false. The colony received a whole lot of attention from the U.S. media- that's why there is a Wikipedia article on it. The guy also claimed that the state of Florida has a 2,000 foot residency restriction, even though the state's mandated distance is actually 1,000 feet. Furthermore, the state does not have the term "where children gather" in its residency restriction. The state's residency restrictions only apply to distances from schools, parks, day care centers and playgrounds. It was only the local residency restrictions in South Florida that included the weird and vague terms like "places where minors congregate" in them. (I can't find the source now, but I read somewhere that a fairly large number of people under the causeway were forced there because they had miraculously found some apartments compliant with the restrictions, but their probation officer or the local police forced them to leave after determining that something like a pool or ice cream shop nearby was a "place where minors congregate.") Ironically the editor yesterday is making Ron Book seem better by making it seem like he increased the residency restrictions less than he really did. Describing family members as loving is the very definition of opinionated. (And I have to wonder if a lot of these guys basically got disowned by their families after their convictions anyway.) I don't know if you can say the sex offenders had "paid their debt to society" (if such a legal term even really exists) since they were still required to register as sex offenders, which is sort of part of "paying the debt to society." Also I'm sure some people under the Julia Tuttle Causeway would have been homeless even if it weren't for the local residency restrictions. It would have been hard to find housing with the state restrictions, the hardships of getting an apartment to rent to you as a sex offender and the hardships of getting a job with a felon (let alone sex offender) tag. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikidude87654321 (talk • contribs) 15:51, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Issues with WP:NPOV

It has the sentence “Broward County also has a serious problem with homeless sex offenders” which seems to be unnecessary. Thoughts? Thebest8382 (talk) 18:29, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]