Community Watch

Registered sex offender accused of lewd punching at Disney's Typhoon Lagoon Water Park

Orlando Sentinel - August 12, 2011

Moses Velasquez, 39, is accused of touching the girls in the wave pool at Disney's Typhoon Lagoon.

A sex offender was jailed Friday after three girls say he touched them inappropriately by punching their genitals at Disney's Typhoon Lagoon water park Thursday.

Moses Velasquez, 39, was charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation, according to the Orange County Jail.

Witnesses and alleged victims told an Orange County Sheriff's deputy that Velasquez was in the wave pool with the children when the alleged incidents occurred. Once a Disney employee was made aware of the incident, Velasquez was quickly removed from the pool.

"We are focused on deterring this type of behavior in coordination with law enforcement," said Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger said in a statement. "Among the tools we use is a training program to raise awareness among our Cast to help them recognize and report suspicious behavior.

"

The children said Velasquez punched them in their genitals and pulled down their swimsuits while the waves were in motion, according to an arrest report.

One of the victims said another person in the pool told her Velasquez ducked under the water and kissed her buttocks.

One of the girls told the deputy she was punched so hard it caused a burning sensation.

The three girls, who are vacationing with their families, are related, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Velasquez was escorted to the park office, where he was interviewed by a deputy. Velasquez's wife, who was also at the park, went with him.

 Deputies issued Velasquez a trespass warning for all of Disney properties and took him to jail.

Velasquez is a registered sex offender who was found guilty of molesting a girl between the ages of 12 and 15 in 2002, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Community Watch comments:

Registered sex offenders in Disney Water Parks?  In 2011, that is just not acceptable based on available technology.

Consider the following: http://www.raptorware.com/

Raptor's V-soft provides an effective and affordable way to help facilities keep unwanted visitors out while tracking those they allow in. Simply scan a visitor’s Driver License (or other state issued ID) and web-based V-soft instantly screens for registered sex offenders, domestic dispute offenders and other trespassers. If a potential threat is identified, V-soft’s system instantly alerts designated officials, such as administrators and law enforcement, via email, telephone, text messaging and/or page. 

Note: Community Watch is not affiliated with Raptor and we do NOT receive affiliate or sales commissions from Raptor.

 

Obama Talks with John Walsh about sex offenders on "America's Most Wanted"

President Obama sat down yesterday with "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh at the White House to congratulate the show on hitting a 1,000 episode milestone and to reassure viewers that he would continue "providing the states the support that they need" to keep law enforcement officials on the ground. 

"Last year when we came in, obviously you had a huge economic crisis, one of the things we were most worried about was how would this affect law enforcement because you started seeing state and local budgets hemorrhaging," Mr. Obama told Walsh. 

"There were the prospects of tens of thousands of cops on the streets being laid off, and so what we did was working with state and local governments, got four billion dollars additional funding so that we kept those law enforcement officials doing great work that they do each and every day," he continued. 

The president also threw his full support behind The Adam Walsh Act, a law signed by President George W. Bush that categorizes sex offenders and ensures they can be tracked and monitored. The act is named after the son of John Walsh, who was kidnapped and murdered in Florida almost 30 years ago. 

John Walsh later became an advocate for victims and violent crimes, and soon after became the host of "America's Most Wanted," a show committed to assisting law enforcement in apprehending fugitives. 

"It's about saying we need justice, we need these people caught, we need them off the streets, and we need the highest level of politicians to focus in on our needs," Walsh told the president, grateful for his commitment. 

"Well John," the president responded, "we couldn't be prouder of what you've done and I know Adam's looking down on us and saying, you know, my dad's really done something incredible, so congratulations to you." 

The interview will be part of the 1,000th episode of America's Most Wanted, which airs this Saturday. 

Community Watch comments:

1,000 episodes have made a significant impact on our communities - congratulations John Walsh and America's Most Wanted.  

Indiana Supreme Court ruling that child sex offender should be removed from sex offender registry endangers public

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-in-sexoffenderregist,0,2138848.story

A court's ruling that a convicted child molester did not have to register with the state as a sex offender because heas convicted before the requirement became law has thrown many counties into turmoil as offenders ask to be removed from the rolls. 

The Indiana Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that Richard P. Wallace no longer had to register as a sex offender because his crime occurred in 1989, and the registry wasn't created until 1994. 

The Department of Correction, which maintains the state's official registry, says the ruling applied only to Wallace's case. But several counties say it applies to everyone and have begun purging their local registries of offenders who don't fall within the reporting guidelines. 

Cpl. Jeff Shimkus of the Allen County Sheriff's Department says the situation undermines the state's goal of uniform, standardized reporting on sex offenders. 

The Allen County registry, for example, is supposed to be an offshoot of the state registry. Now, though, the registries do not match. 

"It's going to cause problems with the state site because its accuracy can't be guaranteed," Shimkus said. 

Shimkus, who is charged with enforcing the registry laws in Allen county, said officials from the sheriff's department and prosecutor's office met after the Wallace ruling to determine how it would impact the local registry. 

They decided to remove the names of offenders who committed crimes before the registry was created and to purge the names of people who had committed lesser crimes that previously did not require registration. 

For instance, between 1994 and 1997, people convicted of rape were required to register only if the victim was younger than 18. Someone who raped an adult in 1995 would not have been required to register. But laws were later amended to require all convicted rapists to register as sex offenders. 

Now, people convicted of rape before the law was amended no longer appear on the Allen County sex offender registry. 

"We don't have to like it, but that's what the law says," Shimkus said. 

The Kosciusko County Sheriff's Department has reviewed sex offender files but has not found any affected by the Wallace ruling, department spokesman Sgt. Chad Hill said. 

DeKalb County says it will not remove names unless given a court order. 

Brent Myers, director of registration and victims services for the Indiana Department of Correction, said that's the right approach. 

He said corrections officials, prosecutors and the Indiana Attorney General's office met after the Wallace decision and agreed that offenders who wanted off the registry because of the ruling should take their case up with a local court. 

He said DOC has received fewer than 70 orders to remove offenders from the registry. 

Shane Call, who claims he was wrongly convicted by a jury of child molesting in 1991, asked Allen Superior Court to remove him from the registry. 

He said appearing on the registry has affected his ability to work and support his wife and 13-year-old son. 

"Before I was on the list, I hated the fact I was accused of that crime, but as soon as I got on the list, things got hard," he said. 

Call hopes things get better soon. The court has agreed to remove him from the list. 

Community Watch comments:

These are not accused sex offenders being removed from the Indiana Sex Offender Registry; these are convicted sex offenders being removed from the Indiana Sex Offender Registry, all due to a legal loophole.  

So, if you are a known and convicted terrorist, should the CIA and TSA take you off their terrorist watch list because you were not a known and convicted terrorist prior to 911.  Does that make sense?  Would that make us safer?  Put yourself in the shoes of the terrorist.  Is it fair or legal to be placed on a list of terrorists if the list did not exist prior to you committing terrorist acts?  If you say our terrorist example is ridiculous, you got the point.

Congress passes the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006

Attorney General Hails Passage of the Child Protection Act

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales released the following statement today regarding Congressional passage of H.R. 4472, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006:

"America's children will be better protected from every parent's worst nightmare - sexual predators - thanks to passage of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.

I applaud both the House and Senate - and in particular the leadership of Chairman Specter in the Senate and Chairman Sensenbrenner in the House - for passing this comprehensive bill, which includes provisions proposed by the Department of Justice. The protection of our Nation's children has been, and will continue to be, one of the Department's highest priorities, and we believe this bill will help us do our job even better."

BACKGROUND

Important measures in the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act include:

* Providing statutory authorization for one of the Attorney General's major initiatives, Project Safe Childhood, which will be implemented through U.S. Attorney-led, locally designed partnerships of federal, state, and local law enforcement to investigate and prosecute technologically-facilitated crimes against children.

* Strengthening the national standards for sex offender registration and notification, including:

- Consistent requirements that convicted sex offenders register in the jurisdictions in which they live, work, or go to school, and periodically appear in person before officials of those jurisdictions to verify and update their registration information.

- Longer required registration periods for sex offenders, including registration for at least 25 years or for life for persons convicted of offenses involving sexual abuse or exploitation of children, for rapists, and for recidivists.

- More consistent availability to the public through the Internet of information concerning the identities and locations of sex offenders who are required to register.

* Enhancing the penalties for various federal violent crimes and sexual offenses against children.

* Authorizing the Attorney General to make grants to support pilot programs for electronic monitoring of released sex offenders, and to support effective civil commitment programs for mentally disordered or abnormal sex offenders who remain dangerous.

*Allowing the Attorney General to seek the federal civil commitment of sexually dangerous persons to treatment facilities until such time as they no longer pose a threat to other persons.

* Including the provisions of what is popularly known as "Masha's Law," to make it clear that adults who were victims of sexual exploitation when they were children can sue both those who initially committed the exploitation and those who perpetuate the exploitation by downloading the images of abuse.

* Enhancing recordkeeping requirements to ensure that minors are not depicted in sexually explicit material.

* Prohibiting the insidious practice engaged in by certain sexually explicit web sites of hiding innocuous terms in the hypertext markup language so that a search for those terms on the Internet yields links to the sexually explicit web sites.

Community Watch comments:

Excellent work on the legislation - now let's get moving on the National and State Initiatives.

Texas - State Sex Offender Registry - Overview and Analysis - March 2005

The Texas Sex Offender Registry enables the community to search using name and location AND use a mapping application to quickly identify sex offenders living near their family and friends.

Name and Location Search Options:

• Offender: Last Name, First Name, Middle Name
• Date of Birth
• Sex
• Race: All, Black, White

Suggestion: Texas borders Mexico and yet there is no ETHNICITY = Hispanic available in search or in the database.  There are numerous records where the sex offender is Hispanic  - consider a system update in the future.

Although most sex offender sites indicate RACE, they usually provide ETHNICITY in the dropdown choices.

• Location: Zip Code, City

Suggestion: When user enters zip code, search all zip codes within 1 mile radius of entered zip code.

Example: User enters zip code = 78759 but is unaware zip codes 78755 and 78720 are within a 1 mile radius of zip code 78759.

click here to view one vendor which sells inexpensive, high quality zip code radius data.

User must enter one of the following to perform a search:

• First and Last name
• City and Zip Code
• Zip Code

List of Records Matching the Search Criteria:

After the User clicks "Begin Search", a list of records matching the search criteria is displayed (user can click to get detail on each sex offender in the list) - data displayed is:

• Name/Address
• Date of Birth (DOB)
• Sex
• Race
• Height (HGT)
• Weight (WGT)
• Eye Color (EYE)
• Hair Color (Hair)
• SID - seems to be the DPS number - data is sorted by this number (sorted in ascending order)

Author editorial:

The purpose of this display is to help users:

a. understand how many sex offenders are in their area

b. understand the risk level of sex offenders in their area

c. determine which records to select (or click) to view details (including photos)

Suggestion:  Add RISK LEVEL icon and most recent thumbnail photo to each row on this display.  SORT the page by risk level - highest risk to lowest risk.

Sex Offender Record Details:

• Name (Last, First Middle)
• DPS Number (seems to be the same as the SID#)
• Date of Birth (DOB)
• Risk Level
• Sex
• Race
• Height
• Weight
• Eye Color
• Hair Color
• Shoe Size
• Photo(s) - current photo is auto-displayed with date of photo - user can click to view all photos and all photos have dates
• Alias names
• Registration record - date and agency
• Verification record - date and agency
• Current address - street, apartment, city, county,state, zip code
• Offense data - offense, general offense code, counts, victim's sex, victim's age, disposition date, time, status

Suggestions: 

1. Add STATUS as a separate field in the database.  There are numerous examples of placing status in the STREET field in the CURRENT ADDRESS - see example below:

Street	IN CUSTODY TRAVIS COUNTY JAIL
City	AUSTIN
County	TRAVIS
State	TX
Zip Code	78759

The Travis County Jail has a physical address - it should be entered as this makes this address unable to be be displayed in the mapping application.

2. Enable users to search using the new STATUS field.  for example, provide a checkbox to exclude all sex offenders with a status = IN CUSTODY".  If it is too cost prohibitive to add a STATUS field and update all the records, at least highlight the street field in RED when it contains status data.

3. Offense Data should be converted into Offense Information - for example - a sex offender with this offense data:

Offense	36990013 Indecency with a Child by Exposure
General Offense Code
Counts	1
Victim's Sex	Female
Victim's Age	8.0
Disposition Date	02/14/1994
Time	5Y
Status	PAR/DIS

would be converted into offense information and read:

"Mr. Williams was convicted of 1 count of Indecency with a Child by Exposure with a 8 year old girl on February 14, 1994 for which he served 5 years.

Current status is PAR/DIS." (PAR/DIS is not defined on the site)

Mapping Application Search:

User enters an address of interest:

• user's home address
• child's school address
• grandparent's home address
• user's favorite parks (where child practices soccer, baseball, etc.)

User clicks "Show Map" and map is displayed with address of interest (centered in map) and sex offender addresses are highlighted with "pushpins" - the color of the pushpin indicates the sex offender risk level (red = high risk, pink = moderate, etc..)

Suggestions: 

1. If the query returns less than 20 offenders, automatically list the offenders below the map with most recent photo thumbnail, risk level and associated summary data.

2. Review California's sex offender mapping application for other features which make the application intuitive and easy to use.

3. Consider comparing all home addresses of foster families in Texas to this database to ensure there are no sex offenders living close or next door to foster families.