Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Sex Offenders Forced to Use Hotels As Home Address

WKRC (Cincinnati, OH): Sex Offenders Forced to Use Hotels As Home Address.

Sex Offenders Are Using Hotels as Home Address

Across the country, and right here in the Tri-State, sex offenders are legally using hotels and motels as residences when they register with law enforcement. They are people like Rodney Hines, a top level sex offender, a convicted burglar and rapist. Until recently, when he was arrested on new charges, the Ohio Attorney General's sex offender website showed this Extended Stay America in Sharonville was home base for Rodney Hines.

According to the Kentucky sex offender registry, this Stay Lodge along I-75 in Florence is home to 11 convicted sex offenders. While she didn't want to appear on camera, the manager says that number's wrong... it's really more like half a dozen, but they don't cause her any problems and she says they're entitled to a certain amount of privacy like anyone else.

Searching local registry websites, we easily found nearly 60 sex offenders living in hotels around the Cincinnati area. Recently, U.S. Marshals, probation and parole officers along with sheriff's deputies and police scoured Butler County, checking up on nearly five hundred registered sex offenders, including at least 9 that we discovered living in hotels.

The sex offender registration laws and residency restrictions are the cause of this kind of situation. When you ban former offenders from living in nearly every decent neighborhood, this is the only place many of them can find to live. If you don't like the results, change the residency restriction laws which force former sex offenders to find unorthodox places to live.