”Don’t let your children talk to strangers,” Broward County, Fl., Sheriff Ken Jenne said yesterday as he unveiled a new, easy-to-use website that pinpoints where sex offenders live, reports the Miami Herald. The site is two page clicks off the sheriff’s office home page at www.sheriff.org. It is a Broward-centric alternative to the more cumbersome site listing offenders statewide that is operated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement at www3.fdle.state.fl.us/sopu.
Unlike the state version, the new Broward site allows residents easily and precisely to map out where registered sexual predators and offenders live in the areas their children frequent. With just one click on a yellow or red dot on the neighborhood map, parents can call up photos and criminal rap sheets on offenders and predators in their neighborhoods. They can also quickly map out danger spots along the exact routes their children walk: near parks, libraries, schools, and daycare facilities. Sherry Friedlander of A Child Is Missing, a nonprofit organization that helps police track lost children, said, ‘Many people are often shocked and say, `But he is such a nice man and we live in such a nice neighborhood.’ It doesn’t make any difference.”