HPD: 131 sex offenders in the Houston area (updated)
On Friday, KTRK-13 and the Chronicle both reported that approximately 131 sex offenders from Louisiana are believed to have settled in the Houston area.
The Chronicle's Rosanna Ruiz reports:
Lt. Robert Manzo, a Houston Police Department spokesman, said it now appears 131 sex offenders from Louisiana have settled in the Houston area after fleeing from the recent storms. He said the number could be whittled down further as officials comb through the list.
On Wednesday, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt announced that Federal Emergency Management Agency officials had told HPD that 287 registered sex offenders were believed to be living in the Houston area. HPD officials said they needed to identify those offenders before trying to locate them.
KTRK's Andy Cerota reports:
Texas is now home to 373 Louisiana sex offenders who arrived when Katrina hit. One hundred thirty-one are in Harris County. Along with these offenders, DPS says another 225 evacuees in Texas are wanted on felony or misdemeanor warrants.
[snip]
"What are we going to do?" asked Andy Kahan with the Mayor's Crime Victims Office. "It's like finding where's Waldo."
A member of the Harris County interagency sex offender council, Kahan says the group is looking at what other states have done in similar situations so that what happened in the aftermath of Katrina never happens again. Kahan says Florida's new plan could be a model for Texas. That state now requires sex offenders whose victims are children to report to a local jail instead of a shelter when they evacuate in an emergency.
The Chron's Editorial LiveJournalists are not going to be happy to hear Kahan's comments!
Prior to KTRK reporter Jessica Willey's Tuesday story on this topic, Houston media had been inexplicably slow to show interest.
UPDATE: James T. Campbell, the Chronicle's very own reader representative, writes the following in his Sunday editorial page column:
As many as 287 registered sex offenders from Louisiana may be in Houston, but local authorities don't know where to find them yet.
Nope, James. They reduced that number to 131. It was in your own newspaper. On Friday.
That's okay. We sometimes can't bear to read it carefully either.
There's also this error:
The good and bad news regarding how Katrina evacuees will effect our job market and local economy.
Does anybody read the material on the editorial pages before it goes to print?
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/20/05 05:16 PM | Print | Comments (4)
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