The release of a high-profile, convicted sex offender and his subsequent move from Massachusetts to Rhode Island has created a storm in a Providence neighborhood.
Residents upset at the presence of Richard Gardner in the Washington Park neighborhood have demonstrated publicly outside his residence and met in a community forum.
Providence City Council, at the behest of the neighborhood councilman, is now weighing whether to strengthen prohibitions that would restrict where registered sex offenders can live or visit.
Mayor Jorge O. Elorza, meanwhile, has asked police to monitor the residence. The mayor declined a request for an interview. His spokesman said due to the prospect of a nightly protest, the house and neighborhood will be monitored “for community safety.”
The focus is misplaced, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, which has already engaged the state in two lawsuits over the General Assembly’s efforts to restrict where sex offenders can live. One, approved last year, sought to limit the percentage of released offenders that could live in Harrington Hall in Cranston, one of the state’s largest homeless shelters.
Another would create a 1,000-foot zone around schools that would not allow convicted sex offenders to live there. Neither is being enforced while the litigation is active.
The problem with such restrictions is that they ultimately combine to force individuals into homelessness, which isn’t making the communities safer, said Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island ACLU.
“Restrictive laws as to where sex offenders can live generally have the effect of making them homeless,” Brown said. “Public safety is not served by having no idea where these individuals are, rather than giving them a place to stay so everyone knows where they are.”
In other states, such as Massachusetts, the courts have found that communities cannot create a network of restrictions that effectively put themselves off-limits to released offenders.
Brown said the efforts in Rhode Island create a false sense of security. Statistically, the vast majority of child-related sex offenses are committed by family members. “There is a false sense of security in attempting to try to kick someone like Richard Gardner out of a neighborhood,” said Brown.
The Providence proposal, introduced by Councilman Luis Aponte, would increase the minimum “child safety zone” from 300 to 500 feet and place that radius around schools; day care centers; recreational areas, including parks, playgrounds and recreation centers, as well as empty lots and multiservice centers.
If approved, it would apply to people who move into residences in the future, not retroactively.
But Aponte argues it will add needed safeguards in a city that he said has more than 500 registered sex offenders.
Certain locations, such as home-based day care providers, were not considered in the city’s existing restrictions, he said.
“I would love for him to leave that neighborhood,” Aponte said. “But this is broader than that.”
Mary MacDonald is a staff writer for the PBN. Contact her at Macdonald@PBN.com.
