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Tracking sex offenders? There's an app for that

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M

MThanded

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
(CNN) -- Tracy Rodriguez of Houston, Texas, is not a trained private investigator or police officer. But with a gentle tap on her iPhone screen, the mother of three can access information revealing the sex offenders who live within a 10-mile radius of where her children practice sports or watch movies.

The information, provided by an iPhone app called Offender Locator, helps Rodriguez make more informed choices, she says. When the app pops open on her phone, there is an eerie sketch of a man's face. Then, the app asks for an address.

"I am constantly worrying about the well-being of my family," says Rodriguez, who uses the app several times daily. "You can't be too careful."

Since the iPhone launched more than two years ago, a handful of crime-fighting tools have emerged among the thousands of innovative apps. They give ordinary citizens the capability to sleuth and guard themselves against crime. Users can conduct a background check during a dinner date or avoid walking through a high-crime area.

The Offender Locator app has been downloaded more than a million times, breaking into the top 10 most popular apps list on iTunes when it made its debut in June.
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/29/iphone.app.fight.crime/index.html
 
Why do people worry so goddamn much about everything?
 
Wait, it just shows their addresses, not where they are at the current time... so what's the point of checking it several times daily?
 
AtomskEater said:
Wait, it just shows their addresses, not where they are at the current time... so what's the point of checking it several times daily?
Click to expand...

Good question.
 
Careful children, Annie Pasley lives on this street. A sexual offender, she took naked pictures of herself and send them to her boyfriend.
 
Angry Grimace said:
Why do people worry so goddamn much about everything?
Click to expand...
i feel sorry for her kids. Omg you talked to someone at the grocery store, your grounded for a month!
They're going to be severely fucked up with an over protective parent like that.
 
madara said:
Careful children, Annie Pasley lives on this street. A sexual offender, she took naked pictures of herself and send them to her boyfriend.
Click to expand...
sad but true. Also know someone who was forced to register as a sex offender because he was 18 and his gf he had sex with was 16.
 
captive said:
sad but true. Also know someone who was forced to register as a sex offender because he was 18 and his gf he had sex with was 16.
Click to expand...

Also, wasn't there some story about a guy who was driving down a road and a 15 year old girl walked right out in front of her car, he grabbed her by the arm and yelled at her, and he had to register.

It's pretty pathetic nowadays...
 
"I am constantly worrying about the well-being of my family," says Rodriguez, who uses the app several times daily. "You can't be too careful."
Click to expand...
I disagree with this statement. You certainly CAN be too careful. Going to work in a plastic bubble because you're worried about Swine Flu is being too careful. Putting on more than one condom for sex simultaneously is being too careful. Downloading and installing a fucking app on your iPhone to keep track of sex offenders is being too careful.
 
SmokyDave said:
I'm sure this won't lead to any innocent people being lynched and beaten to death.
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it doesnt matter, the local government is required to notify you if a sex offender moves into your neighborhood. In fact i actually got a notification in the mail the other day that this sex offender was moving near me.
Local news sites have their own sex offender searches and maps available too.
 
captive said:
it doesnt matter, the local government is required to notify you if a sex offender moves into your neighborhood. In fact i actually got a notification in the mail the other day that this sex offender was moving near me.
Local news sites have their own sex offender searches and maps available too.
Click to expand...
Thank God for our legal system, where if you commit any other crime and serve your time you get to come out with a clean slate and a fresh start, but be a sex offender and you get your arm branded and have to wear a star of David for the rest of your life!
 
I AM JOHN! said:
Thank God for our legal system, where if you commit any other crime and serve your time you get to come out with a clean slate and a fresh start, but be a sex offender and you get your arm branded and have to wear a star of David for the rest of your life!
Click to expand...
Dumb things happen in other countries as well.

But still. This is one of the about 5,000 things I don't understand about the USA. :lol
 
I AM JOHN! said:
Thank God for our legal system, where if you commit any other crime and serve your time you get to come out with a clean slate and a fresh start, but be a sex offender and you get your arm branded and have to wear a star of David for the rest of your life!
Click to expand...
i agree completely. I recall a story a while back, this sex offender got arrested because his houses lights were on during Halloween... the kicker he wasn't even there, his wife was.
 
captive said:
i agree completely. I recall a story a while back, this sex offender got arrested because his houses lights were on during Halloween... the kicker he wasn't even there, his wife was.
Click to expand...
What?
 
It grosses me out that sex offender apps are ALWAYS in the top 5 apps list on the iTunes store. Worse than fart apps. Why do people...ah nevermind.
 
captive said:
it doesnt matter, the local government is required to notify you if a sex offender moves into your neighborhood. In fact i actually got a notification in the mail the other day that this sex offender was moving near me.
Local news sites have their own sex offender searches and maps available too.
Click to expand...

Wow. Are random paedophiles that much of a threat in America? Over here in the UK the offender is usually known to the victim through friends or family. We do have a sex offenders register but I'm not sure if it's available to the public at large, it certainly isn't mailed to us. Do you get mail notifications for murderers as well?
 
This app needs to fucking burn and die.

Like parents' paranoia and nannying of their kids hasn't gotten bad enough... this shit just makes it worse.

The thing is pretty much useless anyways, most cases of child abuse comes from in the home/family.
 
Sho_Nuff82 said:
Isn't this sort of info already publicly available due to Megan's Law and all that jazz?
Click to expand...

Yup, just read up on the situation. Hadn't realised US law was even more public influenced/driven than UK law. I want children to be safe as much as the next person but I think giving the general public too much information can be dangerous. Still, none of my business, I'm sure your sex offence stats would show it works.

Also, I naively thought it was real time tracking at first. Long day at work.

Edit: I'm in favour of registers and I think the information should be available on request to parents and employers. They should also, at a minimum, categorise the level of offence and number of convictions.
 
I don't understand why people are so against the sex offender's list. Yeah, people can be put on there for petty things, but these lists also give the charge they were convicted for, so you can know the difference in someone committing a lewd act in public versus sexually assaulting a child and so forth. It just means they need to seriously readjust it, not abolish it completely.

Also, everybody has their anecdotal evidence of people being put on their unjustly, so for my own, I did a 100mi search from my address on one of these things and looked at every profile, and not a single one was a minor offense. All were very serious screwed up stuff.

I don't have kids, but if I did, I wouldn't mind knowing if my next door neighbor raped a child. Sorry they get branded for life, but it's hard to feel too bad about it. Some people hate it so much, it's like they are afraid of being put on it.
 
I pretty much agree with J-Rod. It may be overkill for the people who check all the time, but there is a high recidivism rate among sex offenders, particularly pedophiles (which, if it is an inborn thing, makes sense but sucks for them/those around them).

When I first got my G1 I downloaded the alert app which show crime stats and sex offenders in my area, looked out of curiosity, and deleted it.
 
This app has been on the App Store forfuckingever
I hate apps that use pubically available info and then stick your location next to it like "look how revolutionary this is, please give me $1.99 now"
 
This is pretty pathetic, but I probably shouldn't say anything as I just spent the past hour staring at the ups tracking page.
 
Roxas said:
Do you have kids? I would want to know if there was a sex offender in the same area as my kids.
Click to expand...
Would you also want to know if a former robber was moving to your neighborhood? Or if your coworker once served four years for a manslaughter change? Or if someone living in your building committed tax fraud? That's why this law is such bullshit - it's a flagrant violation of people's right to privacy. For almost every other crime, you serve your time to the state and you're done; with this, it's never enough. You need to keeping giving your pound of flesh for what good goddamn reason?

Either do this for every ex-con or do it for no ex-con. Double-standards are bullshit.
 
AtomskEater said:
Wait, it just shows their addresses, not where they are at the current time... so what's the point of checking it several times daily?
Click to expand...
Perhaps because each time her kids are going out for fun somewhere, and she wants to check that area to see if there are sex offenders there.

In other words, the addresses of sex offenders might not change, but the whereabouts of her kids may change several times a day.
 
The Lite version shows hardly any damn offenders by me. I find this hard to believe. Only 3 people within 20 miles? Does the Lite version not include everyone?
 
I AM JOHN! said:
Would you also want to know if a former robber was moving to your neighborhood? Or if your coworker once served four years for a manslaughter change? Or if someone living in your building committed tax fraud? That's why this law is such bullshit - it's a flagrant violation of people's right to privacy. For almost every other crime, you serve your time to the state and you're done; with this, it's never enough. You need to keeping giving your pound of flesh for what good goddamn reason?

Either do this for every ex-con or do it for no ex-con. Double-standards are bullshit.
Click to expand...



There is an reason for this though, more than any other group sexual Predators have shown an habitual need to keep going after children, and most are repeat offenders who serve their time then go and do it again.
 
The story behind Megan's Law was pretty heart-wrenching so they created a law.

Similiar thing happened when a dude killed his mail-order bride from Russia and he had a previous charge for brutally assaulting his previous mail-order bride. They created a law that the woman getting set up with the man must be made aware of any crminial past.

Single situations and stories end up creating consequences for the entire population at times. Sometimes it is for the best, some times it is because a politician "reacting and being tough" gets votes. Also, the fact that most people will never be convicted of any crime makes most have little sympathy for those who do.
 
methos75 said:
There is an reason for this though, more than any other group sexual Predators have shown an habitual need to keep going after children, and most are repeat offenders who serve their time then go and do it again.
Click to expand...

Then let's just cut out the middleman and kill them already. It seems everyone is convinced they'll repeat offend no matter what, so why we wasting our time? Kids would be much safer if we put a bullet in their head.
 
It is really a one or the other thing for me. I don't like the sex offenders list, but if it must exist, make sure that it only has dangerous sex offenders, not some dumbass that pinched a girl's butt or a guy having consensual sex with a girl who was less than a year younger than him BUT was below that magical 18 year old line that everyone knows is when your brain completely changes and you suddenly become mature.
 
Roxas said:
Do you have kids? I would want to know if there was a sex offender in the same area as my kids.
Click to expand...
Do you care about any child killers who may be living there? Or someone who has been convicted of kidnapping children and holding them ransom? Or any of the other million + threats to your family?

I mean, is there a list of those guys online too? I really don't know.
 
sotrue.jpg
 
Roxas said:
Do you have kids? I would want to know if there was a sex offender in the same area as my kids.
Click to expand...

Okay, have you ever actually looked at a sex offender registry online? There are probably a dozens or hundreds within a ten mile radius of you at any given time.

Of those, only a few would actually pose any threat.
 
the sex offenders list is a great idea, tho you can get things like an 18year having sex with his 16year old gf and having to go on list even tho they are not a sex offender.
 
are there criminally different tiers to sex offenders? Because the amount of bullshit that gets people on that list is staggering and makes them no threat at all to have to carry the mark of Cain on them for the rest of their lives.
 
Are not all felony arrests public information already? I know my local paper used to list names of those charged with DUI's and that's not even felony, and or even a conviction. I don't know how this is anymore an "invasion of privacy" as all the other stuff people don't seem to fuss about.
 
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