Bizzell, Baker: STOP exposing officers to virus

The staff of NCRSOL has researched every North Carolina Sheriffs’ official website for Covid-19 information as it pertains to registered sex offenders in the state.

Of the 100 counties in North Carolina, only three counties have posted amended sex offender registration procedures on its official website. Naturally, there will be discourse from those in the law enforcement community that registrants should call their sheriffs department or visit a social media site for the latest information. However, if sheriffs can implement augmented pistol permit and jail policies, then it can amend sex offender in-person requirements. These are not permanent acts – these are temporary acts of mercy and public safety that benefit the bigger picture at hand.

By current law, registrants in North Carolina are prohibited from accessing a website where a part of its terms and conditions prohibits registered sex offenders. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Nextdoor, and a few others are platforms that many law enforcement websites use! NCRSOL encourages all registrants to obey the law and remain compliant. Don’t be a fool and assume that one law supersedes another by getting caught up in a legal imbroglio. The first line of defense of credible information is the official county website maintained by various sheriffs departments. The county website should be the sole credible source of public information.

Here are the North Carolina sheriffs departments that have amended sex offender in-person policies by notice on its official website during the Covid-19 pandemic: (effective 3/29/2020)

(F-Facebook; T-Twitter; B-Blogger; X-Nixie; G-GooglePlus; P-Pinterest; L-LinkedIn; S-Snapchat; N-Nextdoor; Y-YouTube; V-Vimeo; K-Flickr; I-Instagram)

Click on any county to be redirected to the official website of that particular sheriff’s department. Sheriffs may quietly change policies or directives without making it public via their website or social media blasts. You are encouraged to use this tool to show the law enforcement community that either there is no, limited, or ambiguous information from the department entrusted and elected to keep you and your community safe.

Upon researching each of the county sheriff websites, some may display a section for Emergency Alerts. However, in nearly all circumstances, no emergency alerts have been activated, updated, or mentioned for Covid-19, jail closings, pistol permit holds, or other sheriff related functions. Instead, many sheriffs have left those decisions to other county officials. 

A majority of sheriff official websites had no information posted about the governor’s recent mandatory “Stay-At-Home” order. A noticeable trend was that many sheriff websites used social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and in some cases defunct websites or broken links. Additionally, some of the sheriffs websites redirect to county administrative social media platforms with no mention of sheriffs operations amended or not. The scope of this particular research did not scour social media sites maintained by individual sheriff’s offices.

NCRSOL staff identified the following problems with sheriff official websites:

• websites neglected over time with no relevant or updated public information,
• no information about Covid-19 information regarding jail and/or public operations,
• no information about the governors stay at home order,
• no alternative emergency information or guidance procedures,
• broken or inoperable links,
• Sheriff’s updated concealed pistol permit information, but no other information was updated.
• No sheriffs department had alternative solutions for the sex offender community such as mail-in forms, documentation available online, or temporary change of address forms for the registry community.
• There is no standardization of law enforcement websites to simplify emergency data or services.

In a high-tech society surrounded by flagship universities and a state population where internet, webpages, and technology is a significant part of our daily lives combined demonstrates a lag in online technologies or features to keep society moving forward. It has been nearly two decades since 9/11. Yet a majority of our sheriffs departments are greatly unprepared to meet the simple challenges of the 21st century by leaders failing to change policy towards an on-line or application method rather than antiquated and expensive in-person requirements. Sheriffs have a unique ability to step aside of the political compass and begin to look at the human compass. 

While social media appears to be the new facilitation to traditional webpages, there is little to no standardization across the board for the general public to better understand changes under emergency conditions; especially a platform that serves communities such as the poor, homeless, registrants, or seniors without smartphones and social media outlets. North Carolina leaders must do more to simplify our information flow and processes to reduce not only our carbon footprint, but to reduce our public health criteria for the overall safety for all citizens. This is an opportunity to stop the “guessing games.” 

Despite emergency conditions and the putting innocent citizens further at risk, deputies all across North Carolina are still knocking on doors of registrants to verify if they live there. Basic constitutional rights include that citizens are not required to answer the door or talk to the police when they’re knocking at your door without a warrant. Yet, deputies continue to knock on registrants doors without a warrant despite those same registrants go in-person to the sheriffs office to verify his/her address.

NCRSOL staff would like to keep this data and information up-to-date. Please reply with updated information about specific counties to share with other registrants.

In the meantime, please contact your sheriff’s department to learn more about your county’s sex offender in-person registry policy during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of all, please stay safe and follow the CDC recommended guidelines. Lastly, pay attention to the President and Governor by staying at home until this crisis has passed. 

• Are registrants still being required in your county to appear in-person?
• Have you had sheriff deputies knocking on doors for compliance checks?
• Have you called the sheriffs department to ask a question but are left in limbo with an answer?
• Has your county sheriff amended in-person requirements during the pandemic?

We would like to hear your stories so we can better assess what is happening in your community and county. So far, we have heard from a few registrants and family members, and despite the threat of the coronavirus, sheriffs departments haven’t seemed to have made adaptive measures to keep registrants, deputies, and the public safe.

Please contact us by email at contact@ncrsol.org . Be sure to include only facts, and what county you or the registrant resides. If you have received written notice of amended in-person requirements, our staff would like to view that as well.

On behalf of the staff at NCRSOL, please stay safe! The registry community will always remain in our thoughts and prayers.

Buncombe, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Mecklenburg and Wake counties have all confirmed that they are releasing detainees as a means to lower jail populations. The fewer people who are in the jails, the easier it will be to enforce preventive measures — such as medically screening staff and those arrested — to keep COVID-19 out of the facilities.

If the virus gets into a jail, lower populations will mean the illness will be easier to contain and fewer people who will be exposed, which would protect both the people in jail and communities at large.

When discussing the releases, Aaron Sarver, public information officer for the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office, stressed the difference between jail and prison.

The people being released from the Buncombe County Detention Center are all pretrial, Sarver said, meaning they have not been convicted of a crime.

In some cases, people convicted of low-level misdemeanors and are serving time in the jails could also be released. Prisons, by and large, hold people who have been convicted of felonies.

Click here to read more

We live in unprecedented times. Never before have semi-quarantine conditions been imposed across the entire country. Registrants especially, having a history of not knowing what to expect from law enforcement, are unsettled. Going into sheriff’s offices or other places where registration verification is done is risky business these days, risky in ways never experienced before. Many registrants are senior citizens, and many, just like all senior citizens, have some serious health conditions. An exposure to the Corona-virus, COVID-19, could be disastrous, putting not only the registrants but also the law enforcement or governmental personnel at risk along with the families and friends of all.

Mainstream media articles dealing with this issue reveal a definite trend: While more and more offices are closing to the general public wanting to conduct normal business, such as fill out a report or renew a driver’s license, registered sexual offenders are still to report for their regularly scheduled verification checks. NARSOL finds this unacceptable, and March 20, 2020, issued this press release to media outlets across the nation calling for a suspension of all required in-person verifications during this crisis.

Reposted from the NARSOL website

Let me be as clear as I can to anyone who happens to read this posting. North Carolina’s ban on the use of social media by registered citizens who are not otherwise on post-release supervision or probation is absolutely, unequivocally null and void having been struck down, in its entirety, by the United States Supreme Court in June, 2017 (See Packingham v. North Carolina). Any attempt by a law enforcement agent in the state of North Carolina to enforce this ban against a registered citizen who is no longer under any form of court-ordered supervision will constitute a false arrest. Pure and simple.

The mere fact that the statute remains searchable is irrelevant to questions regarding its legitimacy. There are hundreds of laws on the books that can no longer be enforced. Sheriff Harrison knows that. Most of the sheriffs in the state know that. And if they have any questions about a certain statute’s authority, they should refer such questions to the Attorney General’s office for a legal opinion. What sheriffs and their deputies should NOT do is provide false and unreliable information to the citizens living in their counties.

Will North Carolina’s social media statute be re-written and eventually re-enacted by the state Legislature? It is probable that the state Legislature will attempt to craft a replacement statute. How it can write such a statute narrowly enough to avoid additional constitutional review is yet to be seen. Anything too broadly written would be easily enjoined by a federal District Court. Anything written narrowly enough to pass scrutiny under the Packingham analysis is likely to be a fairly benign and practically useless law. And anything that’s even borderline constitutional will immediately be the subject of a new lawsuit by NCRSOL and our attorneys….and very likely enjoined before it’s ever able to take effect.

If you are a registered citizen living in North Carolina and you are no longer under any form of court-ordered supervision, you have a First Amendment right to access and use social media. There are still social media platforms that have corporate policies restricting your use. But as of June 19, 2017, the state of North Carolina and any derivative law enforcement agency of ANY jurisdiction within the state of North Carolina has absolutely no authority to arrest you for using social media.

However, you are still required to report your online identifiers!  VERY IMPORTANT.

If you are a registered citizen living in North Carolina (and no longer under ANY form of supervision) and have been informed by local law enforcement that you cannot use social media, please contact us immediately. If you or someone you know is threatened with arrest for using social media, please contact us immediately. You can find our contact information at the top of the home page.