news-record.com

Mike Barber's likely to win support, from the public and fellow council members, for his proposed ordinance to ban registered sex offenders from city parks and recreation facilities.

It's easy to go along, hard to say no.

I've written about this before, highlighting N.C. Appeals Court Judge Martha Geer's dissent in the Standley v. Woodfin case.

Since then, the state Supreme Court has unanimously upheld the Court of Appeals decision, leaving Geer out on a legal limb with no support at all.

So be it. It's permissible for a city or county to enact an ordinance like Barber proposes. In fact, Mecklenburg County put such an ordinance in place this month and already has recorded the first arrest.

City leaders can congratulate themselves on making their parks safe from fiends who prey on children.

Except they're doing no such thing. As information in the Standley v. Woodfin case record showed, most sex crimes are committed by people who are NOT registered sex offenders. And certainly most sex crimes are NOT committed in parks.

The fact that you can find a registered sex offender in a park, as an officer did in Charlotte, hardly means that a horrendous crime was about to occur. You also could find registered sex offenders in grocery stores, movie theaters and maybe even churches.

Nevertheless, I'm sure the greater good will be served to see to it that a registered sex offender -- one who's not considered dangerous enough to be locked up, by the way -- isn't allowed to play tennis or jog in a city park, or watch a ballgame at War Memorial Stadium.

The greater feel-good, anyway.