E-Mail
Print
The accused killer, Cortrell Rose, was a convicted sex offender who had slipped through the cracks. Even though cops believe the motive was robbery, some believe the murder could have been avoided had Edhegard known Rose was on the sex offender list.
LINK: Mississippi Sex Offender Registry
Longwitz is talking about the possibility that some of the worst offenders should instead be on an electronic monitoring system for life.
"If you do not follow the registry system, bang! You get a monitor. We are gonna know where you are, we're not gonna leave it up to you to tell us," he said.
"I think we need to follow Louisiana's lead as far as notification," said Longwitz. He was talking about standards that required offenders to report their movements during Hurricane Katrina, which Mississippi emulated in recent hurricanes.
He also said that our neighboring state requires offenders to send out post card notification to anyone who lives within a three-block area in an urban location. In a rural setting they would have to let neighbors know in a two-maile radius.
"If we do something like that, that at least puts potential victims on notice that this is a person that, if you choose to, you should avoid at all costs. It's simply about giving people the information they need to protect themselves."
Another idea is a tier system, where offenders have different requirements based on the nature of their offense.
Longwitz says he'll be trying to bolster support for the ideas, possibly turning them into a bill.
"My first visits are gonna be colleagues that are dads of daughters like me. I have two daughters and there's nothing that we should not be doing to protect our wives, daughters and our mothers from this kind of tragedy," he said.
Longwitz says sex offender notification should be like any other public safety advisory, almost like a storm notification.
