Tran's Sex Offender Plan Moves Forward

Nice win last night for Councilor Dean Tran, as his plan to not allow sex offenders moving into the city to live within 1,000 feet of a school, day care, library, and other spots passed through committee with nary a scratch. It appears the full council will approve it in the next month or so as it goes through the process.

At the end of the day, this is a good petition by Tran that is protective of children in the city, and we like it (despite our questions from before).

One sort of sidelight to it: While it's good policy, it's politics that preys on our worst fears. Not all Level 2 and 3 sex offenders are kid-diddlers. Not that we'd like to even shake hands with these people, but when people talk about this legislation, they talk about child molesters. Realize that offenders that committed heinous crimes against adults are being "punished" (we can't think of a better word, but don't love it) for someone else's kid crimes.

The end result of this: Fitchburg is less hospitable to sex offenders than it was before. Not sure there's anything wrong with that.