09/19/2011
By Mallory Cooke
The Fort Smith Police Department gave members of the community a lesson on sex offenders Monday night.
“The public needs to know about these offenders and the more the public knows the safer they’ll be,” said Detective Michael McCoy of the Fort Smith Police Department.
McCoy deals with sex offenders and ran Monday night’s information session. “We’re going to talk about the levels and the laws,” he said, “We’re gone talk about state laws, federal laws, what sex offenders look like, how they act.”
The audience asked questions. Citizens for sex offender reform drove from other counties to listen and voice their opinion. “It was good to be here,” said Lynn Gilmore of Arkansas Time After Time, “We were a little bit apprehensive about this. We thought oh God we’re gonna be in a room full of wolves, but really that didn’t happen at all.” (See her comment on the article, and below)
McCoy says Fort Smith has about 214 registered sex offenders right now, which is up from about 170 two years ago. “They look just like everybody else,” said McCoy, “You’ll never know who they are.”
McCoy also mentioned an alert system where people can sign up to get an email if a sex offender moves into their area.
Monday night’s meeting was just the first of several. Every night this week at 6:00 p.m. people can go to the Fort Smith Police Department for an information session on sex offenders. The information sessions run through Friday, Sept. 23.
Comment (on the article) from Lynn of SOSEN:
Lynn Gilmore at 6:11 AM September 20, 2011
Just to clarify, when I said, "We were a little apprehensive about this. We thought, oh God, we're going to be in a roomful of wolves, but that didn't happen at all," I was referring to sex-offender haters, NOT sex offenders themselves! Note to self: Don't use the word "wolves" when referring to anti-sex offenders. Overall, we felt that the presentation went very well, the audience and Detective McCoy were open-minded about how the laws affect offenders and their families and we at Arkansas Time After Time greatly appreciate your plug for our organization. THANK YOU!!! Anyone troubled about the current sex offender laws should get in contact with us. Visit http://www.arkansastimeaftertime.org/.
