Hello Concealed Coalition! Quick question – how well do you actually know your neighbors?
If you watch our Concealed Coalition University episode on family safety then you know we spend a lot of time talking about finding out if your neighbors are helpful, harmful, or somewhere in between.
The reason I want to bring this topic up is because of something that happened to me a few weeks ago. As you may or may not know, I’m a police officer, and I try very hard to keep my patrol life separate from my Concealed Coalition life, but this is something that had to cross over.
Registered Sex Offenders Near Me?
I was assigned to be in a multi-agency task force, and our goal was to go ahead and assemble officers from all over the state, come down, and swarm one particular county in my state, visiting every registered sexual offender in the county in one big task group.
What was really interesting though is that as we would show up to check on these registered sex offenders, some of them were not home. As a result, we would have to go visit the neighbors to make sure they were in compliance and there was nothing that was outside their bounds of being released on this provision. Some neighbors were shocked to find out that there was a registered sex offender living near them.
What I found really scary about these encounters is that registered sex offender status is publicly available information. I personally think it’s well worth knowing if somebody near you, whether they’re next to you, down the street, or in any way connected with your lifestyle, is a registered sex offender.
Now, am I saying that all registered sex offenders pose an immediate threat to you and your family? No.
But I can tell you through firsthand experience that as I look through these files and visit people, it was crazy to find out some of the details and the absolute depravity of the activities they were involved in – not to mention that being unaware of this would be a lapse we can’t have.
The Moral of the Story
The moral of the story here is twofold:
- Please support law enforcement officers who go out and do this potentially dangerous work regularly.
- Learn more about your neighbors.
Remember, just because someone has been caught, convicted, and placed on the registered sex offender list does not mean they’re an immediate threat. But this is a boundary that some people have crossed over that we as Concealed Coalition family members need to be aware of to keep ourselves and our families a lot safer.
In the meantime, remember to be a guardian always and a warrior when needed.
