NC ACLU's Rudinger Wins One For Garner Sex Predators

Garner, NC Board of Aldermen voted 3-2 against an ordinance that would have prohibited registered sex offenders from entering parks owned by the town, saying that the ordinance was too vague and had too many loopholes.

Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the North Carolina ACLU, apparently reviewed Garner's proposed ordinance under what appears to be a veiled threat of legal action, which the ACLU has announced it is considering against other towns that have adopted comparable ordinances.

Rudinger said:

"We certainly understand and support the city's interest in promoting public safety. But these overly broad laws that punish people based only on their status do not serve the goal of making the public safer."

But here's the kicker—Alderman Buck Kennedy offered Rudinger and the North Carolina American Civil Liberties Union a chance to contribute in drafting an ordinance to protect women and children in public parks from convicted sex offenders—and Rudinger declined to help.

I can only assume that the North Carolina ACLU viewed an opportunity to help draft a law protective of non-predators as a conflict of interest.

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In not unrelated news, Ryan Hade who survived being raped, mutilated, stabbed and left for dead in 1989 at the age of seven in a Tacoma, Washington park, died as the result of a motorcycle accident June 9. He was 23.

Earl Kenneth Shriner, the brutal sexual predator that brutalized Hade, will sadly not be able to take advantage of the sex offender ordinance-free Garner park system, as he is serving a 131-year sentence.

The 33 registered convicted sexual predators in Garner, and 525 within Wake County don't have that problem.