AP and Fox News...
Judge Rules Sex Offenders Can Live Under Bridge
Saturday, April 07, 2007
MIAMI — In a county where any housing within close to a half-mile of a school is off-limits for sex offenders, five convicts have been forced to call the low space under the Julia Tuttle Causeway home.
Above their heads, the loud wooshing of cars headed to and from Miami Beach's warm sands and nightclubs. Below their pallets — if they have them — rats scurry. Add to that the fear that comes with being hated and vulnerable.
"You just pray to God every night, so if you fall asleep for a minute or two, you know, nothing happens to you," said 30-year-old Javier Diaz, who arrived this week. He was sentenced in 2005 to three years' probation for lewd and lascivious conduct involving a girl under 16.
Even some who consider this concrete makeshift shelter just deserts might reconsider if they looked around. About 100 feet away are Biscayne Bay's blue-green waters, where a family with young children played this week.
The conditions are a consequence of laws passed here and elsewhere around the country to bar sex offenders from living near schools, parks and other places children gather. Miami-Dade County's 2005 ordinance — adopted partly in reaction to the case of a convicted sex offender who raped a 9-year-old Florida girl and buried her alive — says sex offenders must live at least 2,500 feet from schools.
