Brooklyn Park considering law limiting where sex offenders can live

NINA MOINI: Brooklyn Park is considering restricting where sex offenders can live in the city. You may be surprised to learn that in Minnesota, not every city is required to have rules on the books that prevent sex offenders from living near, say, schools, daycares, or parks. Brooklyn Park Police Inspector Matt Rabe noticed an uptick in sex offenders moving to Brooklyn Park, so he decided to figure out why. He joins me now on the line to talk about what he found out and his proposal to the city council moving forward. Thank you very much for being with us today, Inspector.

MATT RABE: Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you having me.

NINA MOINI: Would you share with us how this came to be? How did you notice this uptick?

MATT RABE: Yeah, so I get notified in my position of every level 3 sex offender that moves into the city and had been getting these notifications, and was a little bit surprised to see how many had come through in a pretty short order, and started asking about what's going on here. And then something else cropped up. We received a phone call from somebody that was advocating for a level 3 sex offender living in another city and looking for some housing for that individual.

And they asked if we had an ordinance. And I said no, why? And she said because the city that they're currently in does, and they're getting kicked out because of the ordinance. And I thought, well, gosh, maybe we should. What's going on here? As I dug into it further and took a look, the city of Brooklyn Park has 20 level 3 predatory offenders living in the city, which, compared to all of the cities around us, is significantly higher.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And just so without too much detail, level 3 is significant of the different levels?

MATT RABE: Yeah, there's three risk levels, one being the lowest. Two they call moderate. And level 3 is the highest risk of reoffense. That's right.

NINA MOINI: I think most people listening are probably like, what? I thought people couldn't live by schools and parks. I thought perhaps this was a law at the state level. Are there state laws around this?

MATT RABE: Good question. I looked into that, and no. I actually thought the state had some laws around it too. And they don't. Any law that does have residency restrictions are done at the municipal level, and our city didn't have any. There are 18 cities in Hennepin County that do have an ordinance regarding it and 27 cities that do not.

NINA MOINI: And so moving forward, have you been able to identify why Brooklyn Park?

MATT RABE: That's another really good question. I think what we have is a confluence of two things coming together at once here. Brooklyn Park has an inordinately high level of congregate care facilities, otherwise known as group homes. And we don't have an ordinance.

So I've noticed that of the level 3 sex offenders that live in our city, 50% of them are in group homes. It seems as though they're coming out of the prisons and somehow, for some reason, being placed in group homes. So when we have a really high number of group homes and we have no ordinance that restricts where they can live, I think we have these two things coming together to give us a really high number of sex offenders.

NINA MOINI: And could you talk a little bit more about just what a group home would be like? Would that be just for any individual who's coming out of incarceration, or are there group homes specific to sex offenders?

MATT RABE: Yeah. No, that's-- unfortunately, it's a catchall. There are different types of group homes, or congregate care facilities. They're managed by the state. The state is the one that does all the licensing for them. There's two state entities that do that.

And the city has no control over group homes whatsoever-- where they are, how many they have-- unless they're a city of the first class. That's defined as a city that's 100,000 people or more. Well, we're 86,000, so we don't have the ability to control that.

And so what ends up happening is people of all types are in group homes. It could be someone with a mental illness or a mental disability. It could be a physical disability. It could be behavioral. It could be substance abuse. It could be simply that they're homeless.

And what that means is we have a lot of vulnerable or potentially vulnerable people living in Brooklyn Park in these group homes. And then we have potentially high risk of offense offenders moving into group homes with these potentially vulnerable people.

NINA MOINI: So, Inspector, the ordinance or the proposal that you're working on, I understand you're going to present that to the Brooklyn Park city council next month. So I'm assuming you'll put your heads together with other people. And what have you come up with?

MATT RABE: Yeah. I've looked at all of the ordinances that other cities have in Hennepin County. Typically, they're a distance from the offender's residence to different areas like a school or a place of worship, a park, places where children tend to congregate. And that distance can be 1,000 feet, 1,500 feet, 2,000 feet. It really varies based on the layout of the city. And it's designed in such a way where it limits the amount of places that level 3 offenders can live within your city. It might be 10%, 15%, 20%, or 50% of your housing stock is then available for level 3 offenders to move into.

NINA MOINI: Are there any challenges you foresee? Because some people might argue, well, people have to live somewhere. And if it's a group home, then that's where they need to go. And if the city has more group homes, then what's going to happen. What are some of the challenges you foresee with this ordinance?

MATT RABE: Yeah, there are significant challenges. It has been challenged in the courts in a couple different places, and there are some concerns about that. I think most of those challenges are around if you build an ordinance that says you can't live anywhere within the city, that's probably unreasonable. There has to be a certain percentage of your housing stock that's available.

You're right. People do need to live somewhere. The courts have said you cannot indefinitely hold these people, and they have to have a place to go. I think what Brooklyn Park is saying-- hey, maybe we shouldn't be taking all of them. Maybe that's not appropriate.

Give us the tools to manage this problem better. We want the state to give us the tools to manage group homes better. And then we want to take control of some of the tools that we have, which would be this ordinance, to say, hey, Maple Grove's only got two, Champlin's got one, Plymouth's got zero. Brooklyn Park's got 20. Is there any way we could make that a little bit more even?

NINA MOINI: Are there any cities that you looked to when you were drafting up your ordinance that you said, OK, they're doing it right? Here's what makes sense. Anything like that?

MATT RABE: Yeah, I looked all around us. So Brooklyn Center has an ordinance. They're the city that actually told the offender, you can't live there. And the offender moved from there to our city.

I looked at their ordinance, looked at Maple Grove. I looked at Plymouth. And I'm taking bits and pieces out of each one. Maple Grove and Plymouth are similar in size to us, so I think that's an appropriate resource to look at. And that's what we're gauging our ordinance on.

NINA MOINI: So moving forward, do you think there should be changes at, say, the state level or something more uniform? Or do you think it's a better idea to just leave it up to individual cities and communities?

MATT RABE: That's a really good question. And I think it probably could be managed better and probably should be managed better at the municipal level, not necessarily the state level. I don't know if there is a catchall, all-encompassing solution to this problem. But the problem really is not just around the level 3 offenders, but also around the group homes. And that's what we've asked the state, is to give us the tools and the ability to manage these problems better. And then all of the cities together can figure out what is the solution to this problem. I don't think it's a solution that the state can come up with that is going to be all encompassing, that's going to fit for all of the different cities in the state.

NINA MOINI: As you've been raising awareness about this, what has the reaction been just from community and perhaps even city lawmakers?

MATT RABE: Yeah, it's been surprise. I actually got a text message this morning from a resident that says, what the heck? I didn't know we didn't have any rules around this. Why don't we have any rules around this? And they requested to have a meeting about it.

Like I said, I was surprised that the state didn't have any rules around this. It's overwhelmingly been surprise. People have been shocked to say a level 3 offender can move right in across the street from a daycare. Everyone's shocked by that, and everyone's concerned.

NINA MOINI: So moving forward, Inspector, what is next? You're going to present next month. And what are you hoping, I guess, timeline-wise for this effort?

MATT RABE: Yeah, next month I'm going to go to a work session with the council, and I'm going to give them a series of maps so they can figure out, OK, what is the distance that's appropriate? What percentage of our housing stock is appropriate? What are some of the limitations that we can have in this ordinance? Get a little bit of direction from them. And once we have that figured out, we'll be able to move forward and have them vote on an actual ordinance.

NINA MOINI: And just lastly, would this apply to people who are already living there, the sex offenders who are already there?

MATT RABE: So that's addressed in a lot of the ordinances, and that's probably what we'll have to do as well. And the people that are currently living here, they're going to be essentially grandfathered in. There will be an exception that they won't have to suddenly just get up and move. That would probably be unreasonable. But one thing that I have seen by watching these numbers really closely is that this population tends to be very transient as well. So when we enact this ordinance, I would expect that within a couple years, most of those people will have moved.

NINA MOINI: And last question, I promise. I just want folks to know how they can gain access to this information about where they live. Where's the best place to go?

MATT RABE: Oh, yeah. That's a great question. So it's on the state website. If you just go to Google and you type in Minnesota sex offender search, you'll be able to find the search. And you can look by city. You can look by county. You can look by zip code. And it's going to give you a little bit of information on when the person moved in. It's going to give you a little bit of information on who that person is and what it is that they-- the crime that they're convicted of.

NINA MOINI: All right. Inspector Rabe, thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it.

MATT RABE: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: That was Matt Rabe, an inspector with the Brooklyn Park Police Department.