Sex offenders list odd ‘homes’ as sheriff struggles to track

Sex offenders in Bibb County claim to live at City Hall, a tax business on the east side, fast food joints on the west side, in the woods around Bass Pro Shops on the north end and at the rest area off Interstate 475 — if the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office’s sex offender registry is to be believed.

“Those are offenders who are homeless,” Sgt. Janet Whetstone said in an email to The Melody of about 20 sex offenders whose addresses were listed at locations including grocery stores, automotive shops and even Whetstone’s office on Hazel Street. “They are required to register their ‘sleeping’ locations.”

As the county continues to grapple with the growing problem of homelessness, vagueness in state law makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the sheriff’s office to keep tabs on the small portion of offenders who lack a fixed address. Sheriff’s offices are required by law to verify addresses for sex offenders at least once each year.

“The law is very vague on how homeless offenders are to list their addresses or how law enforcement can enforce the sex offender law in regards on how to verify those addresses,” Whetstone said. 

Homeless sex offenders will often list the street address for the nearest building to where they are sleeping, whether it be in a nearby wooded area, a parking lot or an encampment, she said.

Though state law designates the Georgia Bureau of Investigation as the central repository for maintaining the sex offender registry, local sheriff’s offices are tasked with registering and monitoring hundreds of offenders without state funding to do so. Local sheriff’s offices also are required to maintain their own lists of offenders and predators.  

At least once each year, two Bibb County sheriff’s deputies verify addresses for some 478 sex offenders who are required to register with the sheriff’s office within 72 hours of being released from prison or parole. Offenders with a history of noncompliance are checked on more often.

The laws governing homeless sex offender registration have changed over the past decade or more.

In 2015, the Georgia Court of Appeals overturned a Coffee County man’s sentence for failing to register because the state never contested evidence showing the man was homeless and also never alleged the man had a fixed address that he didn’t provide to the sheriff’s office.

The judge found the statute requiring offenders to register had “no guidelines for what a homeless person who was without a route or street address should do to comply,” according to the written opinion.

Since then, homeless offenders have been required to provide the address of where they sleep. If they move, they must notify the sheriff’s office of their new sleeping location within 72 hours. 

Whetstone did not reply to an inquiry about how often homeless sex offenders update her office with their sleeping quarters. 

Atlanta lawyer Bernard Brody of Brody Law Firm specializes in representing sex offense cases and said he’s only ever represented one homeless client.

“My one client who was in this situation, he ended up sleeping in a tent in the parking lot behind like a warehouse where all these other people on the registry were sleeping as well,” Brody said, adding that Cobb County had attached a special form for the client to register as a homeless sex offender. 

The form lists space for those offenders to declare homelessness. It also requires they provide a four-hour daily time block during which they can be located at the address.

That’s not the case statewide. 

“What it is is a county reacting to that decision and recognizing that we have to have some sort of different procedure” for homeless offenders, Brody said.

Houston County Sheriff’s Sgt. Timothy Leonard has maintained the county’s sex offender registry for eight years. Leonard said he verifies residency for offenders who are not on probation “at least two or three times a year.”

The Georgia Department of Community Supervision verifies residency for sex offenders on probation. 

At present, only two of the 280 registered sex offenders in Houston County are homeless.

Leonard said he knows exactly where to find them. One lives in a van parked at a shuttered fast food joint in Perry.

“If I don’t think that they’re staying there, I start an investigation and usually I can get something within a very short period of time,” Leonard said. “Bibb County has a lot more homeless than I do.”