Dear Editor: Since 2009, laws that regulated where sex offenders would be able to live and how far they would have to be from schools, or certain other public places were strictly enforced.

For the past five and a half years the number of cases that have to do with sex offenders have gone and stayed down which is great news for the city of Downey. This means that all of the efforts made by the city council and law enforcement have been working, so why change anything now?

For the victims of these types of crimes it is not only the time in which the attack against them happens that’s scary, but also everything they will have to go through after the traumatic incident in order to be able to go back to living a normal life.

Another unpleasant belief is that sex offenders’ actions are like a drug and even if they try changing it is just a habit that they cannot break. This is the reason why they often strike more than just once. If an innocent child happens to walk by a sex predator one day, that moment can come back and haunt him for the rest of his or her life. When counseling is unsuccessful in trying to help victims clear their heads of their horrible experiences, then they start looking for alternatives to heal them. In many cases that alternative is the use of drugs. From that point on the victim’s life can go downhill and even result in death all because of an event that could have been prevented by law enforcement. And if in any case a sex offender was to harass or attack anybody and get away with it, the cameras that the city voted on not putting in public places, can give the police a good chance of finding the criminal.

Many of the people of Downey believe that investing in these types of cases are not beneficial and that the money can be used on other luxuries. To the people that have not been sexually harassed it may feel like these laws make no difference but in reality this injects fear into sexual predators, which may cause them to think twice before they try something bad or may even result in them staying away from the city. Crime rate is something that people really look into before moving into a city and by preventing sexual offense activity you can bet that the overall rate will go down.

At the end of the day, a price must be paid in order to make Downey a safer place, but that is a small price to pay to keep it a desirable destination for people to relocate to.

Brian Morales

Paramount

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Published: April 23, 2015 - Volume 14 - Issue 02