Thought for the Day testimony

I am Atwo Zee, a law abiding citizen of Florida.  I begin with a Thought for Today (and every day):

We who are on Florida’s offender registry understand that we were originally placed on the registry because we committed a sexually related offense. But that’s not why we are on the registry today.

We are on the registry today because we have NEVER reoffended. Because obviously if any of us had ever re-offended we’d be in prison right now instead of being in the community on the registry.

I say to you the fear of re-arrest has nothing to do with my reasons for wanting to “go straight” and never re-offend, but still, anyone who thinks they can re-offend and not get caught is kidding themselves. The fact that we are on the registry today should be your guarantee that we have NEVER re-offended.  In America we have a name for such people:  law abiding citizens.

So I say to my fellow law abiding citizens: When you are home tonight – go to the FDLE website, look at the map of your neighborhood, and realize this is a map of people in your neighborhood who have NEVER re-offended. They are also fortunate to have not been scooped up in a weaponized law enforcement registry sweep and imprisoned for a paperwork error.

If any of those people had ever re-offended they wouldn’t be on that map.  They’d be in prison today.  This is a map of law abiding citizens.

And remember – FDLE is providing no information at all about the drug dealers in your neighborhood, the carjackers, embezzlers and home invaders in your neighborhood.  There’s no map of them on the FDLE website. Instead, they are showing you a map of law abiding citizens and telling you these are the people you should be afraid of.

I say to my legislators to to law enforcement – law abiding citizens should not be treated as criminal suspects. 

Therefore I urge you to tell FDLE to establish a policy whereby if any error or omission is found in any registrant’s file, he will be notified and provided an opportunity to correct that error before any further action is taken.

This requires no legislative action.  You’ll never have to publicly say anything good about any of us.  It only requires an internal FDLE policy change to allow law enforcement to act more humanely towards law abiding citizens.

Thank you.