The Court of Appeals stunning reversal last month, in People v. Diack, of the Appellate Term, Second Department’s reversal of a Nassau district court’s dismissal of a criminal charge alleging a violation of a Nassau County ordinance severely restricting residency opportunities of registered sex offenders has significantly changed the landscape of this quintessentially incendiary Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) issue.
Nothing gets a neighborhood’s blood boiling more quickly than the news that a convicted sex offender has moved to town or has been living there all along. New York law demands government supervision of the establishment or continuation of residence, change of address and more frequently the satellite tracking of the geographic wanderings of all registered sex offenders.
