Sex offenders told they must move | Feb. 3, 2008

Convicted sex offenders who have called the area under the Julia Tuttle Causeway bridge home got a rude awakening early Saturday morning.

They were visited by state Department of Correction parole officers at 5 a.m. The message, delivered in writing, was clear: The residents have until 9 a.m. Monday to vacate the bridge, which spans Biscayne Bay, linking Miami to Miami Beach.

The move to rid the bridge of the men marks yet another strange chapter in a long-running saga that has drawn national media attention and began in 2006 when a handful of convicted sex offenders began sleeping under the bridge because a city of Miami residency ordinance left them unable to find housing.

The ordinance does not allow convicted sex offenders to live within 2,500 feet of a school. The state requirement is only 1,000 feet.

The state Department of Corrections, charged with supervising offenders after their release, said no offenders were ever assigned to sleep under the Julia Tuttle bridge. The department simply OK’d the location because offenders said it was just about impossible to find a place to live within the ordinance’s restrictions.

On Saturday, the causeway residents said state officials had been ordering them to leave through the week.

“What are we supposed to do? Where are we supposed to go?” asked Juan Carlos Martín, a causeway bridge resident first assigned to the bridge by the state Corrections Department in January 2007. “We had a nice place going here. We had it set up. It’s not a perfect situation. We have no running water, but we had it set up like home, like a community, ” he said. State officials said offenders had received the first eviction notice on Tuesday and that four of the 19 residents already had found other places to stay by Friday night.

Gretl Plessinger, a corrections department spokeswoman, said the agency decided to give residents notice after the owner of land under the Oakland Park Boulevard Bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Lauderdale last month evicted residents living there.

“We have every indication this is going to happen statewide. We’re being proactive by giving them more time to move, ” she said, noting they may stay only if the causeway owner agrees.

Unlike the land under the Oakland Park Boulevard Bridge, which is privately owned, the western portion of the Julia Tuttle Causeway is owned by the city of Miami.

Plessinger stopped short of saying that those without living arrangements would be arrested on Monday.

However, those living under the causeway bridge fear they may end up back in prison. “We are doing what we’re supposed to do, ” said one resident who did not want to be identified. “I take orders, I do what I’m supposed to do, and they said I’m supposed to be here. Now I’m supposed to move somewhere I don’t even know how to get to?”

Parole officers have handed out packets to the residents detailing other accommodations in the state. Most are hundreds of miles away from Miami.

The closest is a Motel 6 in Fort Lauderdale, but the $79.99-a-day rate is too steep for most of the residents.

When reached by phone, the manager of the Fort Lauderdale Motel 6 said he knew nothing about the arrangement.

Ray Taseff of the American Civil Liberties Union in Miami said the move to evict the residents will “ultimately boomerang on the city” of Miami, causing offenders to go underground.

“This is the government that created homelessness, and now the government is effectively trying to banish them from the community, ” he said.

“If these people are homeless and engaging in life-functioning behavior, it seems to me that violating their parole is a violation of their Eighth Amendmentrights, ” said Taseff, who said the ACLU will help the residents.