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10/31/2016 Community backlash puts freed sex offenders in a Catch-22 - StarTribune.com STATE + LOCAL Freed sex offenders in a Catch-22 amid community backlash As they're released from MSOP, communities take action to keep them out. By Chris Serres Star Tribure OCTOBER 29.2016—9:30PU VIEW YOUR BALLOT I Zipoode GO Growing numbers of sex offenders are still being confined in Minnesota's controversial treatment program even after courts approved their release, amid an intensifying local backlash against state efforts to return them to the community. Across the state, anxious communities are rushing to pass extraordinary rules aimed at banning sex offenders from moving in, with fargeaching ordinances that would effectively bar them from any residential neighborhood. More than 40 localities have adopted such bans, and emotions have reached such a pitch that Human Services Commissioner Emily Johnson Piper, whose agency oversees the sex offender program, recently received a threat of violence against her children. Last week the city of Dayton, about 25 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, became the latest flash point. On Friday, the city passed one of the most restrictive measures yet, barring offenders from living near churches, pumpkin patches and apple orchards. In an emotional three-hour hearing, residents lashed out at the state for attempting to move three convicted rapists to a private group home in Dayton, as Qty Council members called for a statewide movement against such placements. Looming over these hearings is the haunting memory of 11 -year-old Jacob Wetterling, whose remains were found last month, 27 years after his abduction along a country road in Stearns County. `Jacob was abducted in a sprawling, wide-open place just like this," said Malina Hruby, a mother of two children in Dayton, gesturing toward nearby farm fields. "He is on all of our minds." The backlash is confounding state officials, who are running out of places to house sex offenders even as they, face mounting court pressure to release more of them. Including Dayton, roughly four dozen jurisdictions across Minnesota have now passed measures barring convicted sex offenders from living near schools, day care centers and other places with children. Some measures are so sweeping that the towns have become effectively off-limits to offenders, state officials said. The city of Dayton's ordinance even bars offenders from handing out candy on Halloween, or leaving an exterior porch light on to invite trick -or -treaters. The rush to craft such ordinances intensified late last year, after U.S. District judge Donovan Frank issued a ruling, now under appeal, that the state can no longer confine offenders indefinitely without a clear path toward release, and ordered the state to develop options for housing offenders in the community. While similar local laws have been struck down by courts in several states, including California, Massachusetts and New York, they have gone largely unchallenged here. "It's spreading like wildfire," said Richard Weinberger, a clinical director for a Twin Cities residential program for adult male sex offenders. "At some point, the state will have to step in and strike these down These people have to live somewhere, and we can't keep saying, 'No.' " The backlash is complicating efforts to move individuals currently in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) who are legally entitled to live in the community under close supervision. There are now six offenders at MSOP who have been provisionally (hftp://stmedia.startdbune.com/images/ows_1477T733266731 BRIAN PETERSON Malina Hruby of Dayton., Minn., with her two children. Memories of Jacob Wetterling are top of mind, she said. http://www.startriburie.com/freed-sex-offenders-in-a-catch-22-amid-cam m unity-backlasht399169141/ 113