Suffolk Co. looks to move homeless sex offenders

RIVERHEAD (WABC) -- Registered sex-offenders are a tiny fraction of Suffolk County's homeless population. They live together in the shadows of eastern Long Island.

Thirty-eight men are housed in trailers on county land in Riverhead and Westhampton.

Officials want to move them out to existing homeless shelters elsewhere in the county.

Suffolk Police Chief Jim Burke told a subcommittee of the county legislature on Thursday that it was part of a larger strategy to step-up monitoring of all one thousand registered sex offenders in Suffolk.

Under the new program, no more than one offender will be placed in any single shelter and family shelters are out of the question. There will be what he called "technology-based monitoring" of all registered offenders as well as in-person address verification.

County lawmakers seemed receptive if not entirely convinced.

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