“New York State is clamping down on sex offenders on parole playing Pokémon GO,” Don Reisinger reports for Fortune. “Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an edict on Monday to the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) to stop any sex offender currently on parole to immediately stop playing Pokémon Go and ‘similar’ but unidentified games. The directive applies to nearly 3,000 Level One, Two, and Three sex offenders currently on parole, according to the governor’s office.”
“The Governor’s move comes just days after New York State Senators Jeffrey Klein and Diane Savino issued a report called ‘Protecting Our Children: How Pokémon Go and Augmented Reality Games Expose Children To Sex Offenders,'” Reisinger reports. “The report was based on investigations that discovered sex offenders were using Pokémon Go to lure children to locations ‘in close proximity to, or even at, sex offender residences,’ the governor’s office says.”
“In addition to ensuring all sex offenders are off Pokémon Go, Governor Cuomo also issued a letter to Niantic Labs, the game’s developer, informing it of his decision and providing the latest list of sex offenders in hopes the developer will ban sex offenders,” Reisinger reports. “The governor has also directed the state’s criminal justice arm to contact Apple and Google ‘to inform them of these public safety concerns and work with them to enhance user safety.'””
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We understand the sentiment, if not the practicalities of enforcement.
I give it 6 months before this game will be banned everywhere in the US.
1) The game doesn’t allow you to place lures just anywhere you want, so drawing kids to sex offender’s homes isn’t possible, unless they home just happens to sit right next to some other form of Poke Stop, in which case stopping them playing will accomplish nothing.
2) If sex offenders are in some way luring kids to their homes, they need to be thrown back in prison! End of story!
Now government can ban people from playing a game on their phone????
What can’t government do???
Yes, they can if you are on parole. Nothing wrong with that.
While I don’t disagree with your sentiment and overall concept of what restrictions the government can place on parolees, I have just one question…
How can they actually enforce that ban?
Scenario: Parolee comes in for his/her check in. Parole officer asks to see their phone to see if they have Pokémon Go on it. The parolee pulls out a clean phone with virtually nothing on it (not mentioning he/she has another phone hidden away at home). The parole officer sees it’s a phone in use but has no contraband of any kind on it. The parole officer gives the parolee a good assessment and moves on to the next parolee.
Even for parolees, unless the government does a no warning, thorough search of the parolee’s home and work place (and friends’ places) there is absolutely no way to enforce this.
This sounds absolutely nuts to me. Even if Cuomo’s edict stands up to legal scrutiny, how can it possibly be enforced?
Establishing rules that are unenforceable is a big mistake. Establishing rules that are stupid is an even bigger mistake.
“how can it possibly be enforced?”
Actually, searching parolees without warning, even their cell phones, is standard procedure. It’s a condition of parole.
See . . .
Monday morning wakeup call: Knocking on doors of sex offenders with the Anaheim PD
http://behindthebadgeoc.com/cities/apd/monday-morning-wakeup-call-knocking-doors-sex-offenders-anaheim-pd/
The last photo shows the officer searching a parolee’s cell phone.
Disclaimer – I’m the photographer that took the photos.
You are picking at the foundations hoping to weaken the whole, but so be it. I should have qualified my statement – how can it be *effectively* enforced?
I suppose that a parolee can only own one cell phone? How about three cell phones? A tablet? Game and cell accounts registered under fake names? That is what I meant about unenforceable. I agree that random searches and such might turn up a few violators, but it won’t even come close to stopping it. As a society, we have to determine the best way to utilize our resources, and that includes law enforcement. If this Pokemon Go game is *truly* a threat, then it might make sense to attempt to control access to this group of offenders. If not, then we are wasting our time and resources when they could be put to better use.
In some ways, this is similar to the war on marijuana. It has been highly illegal for decades (and still is at the federal level even though some states are legalizing it). Yet it has always been readily available because almost anyone can grow it. Pot was available in middle school, pot was available in high school, and pot was available in college. K-9 units and other law enforcement measures catch some people, but not the vast majority. In the aggregate, the law is essentially unenforceable, at least relative to the resources applied.
Get back to me in a few months with the statistics on the number of sex offenders in New York that are penalized for playing Pokemon Go. I am willing to bet that the number will be low, very low.
The goal is not to “Catch’em All” (sorry, couldn’t resist that pun) but to give law enforcement a tool to use when conducting routine searches already being made.
Whether on not you agree with this law for parolees is another point. You can read other posts here where I poke fun at Governor Cuomo, (nothing personal, just having a little fun) but the law itself is sound.
“The Governor’s move comes just days after New York State Senators bla, bla, bla issued a report called ‘Protecting Our Children: How Pokémon Go and Augmented Reality Games Expose Children To Sex Offenders,'”
Just politicians trying to create reelection publicity points.
“The governor has also directed the state’s criminal justice arm to contact Apple and Google . . .”
. . . what I said above, with taxpayers money.
“New York State is clamping down on sex offenders on parole playing Pokémon GO,”
Keep in mind that this applies ONLY to sex offenders on parole. It won’t be long before politicians try to earn points by making you believe that their efforts apply to ALL sex offenders.
““In addition to ensuring all sex offenders are off Pokémon Go, Governor Cuomo also . . .”
Wow, that was quick!
This is one of those actions that enable politicians to claim they have acted decisively but really misses the point. If this works, then they should also ban them from having puppies and kittens, which are often used as bait. If politicians are really interested in reducing the recidivism rate for child molesters (which is up to 54%), then they should consider castration (which has a recidivism rate of about 3%).
“…it’s for the children.”
In the meantime, the NY state employees are likely playing on guvment dime.