MICHEL MARTIN, host:
Finally, we look to a very different story from the edge of another American city, Miami, where an attempt to stop sexual predators from being near kids has had unexpected consequences.
In recent years, a number of cases where predators have killed or harmed children have led many American cities to stiffen penalties and to enact strict laws about where known offenders can live after they are released.
But in Miami, one such law is creating another public safety crisis: homelessness. There, a law stipulating that former sex offenders cannot live within 2,500 feet of places where children congregate - schools, parks and even bus stops - has apparently caused dozens of offenders to take up residence under a local bridge.
More than 80 people are camping out under the Julia Tuttle Causeway in a shanty-like town of makeshift tents because they cannot find anywhere else to live under the terms of their release.
Greg Allen, NPR's Miami correspondent, has been following the story and he's joining us now.
Welcome. Thank you for joining us.
GREG ALLEN: Thank you.
MARTIN: How did this area come to be?
ALLEN: It's such a long and convoluted path that's gotten us here, Michel. You know, it certainly started in 2007. The state basically is the people who decide where these people go when they get out of prison. You have probation officers who are the people in the hot seat who have to figure where these guys - and in some cases, women - are going to live.
When they started looking, they realized there was hardly anywhere to go, so the state identified this piece of state-owned land, which is - you know, to describe it, it's an island, basically, in the middle of Biscayne Bay. It's probably, you know, a half mile from the mainland, which is under a bridge on the causeway as being the one place in Miami-Dade County that they said was not within 2,500 feet of any park, school, etcetera.
And so the state started bringing people there, issuing licenses and state ID's that say very clearly on the address line: under the bridge, Julia Tuttle Causeway, in many cases.
MARTIN: And you've been reporting on this, as we mentioned. You've spoken with some of the ex-offenders living under this bridge, as you might imagine, including 44-year-old Homer Barkley. He pleaded guilty to attempted sexual battery 17 years ago. And he says the authorities forced him to live under this bridge after he violated his parole. And this is what he told you. Here it is.
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Mr. HOMER BARKLEY: When I came here, they give me nothing. They just put me here. They gave me a hundred dollars, you know, thinking that I'm going survive on a hundred bucks after getting released out of prison. I started on reeducating myself, rehabilitated myself to, you know, be a productive, you know, individual in society.
But then when you put me up under this bridge with nothing to live off of, what are you trying to do? You're trying to force me to what? Just go underground?
MARTIN: And to that point, when he talked about going underground, is that what's happening? Are people, in fact, just saying I'm not going to live here and disappearing?
ALLEN: Well, there's seems to be little question, Michel, that is happening, and that's something that's a great concern to the police. It's a great concern to the state authorities who are the people who actually, you know, started placing people there. City commissioner told me, he thinks that as many as 100 people who the probation officers should be keeping track of have actually left the area and are just off the radar.
MARTIN: The conditions, as Mr. Barkley described, are very primitive, and even apparently some officials are worried about that. You talked with Miami Police Chief John Timoney, who sees a growing crisis here. He talked with you about a recent incident. Let's just play what he told you.
Chief JOHN TIMONEY (Miami Police): On July 4th, I was actually over there myself. I saw three of my units down at the camps, a man in there who I guess was trying to commit suicide by slashing his wrists. The police officers approached him. He had the knife. He continued to slash the wrists and then ran away.
Obviously, they couldn't take the knife away from him, so they eventually had to taser him just to save him to get the knife away. And then he, of course, he was sent off to the hospital. It's just an awful situation.
MARTIN: If the police chief's concerned about it, clearly, advocates are concerned about it. What do other officials say? You're saying that the state initially started sending people to this location. What do they say about how long they think this is supposed to go on and what is to be done about it?
ALLEN: Well, this is a situation, Michel, where, you know, everyone is frustrated. The state, you know, clearly did send people here. They say they no longer do tell people they need to go here, but it's, of course, no secret now that the one place in Miami-Dade County that does comply with the law is under the bridge on the Julia Tuttle Causeway. So these ex-offenders know when they get out, you can either violate your probation, get thrown back in jail or you can find a place to live. And the only place everybody knows about is the Julia Tuttle Causeway. That's the situation we're in.
The state doesn't like it. They don't know what to do about it. The city doesn't like it. They don't know what to do about it. The county doesn't like it - you know, and so on. No one by themselves has the funding, the money, the will to actually take this thing and to solve it. And to describe the conditions there, you know, the issue there is about safety, but it's also about health.
You're talking about 80-plus people there. There is no such thing as a porta-potty down there. You know, I mean, all the waste there of all - every kind of waste goes into the bay - into Biscayne Bay. They cook in open fires. They have generators there that operate some, you know, some cooking rings and stuff like that. But it's amazing that there hasn't been a bigger incident yet down there that's caused a problem.
MARTIN: And finally, Greg, do you have any sense of what public sentiment is about this? Needless to say, this is not a group for whom many people will have sympathy.
ALLEN: Well, you're exactly right, Michel. There is very little sympathy for these people, and that's one reason why this has gone on for so long. I mean, up - for years now, that population has been out of sight because it's been underneath the causeway. One thing that's causing problems now is that it's grown so much it's starting to get in public sight and city commissioners tell me that is a concern. They don't want to see it.
But the fact of the matter is these people did terrible things and no one is defending what they did. What is I think the position of the ACLU even is that what's terrible about this mostly is that it's terrible public policy. We cannot basically create a population of homeless people with no resources and say that's public policy.
The bottom line for many of these people, as we discussed, is public safety. This is not making us safer doing the job that the law was supposed to do in the first place, and that's really the bottom line, I think, for most people here.
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MARTIN: NPR correspondent Greg Allen joined us from his office in Miami.
Greg, thank you.
ALLEN: Thank you, Michel.
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MARTIN: And that's our program for today. I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Let's talk more tomorrow. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
