Halloween Safety and Fun

(Goofy dressed as Mickey clip art courtesy of Disney-Clipart)

The New York Times reported that in Missouri certain rules attempting to limit convicted sex offenders’ activities on Halloween have been deemed illegal by a United States District Court judge in St. Louis. A Missouri attorney general plans on appealing judge Carol E. Jackson’s decision to allow the sex offenders to maintain their civil liberties on Halloween by not forcing them to limit certain activities, while allowing two provisions in the law to stand; specifically, one that required offenders to post “no candy or treats at this residence” sign and another to discourage trick-or-treaters by requiring offenders to turn off any porch lights.

Here in New York city, we haven’t seen similar lawsuits cropping up attempting to identify and separate sex offenders from Halloween activities. I suppose that infractions of such laws would be entirely too difficult to keep track of in our urban environment where millions of people are our neighbors.

Growing up in Sheepshead Bay was great fun. When I was a kid, I remember going with a group of others until it was dark gathering candy and having some innocent fun. There are still quite a few families and children in our family-oriented Sheepshead Bay who happily and safely go trick-or-treating, knocking on neighbor’s doors for fun and candy. We wish you all fun and safety. But, we would also like caution you to be very careful in this evening’s activities.

Read more about staying safe on Halloween after the jump.

The Halloween Safety Guide, available online, is just one place where you can find advice about how to stay safe. You can also get information about where registered sex offenders may be residing at the Family Watchdog website. You just need to enter your zip code and it will pop up with a map of click-on dots where you can see a picture with information about the offender. With a city as large a population as ours has, you might imagine there would be more dots (I’m relieved there are not, though). This leads me to believe that there are many more sexual predators, just that they have not made it onto the map. With all of the news about civil rights of identified, convicted, and registered sex offenders, we might forget to think about those who living amongst us who have not been identified, caught, or even known to prey on children. New York City, with a parade like the Village Halloween Parade which has its own website, is a much different place than Missouri or Tennessee.

New York City, with a parade like the Village Halloween Parade which has its own website, is a much different place than Missouri or Tennessee. While Sheepshead Bay may not have as many porches (or leaves, for that matter) as in Knoxville, Tennessee, where, according to VolunteerTV.com, offenders are prohibited from decorating their porch with autumn leaves, we do have lots of stoops and apartment doors and not every one of them with the light on or festooned with spooky-Goofy cutouts may be friendly.

With that said, have a safe and pleasant Halloween.