One of the most confounding things about liberals is their penchant for releasing dangerous criminals back onto the streets any time they get the chance, and it seems the coronavirus pandemic is as good an excuse as any to free even more miscreants.
The latest to get in on the coronavirus prisoner release fun is the Monroe County Jail in western New York, which was required by a statewide edict from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to release about 50 inmates, according to WROC-TV in Rochester.
These aren’t just any garden-variety petty thieves or drug users.
Among those released, at least four are registered sex offenders, three of whom are considered Level 3 offenders — meaning they have been convicted of raping minors and are deemed by the state as most likely to reoffend.
If that wasn’t bad enough, nine of the prisoners — including the sex offenders — are being housed at a Holiday Inn Express in Greece, New York, the report said.
The police chief of that town, Patrick Phelan, is just as confused by this insanity as the rest of us.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he told WROC. If you could present an argument to me that makes sense, I’m willing to listen. But this doesn’t make any sense.”
According to Phelan, the hotel is near a residential neighborhood and school. He said he was not alerted beforehand and is scrambling to notify the surrounding residents now that convicted sex offenders will be staying near where their children live or attend school.
“We weren’t told by anyone,” Phelan told WROC. “I think good practice would be that if you’re going to release nine convicted felons — some of them very violent, some of them registered Level 3 sex offenders, which is the highest level — if you’re going to release nine of those people into someone’s community, you might want to give law enforcement the heads up.”
The DOCCS order was meant to release low-level parole offenders in order to prevent a possible coronavirus outbreak in the prison. So far there are no cases of the virus in the Monroe County Jail.
WROC said it reached out to the department for its response to Phelan’s concerns and was told that it made decisions on whom to release based on a “review of the underlying technical violation, not the original crime.”
“So you have a violent criminal that’s done time in state prison who’s been given the chance of parole and not followed the conditions of their parole,” Phelan told WROC. “That’s who you’re talking about right now.”
A statement from the department said that its “top priority remains the public health and safety of New Yorkers during this global public health emergency and this measure will further protect a vulnerable population from contracting and transmitting this infectious disease.”
When it says it wants to “protect a vulnerable population,” the department means prison inmates such as these convicted sex offenders who might catch the virus, not the neighborhood children who are now in danger of becoming the next victim at the hands of a pervert.
