NIAGARA FALLS
State confirms sex offenders live too close to a school
NIAGARA FALLS — Representatives for the state Division of Parole acknowledged Thursday that a Niagara Street boardinghouse that is home to 14 registered sex offenders violates a local law that prohibits some convicted offenders from living within 1,500 feet of a school.
But finding a new place for those sex offenders to live will take time, they said, and will require several agencies and the community to work together.
“It’s real easy to simplify this and say, ‘OK, make them disappear,’ but we can’t,” said Eugenio Russi, regional director of the state’s Division of Parole. “They’re residents of the community whether we want it or not.”
Russi pledged to work to move registered sex offenders under the division’s control from the Midtown Inn boardinghouse on Niagara Street to other locations, but said the agency will need help to identify housing that qualifies.
Russi was one of five Division of Parole officials who met with school and community leaders on Thursday during a two-hour round-table discussion organized by Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte to discuss concerns about the number of registered sex offenders in Niagara Falls.
The meeting was sparked by a decision by State Supreme Court Justice Richard C. Kloch Sr. in May to place a 51-year-old man, James A. McKinney, convicted of having sex with four girls younger than 14, in the Midtown Inn under “strict and intensive” supervision of the Division of Parole.
Agency representatives on Thursday addressed parents and community leaders, angered that several registered sex offenders, including McKinney, have been placed at the Midtown Inn boarding house a few blocks from Niagara Street Elementary School.
The Division of Parole officials also acknowledged that the school building is within 1,500 feet of the boarding house, in violation of a city law that prohibits Level 2 and Level 3 registered sex offenders whose victims were children from living within that distance of a school, playground or daycare center.
Separate measurements done last month by The Buffalo News and a city inspector found that the majority of the building was within the city’s prohibited area.
“I do not understand why we are taking so long to move them,” said Bob Kazeangin, president of the Niagara Falls School Board. “They are violating the law. They should be gone. They should be gone by the end of the week.”
The Division of Parole had previously contended that registered sex offenders living in the Midtown Inn were in compliance with the city’s 1,500-foot law.
On Thursday, the agency reversed its position.
Russi said the division initially measured from the school door that was the farthest from the boardinghouse after having been told it was the main entrance to the school. That door, he said, was about 1,530 feet from the boarding house at 1967 Niagara St.
But the division remeasured the distance after learning that the main entrance is in the center of the building.
The city’s senior building inspector, Dennis Virtuoso, who is also a Niagara County legislator, said the main entrance of the school is 1,487 feet from the Midtown Inn. Another school door used by children as an exit is 1,287 feet.
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