P.O.M. Offender Locator
P.O.M. Offender Locator by www.govision2020.com
Vision 20/20, a division of ThinAir Wireless Corp., Inc., markets GPS technology under the guise of “P.O.M.” (“Peace of Mind”). While the company does market innocuous uses for the GPS device (such as locating your pet or your vehicle), one piece of P.O.M. technology is the “P.O.M. Offender Locator,” which provides the subscriber with up-to-date locations of registered sex offenders in any area of the United States. The product’s tag-line is: “They Know Where You Live! It’s Time To Turn The Tables!” With the application, a subscriber can find out where any registered sex offender lives and what he or she looks like.
All the subscriber has to do is plug in their current address into the application. Once the application has identified your current address, it retrieves the locations of all registered sex offenders in the surrounding area. Each offender is listed with a photo, his or her date of birth, street address, and when available, the offense committed.
Vision 20/20 also has a “P.O.M. Alert System,” which sends the subscriber a text, voicemail or email whenever a sex offender moves in or out of the area.
Currently, the application is available on Facebook, i-Phones, and the Internet. Soon it will be available for download on Blackberries, and for plug-in with WordPress.com.
What are your thoughts about arming the public with the ability to have real-time information about every registered sex offender in their surrounding area?
Update (9/19/09): According to the Police Digest of the Providence Journal, Warwick police had to respond to vigilante citizens this week after a married couple saw a man that they thought was taking photos of a child on a jungle gym. The couple then went on an online database of sex offenders (something similar to the P.O.M. Offender Locator), looked through sex offenders living in Warwick, and tried to match their photos with the database pictures. Once the private citizens found what they believed to be a match, “someone else began circulating fliers, according to the police.”
After seeing the flier, the police began to investigate the claims contained within it. The sex offender ended up having several alibis (which the police confirmed), and was proven to have been at a different location at the time of the alleged incident.
The Warwick police have urged citizens to call the police instead of “taking matters into their own hands.” Yet with easy access to online databases like P.O.M., it is very simple for private citizens to do just that.
Opinions on the married couple’s behavior? On the police’s response?
For more information about legal representation of those charged with sex crimes, please visit: http://katherinegodinlaw.com/areas-of-law/sex-crimes/
Katherine E. Godin, Esq.
The Law Office of Katherine Godin, Inc.
615 Jefferson Blvd.
Warwick, RI 02886
Phone: (401) 274-2423
Fax: (401) 489-7580
Email: kg@katherinegodinlaw.com
Website: http://www.katherinegodinlaw.com
