Five Days

John Evander Couey, a registered sex offender with a rap sheet thicker than an oak tree, lived on the same block as Jessica Lundsford.  It took the police five days to figure out that they should question Couey.  Five days.

When they finally went to interview him, he had fled.  Eventually - though the media won't tell us how long it took - police "followed-up" by asking him family members where Couey was living.  Some two or three weeks later they had a bead on this known sexual predator.

Given Couey's history, some are suggesting that his being free does "not inspire confidence in our criminal justice system."  The argument is that he should have been in prison.  That's a good point.

But I'm more concerned that it took detective five days to determine that they should interview nearby registered sex offenders when a 9-year old girl went missing.

Do I even need to say that taking five days is disgraceful detective work?  Nah -- I think the facts speak clearly for themselves.

Comments

[Frank]

a tragic story...I couldn't believe it when I found out they had him & let him go and so on...a petition(here in Fl) has started aimed @ sexual offenders...as I looked it over it's quite drastic in nature and may be too draconian for serious consideration...would you opine on the matter?

[Mike]

Frank, I'd like to hear more about this proposal.

[cheryl]

Everyday I watched the news hoping Jessica would be found alive ,the moment I found out what happened my heart broke for her and her family ,now after finding out about the man that did this terrible thing I am so angry at the system how can we continue to let people like this walk the streets ,the system is to busy protecting these sex offenders , I wont even speak of his name ,he has no name he's worse than a wild animal ,he's being protected right now from harm ,why should he be Jessica never had a chance ,he should suffer a million times over for what he has done .Its time for the system to start protecting our children from these preditors stop thinking about how much it costs to keep them locked up ,and start thinking about the next child that will be effected by these animals the day they are released back into society.

[Aaron]

Perhaps part of the problem is that, despite all the media attention on murderous recidivists, children remain at greatest risk not from registered sex offenders in their neighborhoods, but from friends and members of their own families. Unquestionably, an inappropriate fixation on a family member as "the most likely suspect" can impair an investigation, as seems to have occurred in the Ramsey case. At the same time, as of 2002, there were about 350,000 parental/family kidnappings each year, versus "about 200 to 300, are what the FBI calls 'stereotypical' kidnappings, where a child is gone overnight, transported over some distance, intended to be kept by the perpetrator or even killed." How often do sex offender lists prove useful in these cases? (That's not a rhetorical question - I'm interested in whether there actually are statistics.)

[Daniel]

I live 20 miles from the place Jessica was killed, and on the local level, we do get some news that is slightly different from the rest of the media. One, John Couey was not registered, in fact, he failed to register himself in the sex offender database. It was part of his original parole agreement. It is a common mistake to think these offenders are automatically registered, in which they are not. But registered or not, he was hyped on drugs, and would have done the dirty deed anyways. Does the system need to be looked at and improved? Yes, it does. So far, it cost Jessica her life through the current system, and who knows exactly how many more die every year for this very same reason?