Brooklyn Park council directs staff to draft residency-restrictions for level 3 predatory offenders

At a council work session, Brooklyn Park leaders agreed to direct staff to draft a residency-restriction ordinance aimed at incoming level 3 predatory offenders, with staff returning to council with proposed language, supporting maps and comparisons to other cities.

The discussion centered on maps prepared by city staff showing potential exclusion zones measured from parks, schools, childcare centers and places of worship. Staff said a 1,000-foot exclusion around those features would cover roughly 93% of residential parcels on the city map, while alternative mixes of distances (for example, 300 feet from parks combined with larger buffers for other features) reduced the exclusion area but still left a majority of housing within the zones.

City Attorney Thompson advised the council about legal risks and defensibility, recommending a middle-ground approach rather than the most restrictive option. "The the easiest ones to get sustained are the ones where you have the greatest availability for them to live," Thompson said, noting a need to balance public-safety goals with constitutional and jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction limits. He also recommended including civil remedies in the ordinance: "I would recommend you put a civil remedy in there that would allow you to bring an…