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 injunction action against the individual and get a court order..."

Staff told the council the maps used the standard parcel-edge to facility-edge measurement and that the police department already receives registration notifications for predatory offenders. The staff presenter said, "We have 20 predatory offenders, level 3 predatory offenders currently living in the city," and that existing residents would be handled differently from incoming persons (existing level 3 offenders would generally be excepted/grandfathered while new placements would be subject to the ordinance).

Council members raised several practical concerns. Several members asked whether parks in neighboring jurisdictions would be counted and whether distance buffers should be reduced around parks because Brooklyn Park has a high concentration of parks. Councilmember Pawlowski framed the panel’s stated aim: "the goal everyone has stated before is to do our best to protect residents, children and women, who are most often targeted by these *** offenders." Council members and staff also discussed problems created by congregate-care and group-home placements; several speakers said many reported criminal sexual conduct (CSC) incidents occur in congregate-care facilities, and that locating and classifying those facilities is difficult because state licensing categories vary.

Staff and councilors explored specific buffer configurations. Options discussed included: - A 1,000-foot buffer from parks, schools, childcare centers and places of worship (which staff said would exclude about 93% of residential parcels on the city map); - A mixed approach (for example, 300 feet from parks with larger buffers for schools/childcare) that reduced exclusion to a smaller but still substantial share of parcels; and - A compromise staff said many council members favored by the end of the session: roughly 500–600 feet from parks, 1,000 feet from schools and places of worship, and 1,000 feet between level 3 offenders.

Police staff explained how the ordinance could be operationalized: when the department receives a statutorily required registration notice, detectives would check the official map and notify applicants whether a proposed address is allowable. If a person moved to an address the city determined was not permitted under the local ordinance, staff said the person could be charged for failing to register under state law and the city could pursue civil remedies if the ordinance includes them.

Council members asked staff to prepare additional work-product before a formal ordinance is presented: updated interactive maps (staff noted a desire for a "slider" to test buffer distances), comparisons with neighboring and similar-size cities (Maple Grove and Champlin were discussed), and a narrower effort to identify and classify congregate-care settings that serve vulnerable adults. Several council members said they preferred moving quickly to provide notice to residents and to limit future placements; others urged careful legal and factual work to make the ordinance defensible.

Rather than a formal roll-call vote, the council reached a working consensus to have staff draft ordinance language and return with maps and comparative research. The mayor summarized the direction and asked staff to return with an ordinance draft for formal consideration.

A return hearing and formal ordinance introduction were expected to follow; staff were asked to include: maps showing the effect of chosen distances, a comparison with other cities' ordinances, proposed enforcement language (including civil remedies), and clarification about how existing level 3 offenders would be treated.

Ending: Council members said the item should be ready for a formal ordinance presentation after the requested analyses and mapping. The council adjourned after the consensus direction to staff.