Litchfield Independent Review - Sex offender heads to court after standoff - Comments

Well first I looked his

randay91 — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:53:32 -0500

Well first I looked his record up with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. However you can run a search within the BCA website of no compliant registrants. (Wink) a good investigator always knows you can bypass lack of info by going up to MEEKER County courthouse....search his name in the system at the public computer in court administration...now you have his full name and his date of birth....you will then be able to find him in the public BCA website....however that info is not totally public...you have to be lawenforcement at times to access total information...however there is enough there to tell a person (in the public site) who is educated in the area of how the judicial systems charges and convictions as to the classification.
A first degree charge, as far as the charge when it goes to the prosecuting charge is a "serious felony" a charge in the second degree is a felony, as so forth ...it goes through a 3rd degree, 4th degree and last a fifth degree....(are you understanding this? Baed in the degree is based on the level of offender, in addition to other precursers such as the info found during a pre-release assessment and recommendations of the parolee evaluation. You just need to know how to look into all this...and I do...hope this helps you. Being as he is a life time registrant...means he is very likley to reofend. (Typically this will happen when it is a child molestation case.)

I also (Hint) did a search of local newspaper articals pretaining to his case in Wisconsin during the year it occured.

My thing is I do not always believe what I'm told...I look for facts and wait until I have the facts in front of me before I act. I'm not slamming anyone...I just knew that based on MN statute law enforcement would have been imune to a legal reaction had they notified the public because he was non compliant for more than 30 days. There is a non-compliant clause within the MN statute as I posted earlier...again it says as long as the agency acts in good faith in notifying the public. I know they can not alert everyone...but it would be nice to know that the schools and daycares be alerted.

I am very proactive when it comes to sex offenders in communities. It is my opinion (no slamming of Meeker county here at all) that legislators need to re-evaluate their laws nation wide as to notification processes.

What I do not understand is why they are not charging this man in addition to the pulling of the gun..with a violation of MN's registered sex offender laws. They can charge him with that too, he was in violation of registering and failing to report his residence here...based on your artical...back in December. (if I remember correctly).

Anyway hope this helps. The question to you is are you just a staff writer? Or do you consider yourself an investigative type reporter? I think your paper could use a good investigative reporter :) Someone I know who is influencial in this community told me to tell Brent to look into this particular artical and investigate further.

Randay91, can you give me a

Kristin Holtz — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:22:31 -0500

Randay91, can you give me a hand? I've been researching this story for a week and looked at the Wisconsin DOC registry page multiple times, but I can't find where is says Pitts is a "level II" offender. Where did you track down what level of offender he is?

I know he was convicted of second degree criminal sexual assault but I don't think that transfers into a level II designation.

Kristin Holtz is a staff writer for the Independent Review.

Okay now I know this is

randay91 — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:47:16 -0500

Okay now I know this is bogus. Wisconsin has his as convicted of a level II: thus lifetime registrant. In December when they investigated and knew who he was they would have contacted WI and found this out thus should have and could have notified us based on MN Statute as follows>>>>>>>>> (this is with regard to registered offenders for other states!!!!!
Evidently they are trying to make excuses as to why we were not notified?????? Sorry not wanting to stir things up...I just want accurate informtion, not misleading information....
Subd. 7a. Availability of information on offenders who are out of compliance with
registration law. (a) The bureau may make information available to the public about offenders
who are 16 years of age or older and who are out of compliance with this section for 30 days.
This information
may be made available to the public through electronic, computerized, or other accessible means.

(d) The bureau is immune from any civil or criminal liability that might otherwise arise,
based on the accuracy or completeness of any information made public under this subdivision, if
the bureau acts in good faith.
source: https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/statutes/?id=243.166, accessed 03/20/2008.

Appears that we need some

randay91 — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:15:21 -0500

Appears that we need some comprehensive legislation review on registerd sex offenders and how they allow alerts on a state by state level.

I find myself wanting to look into this more, because I would think that although sex offenders are required to register, it would not matter what state they are in to when it comes down to notifying the public of a registerd sex offender. Meeker County...the state of MN for that matter should be have the authority to alert the community he is in because he was convicted in the Justice System of his crime.

This shows how we loose offenders, there are so many loop holes it isn unreal. We need a serious over haul in this area.

Hypothetically speaking what would we have we done here in Meeker, had although authorities knew who he was, and could not alert the community, and he had preyed on our children? Because of silly data protection laws, we would not be warned and our children would have suffered.
This is not rite. Not right at all. Meeker should have been able to alert, and so should all the other states across America!

Sex offender heads to court after standoff

Kristin Holtz — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 08:07:00 -0500

A Litchfield man who is a convicted sex offender will make his first appearance in Meeker County District Court Wednesday, March 26 after a Feb. 26 standoff with law enforcement.

Thomas Warren Pitts, 28, was charged Feb. 27 with second-degree assault and possession of a weapon, following a standoff with Meeker County Sheriff deputies at a rural Litchfield residence.