commenters sweep up after non-story

A story out of Santa Rosa CA tells us about a "sex offender sweep."

A countywide law enforcement check of registered sex offenders Thursday afternoon found that 94 of 119 offenders were in compliance with residential requirements, Santa Rosa police said.

As we would expect, most of the registrants were compliant. Any arrests made were for something other than a sex offense.

Yawn. 

The comments, though, are more interesting than the story.

Commenter panem_and_circenses does some math:

I am guessing the employees of the 12 agencies participating in this operation (12 agencies to knock on 119 doors - did you catch that?) were not volunteers and did the door knocking in teams. How many man hours did this take? Figuring in police salary and bennies, how much did this little exercise cost the tax payer? But hey, it is not as if the State and its cities are broke or that violent crime is a problem.... 

Now, if I were a LEO what would I prefer - fighting actual crime and dealing with criminals with guns or knocking on a bunch of doors (of people's homes who most likely have not committed a single crime in decades, many of whom are quite elderly) with a gun on my hip and a buddy by my side?

Shaman707 responds:

True, but it's easy overtime. And there is no value in the "enforcement". This group has an overall recid rate of less than 3%. That's lower than almost all other crime categories. But none of the other categories are "monitored" for life. A murder convict can do his time, complete parole, and move on. But somebody who got a happy ending from his 17 year old girlfriend 30 years ago is a social outcast and a criminal scumbag until he dies. The laws surrounding this group of people had good intentions, but they are horribly flawed, wasteful, and serve virtually no purpose towards public safety. [My emphasis.]

When LoveFor Da Game worried,

25 weren't in compliance, which is approximately 20% I still find that somewhat troubling...

 Panem_and_circenses was sensible:

I would be curious as to why you find this administrative shortcoming somewhat troubling...[My emphasis.]

Administrative shortcoming, indeed. When a data entry error can result in an arrest for failure to register, we are talking about administrative shortcomings.

When failure to register is defined, in an "alternate universe" kind of reasoning, as a sex offense, we are talking about astounding administrative shortcomings.

Good to see commenters pulling back the curtain on sex offender sweeps.