Throughout his twenty-six years with the Ulster County Sheriff's Department, Captain Mike Freer said he's never seen anything like the actions taken by Rockland County's Department of Social Services when they relocated a sex offender from their district into a Kerhonkson motel.

In early December, Rockland's DSS placed a registered sex offender, Christopher Palma, into a room at the Colonial Motel, citing their inability to find him adequate housing in Rockland that conforms to the county's sex offender law.

Palma, 25, was convicted in 2005 on charges that he had sex with two minors and possessed child pornography. In 2007, Palma moved into an apartment near an elementary school in Pearl River, and was promptly evicted per Rockland's Pedophile-Free Child Safety Zone Act, which prohibits offenders from living or having employment within 1,000 feet of facilities that would provide them easy access to potential victims.

Palma voluntarily entered Rockland County Summit Park Hospital's in-patient crisis unit in April 2007. County officials agreed that Palma had been unable to find housing that reconciled with the law. As state law prohibits the hospital from releasing a patient without a home, Rockland County paid $1,225 per day in hospital charges for the next 18 months until negotiating placement for him in the Ulster County motel last month.

Colonial Motel's owners, Ashraf and Shahida Rizvi were contacted by Rockland's DSS in November and agreed to house Palma for $650 a month. The Rizvis said they were not told that Palma was a high-risk sex offender. They claim they found out when the police circulated fliers informing the community of Palma's location.

Palma has since been relocated to a mission in New York City.

Police Captain Freer noted that state law requires him to disseminate information to the community regarding the location of level-three violators.

"I think the issue here isn't even so much the fact that he's a sex offender," he said, "Rather, it's the fact that Rockland County is trying to relocate their undesirables to our county."

Ulster County Legislator Glenn Noonan contends that dysfunction at the state level of government is to blame because they refuse to address the problem, which, as a result, "forces counties to play against each other."

Noonan is proposing legislation for Ulster County that mimics Rockland's Pedophile-Free Child Safety Zone Act and he insists that if all counties did likewise, "it would force the hand of the state assembly to deal with this problem on the state level."

A public hearing on the proposed law establishing sex-offender free zones will be held on Wednesday, January 21 at 6 p.m. in the Legislative Chambers of the Ulster County Office Building. Following the public hearing, the legislature will meet in special session to vote on the law.

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