Legislation MASP supports

The 2008 Legislative session has begun. As an organization we are officially supporting three bills; the Surrogate Stalker Act, the Water Polo Bill, and the Ice Cream Truck Bill (we like to use names since remembering all of the numbers gets far too confusing).

The Surrogate Stalker Act (AB 534) was our inaugural project. It came to be after a certain self-proclaimed pedophile began blogging about the best places to find children in our communities. While we found his behavior reprehensible, we were even more concerned about other sexual predators reading his blog and seeking out our kids. SSA would expand the child endangerment statute to include posting and publishing specific information about children and their whereabouts. This bill will be heard in the Senate Public Safety Committee on April 29th.

The Water Polo Bill (AB 2104) was introduced in response to some unscrupulous photographers who took pictures of high school athletes (namely water polo players and swimmers) at sporting events and placed those photos on adult pornographic websites. This had major psychological impacts on the athletes involved and also placed them in danger as their school logos were easily identifiable on their caps. We were shocked to learn that while child pornography is a crime, placing these types of photos on pornographic sites was not. The Water Polo Bill would make it a crime to prepare, post, or publish photos of a minor on an obscene site. It passed unanimously out of the Assembly Public Safety Committee and is now headed to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

The Ice Cream Truck Bill (AB 2169) would prohibit registered sex offenders from obtaining business licenses to operate ice cream trucks. Specifically, the bill would prohibit cities and counties from issuing the licenses to offenders whose victims were under 16 years of age. This came about after it was discovered that a registered sex offender was operating an ice cream truck in Riverside County. Ice cream truck drivers have direct access to children (in many cases unsupervised) and should be prohibited from operating this type of business, period. The bill is headed to the Business and Professions Committee at the end of the month.

We are always on the lookout for reasonable legislation to protect our kids and we always encourage our members to pass along ideas or bills that we may have missed. In the meantime, please visit our website at www.maspofcalifornia.org to join our efforts.