It Wouldn't Have Caught This Guy

A sheriff's department in Louisiana yesterday declared an emergency order to force the American Red Cross to turn over information on thousands of evacuees and volunteers in its shelters to locate registered sex offenders within its parish.

On Tuesday, a grand jury indicted a Red Cross volunteer in Monroe, La., on indecency chages. The man, a convicted armed robber (emphasis added, but one hopes unnecessarily), is accused of asking a 13-year-old girl to perform a sexual act and fondling a 15-year-old girl, Deputy Davis said.

"There are hundreds of children in those shelters and we don't want some pedophile out there with all these children," Deputy Davis said.

Nearly 7,000 sex offenders are registered with the Louisiana State Police. A spokesman there said he has not heard of any other parish using emergency orders to re-register offenders.

Adapted from an article in the The Washington Times, September 22, 2005.