More sex offenders reside in Brooklyn Park than other suburbs. The city may limit where they live.

Matt Rabe, an inspector with the Brooklyn Park Police Department, answered a call that sparked a lot of questions.

Rabe said the caller was trying to place a registered predatory offender in Brooklyn Park after a neighboring suburb had turned them down due to their city’s residency restrictions.

Brooklyn Park doesn’t have an ordinance limiting where convicted sex offenders are allowed to live, but is surrounded by suburbs that do. The ordinances require registered offenders, often only those deemed to be at the highest risk of re-offending, to reside a certain distance away from schools, parks and other gathering areas.

More than 90 Minnesota cities have enacted such bans, creating a patchwork of residency rules that make many parts of the state off-limits to registered offenders who have served their time and are seeking housing. Brooklyn Park officials are now considering passing their own restrictions, as they question whether neighboring cities’ laws are part of the reason a higher number of offenders reside in their community.

“It’s pretty hard to look at the map and say there isn’t some sort of connection,” Rabe said.

Brooklyn Park has roughly 220 registered sex offenders living in the city. Of those, 19 were deemed to be “level three,” or at the highest risk of re-offending, as of April 10. Golden Valley had eight of those offenders, while Maple Grove had three and Brooklyn Center had two. Champlin, Robbinsdale and Bloomington all had one.

“I think it is clear that these ordinances can have the effect of skewing where people who are re-entering society can live. And they certainly can have the effect of pushing people from one place to another,” said Eric Janus, retired professor and dean at Mitchell Hamline College of Law, who authored a book on sex offender laws.

“My thought is that it’s not very smart to leave it up to each locality to decide something as important as this,” Janus said. “It should be a state policy, so you don’t have this disproportionate effect.”

In a sample across Hennepin County, Rabe found 18 cities had residency restrictions on the books, including Maple Grove, Champlin and Plymouth, and 27 cities did not. Rabe said there are exceptions, such as Robbinsdale and Bloomington, which don’t have such an ordinance but most days either have zero or only one offender living in their cities.

Rabe believes Brooklyn Park’s lower cost of living and large number of congregate care facilities, or group homes, also contribute to the higher number of offenders. Half of the level three offenders, Rabe said, live in group homes.

The city has roughly 450 group homes, having added an average of 50 congregate care facilities each year since 2019, Rabe said. He noted the majority are assisted living facilities, which can house residents with various needs, including people with disabilities, substance abuse issues or mental illness.

Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center, Golden Valley, Robbinsdale and some other cities are lobbying to reinstate the suburbs’ ability to impose rental licensing regulations on group homes. City leaders say a disproportionately high number of 911 calls come from the facilities. And they desire the ability to better regulate density and hold housing providers accountable.

Others argue that such rental licensing regulations can lead to discrimination against residents with disabilities, plus assisted living facilities already undergo thorough licensing and inspections.

“We don’t have the ability to manage group homes,” Rabe said. “But we may have the ability to at least manage level three predatory offenders. And that option is an ordinance.”

Mayor Hollies Winston said at a recent council meeting that an ordinance could help ensure Brooklyn Park is not a go-to city for where high-level sex offenders are placed in the metro.

“We should not be the default for all of the things the state struggles with,” he said.

When a level-three offender moves into the community, state law requires the agency responsible for their supervision to consider the person’s proximity to other offenders, schools, child care facilities, vulnerable adults and other places where children gather. Officials will determine whether residency restrictions should be included as part of parole or probation conditions.

Minnesota cities over the past couple of decades have increasingly enacted specific restrictions, partly over fears the state has been running out of locations to place offenders. The ordinances vary, including with some only restricting level three offenders, while others are more broad, according to the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

A Hennepin County judge several years ago ruled that a city ordinance in Dayton, which essentially barred offenders from living anywhere in the city, was invalid. The ordinance banned offenders from living near seasonal pumpkin patches, bus stops and public libraries, or from handing out candy on Halloween. The judge ruled the ordinance conflicted with state law establishing a legal process for releasing offenders from the Minnesota Sex Offender Program and reintegrating them into society.

At a recent council meeting, Brooklyn Park City Attorney Jim Thomson advised if the city passes an ordinance, it should not be overly restrictive enacting a blanket ban on offenders from living there.

The laws have been popular across the country, despite a lack of evidence showing they are effective. Researchers have found geographic residency restrictions are largely ineffective at reducing sex crimes or recidivism.

“The research basically shows that sexual offending is not a product of physical proximity, but rather social proximity,” Janus said, since offenders tend to victimize people they know. “If they are going to offend, it’s not necessarily close to where they live.”

Beth Huebner, director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, said residency policies can put up barriers to offenders successfully re-entering society, while often providing a “false sense of security.”

“Close supervision by a parole agent, perhaps GPS tracking if they are high risk, and regular check-ins and treatment: Things like that are far more effective,” Huebner said.

Rabe said Brooklyn Park staff are studying and mapping out how potential restrictions might limit where offenders live in the city. He hopes a proposed ordinance could be presented to the council within a month.