Butler County, Poplar Bluff officials voice concerns over CSC

__Editor’s note: This is the first of three stories looking at a local Probation and Parole facility area officials say has broken state regulations by housing sex offenders. Articles on Friday and Saturday will look at additional concerns, including whether the facility is being used to bring in offenders from other areas of the state, who then stay in Butler County.__

When sold to the citizens of Butler County in 2007, the Poplar Bluff Community Supervision Center was to be a facility housing local, nonviolent offenders.

Now, 12 years later, Butler County and Poplar Bluff officials are concerned the facility’s purpose and clientele has changed, causing it to morph into a “half-way house,” where sex offenders are being housed.

“Back when the idea was being floated about building the center, it was sold to the citizens of Butler County as a place that would hold low-level status offenders from our area that wouldn’t be a danger to our community,” explained Butler County Sheriff Mark Dobbs.

One of the “foremost concerns” that people voiced, Dobbs said, was sex offenders being housed in the center.

“The officials for the (Division) of Probation & Parole from Jefferson City assured people that wouldn’t happen,” Dobbs said.

Despite those assurances, sex offenders have and/or are being housed at the CSC.

“It has come to my attention that there are sex offenders being housed at the facility on the eastside by the soccer fields,” Poplar Bluff Police Chief Danny Whiteley said.

Those soccer fields are part of the Black River Park and are located less than 500 feet northwest from the CSC. State statutes say it is illegal for sex offenders to reside within 500 feet of a park.

Although Karen Pojmann, communications director for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said the “field … referred to as a park is not currently considered a park,” a Poplar Bluff Park & Recreation official said, it is.

The park, the official said, is used for soccer, as well as baseball and softball practices, in the spring and summer.

Soccer tournaments held at other parks sometimes “roll over there,” the official said.

Given the CSC’s proximity to the park and after learning the sex offenders were being housed there, “we’ve asked the prosecuting attorney to speak with them concerning that,” Whiteley said.

Butler County Pros4ecuting Attorney Kacey Proctor reportedly met with local Probation & Parole officials.

Those officials, Proctor said, have “assured us they are removing them immediately and relocating them to other areas.

“I believe to other CSCs around the state”or locations not near a park or school/day care, which would be a violation of state statutes.

Last week, Pojmann confirmed there were “a few,” possibly six, sex offenders at the CSC.

“They will be relocated by March 1,” Pojmann said

The sheriff is optimistic that “change will occur and that the current sex offenders housed there will be relocated.

“They need to stay true to that assurance and move the sex offenders out of that location,” Dobbs said.

And, if it is “not remedied, we will be arresting people,” Whiteley said.