States Take Aim At Sex Offenders Who Want To Become Ice Cream Vendors

New York, NY (AHN) - On a hot summer the ice cream vendor is the modern Pied Piper of Hamelin and various states are not about to let sex offenders use the trade as their way to lure children.

Several states are now working on bans against allowing sex offenders. The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors in California, as one example, is planning to draft an ordinance that would prohibit convicted sex predators from driving ice cream trucks after one was found last summer in Perris.

A similar bill is underway in Massachusetts, patterned after a 2005 law passed in New York, while Rapid City in South Dakota plans to require ice cream vendors to undergo criminal background checks.

It was the arrest of ice cream vendor Eduardo Grau of Troy, New York that led to the law in the Empire State. Grau allowed young children to ride his ice cream truck and abused one of his riders, a 9-year-old girl.

The battle against convicted sex offenders has even gone hi-tech with registries, and even a Google map plug-in that identifies locations with high populations of convicted sex offenders, now available on cellphones.

The American Civil Liberties Union, however, has warned groups against "going overboard" in their prosecution of sex offenders. Jennifer Ring, executive director of the ACLU in the Dakotas, explained to USA Today, "If you're throwing everyone in the same bucket, you're really restricting these people who have paid their debt to society to go on and be productive citizens."