Portsmouth, New Hampshire, indoor pool. Credit: Portsmouth Herald file photograph

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, city attorney Robert Sullivan confirmed he recently met with a group of people who are concerned because a registered sex activity offender has been using the Portsmouth Indoor Puddle.

The pool, located about the high school, is used by customs members and youth and school swim teams.

After the meeting, Sullivan said, he reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire to get its input.

"The deportment which the city might exist able to have or which the city might be prevented from taking would be dictated by the particular aspects of the state of affairs," Sullivan said this calendar week.

Gilles Bissonnette, the legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, said he told Sullivan that it would be "unconstitutional" for the city to bar the registered sexual activity offender from using the pool, simply considering he's a sex offender.

"The business concern in these types of cases is that there is an equal protection clause trouble," Bissonnette said Tuesday. "That would exist the instance if regular members of the public are able to access these public facilities but a sex offender is precluded from accessing these facilities. The sex offender would be being treated unequally."

Bissonnette stated that fifty-fifty though "sex offenders are an incredibly unpopular group," that doesn't mean a city can "ban a person outright from public places."

"Certainly if there was a credible allegation that the individual has committed an criminal offence," the urban center might exist able to accept activeness, "simply that doesn't seem to be the case here," he added.

Police Primary Robert Merner said Tuesday, "Legally, if he's not committed a crime, there's not a whole lot we tin can practice. That's why nosotros have people registered as sexual practice offenders," he said.

Merner added, no one has "brought any complaints to me" about the presence of the sexual practice offender at the puddle.

He believes information technology's something "for parents to be aware of," but the sex offender "could but be a swimmer."

Bissonnette said an effort to ban someone from a public pool considering they're a registered sex offender would be illegal, similar to residency restrictions Dover and Franklin previously had for sex offenders.

"They were struck down every bit violating the equal protection clause," Bissonnette said. "Any restriction that infringes upon a sex activity offender using a public pool would probably suffer the same fate."

"A puddle brake is and then like," he added.

Any family member who might be concerned that a sex offender is swimming in the pool "can go to the sex offender registry, insert Portsmouth and see all the registered sex offenders," Bissonnette said.

The New Hampshire Registration of Criminal Offenders is found at concern.nh.gov/nsor.

Bissonnette said if in that location are any concerns near safety they tin exist "addressed in a much more narrowly tailored fashion than excluding someone from a public place."

The Portsmouth indoor pool is owned by the city of Portsmouth but operated past Salvage the Portsmouth Indoor Pool as office of a partnership between the metropolis and the not-profit.

Rus Wilson, the city's Recreation Director, declined to annotate and directed all questions to Sullivan.

Yvonne Cedergren, the pool'southward manager, besides directed all questions to Sullivan.

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