Norman, OK city councilor Kelly Lynn is already a piece of trash. He had only recently expunged a guilty plea he took for drug possession in the 1990s, made racist statements, and more recently was accused of assaulting a 66-year-old woman at a bar. Even Unite Norman, which helped Lynn's campaign, has denounced him. Now he wants police to arrest homeless advocates who shelter Registered Persons within the city, even if it they do not know the homeless client is on the registry.
UPDATE: Ol' Kellie Lynn is mad he got nominated LOL
Councilors who disagree with Norman's shelter plan split on path forward
By Max Bryan | Transcript News Editor Mar 26, 2022
Homeless shelters in the Oklahoma City metro commonly practice a level of sex offender enforcement that two Norman city councilors believe is not stringent enough for a proposed homeless shelter.
Ward 3 Kelly Lynn and Ward 5 Rarchar Tortorello have opposed city staff’s efforts to relocate Norman’s homeless shelter from downtown to 900 E. Main St., near Griffin Memorial Hospital. While city staff have emphasized that the proposed location would put those who stay there near other services, Lynn and Tortorello have pushed back, arguing the shelter could endanger children by placing sex offenders near Le Monde International School and other youth services.
Norman has more than 20 unhoused sex offenders, according to police records.
In Oklahoma City, City Care provides shelter to unhoused people nightly, while Homeless Alliance opens its doors overnight when temperatures fall below freezing. Both shelters operate in the “red zone,” meaning they’re within 2,000 feet of a school, park or childcare center and thus prohibit sex offenders from spending the night there.
The shelters operate on the assumption that the offenders, who must check in with local law enforcement weekly on the threat of prosecution, know they can’t stay there. It falls in line with Norman Assistant City Attorney Rick Knighton’s assertion that registered sex offenders in Norman would know where they can and cannot stay.
Norman’s current homeless shelter at 325 E. Comanche St. operates under the same guidelines.
Homeless Alliance Director Dan Straughan said the proximity of Norman’s proposed shelter to the school is “a valid concern,” but also said the issue is more complex than that.
“The other piece of that is, you’ve got to kind of ask yourself, ‘As a community, are we safer knowing where that guy is than not?’” Straughan said. “That would be my question.”
In a message to The Transcript, Lynn said “it is never a good idea to put a homeless shelter next to a school” regardless of whether authorities know where sex offenders are.
“We just have to get it wrong one time, and if something happens to a child after leaving that shelter, it’s on us. The city can be sued for that, and I cannot have that on my conscience,” Tortorello said.
In his response to The Transcript, Lynn also called the Homeless Alliance “a radical political group” and accused them of increasing homelessness in Oklahoma City.
Straughan said unhoused people in Norman travel to Oklahoma City because the city has “way more services,” but later noted that poverty and housing costs primarily drive homelessness. Norman exceeds Oklahoma City in housing costs and poverty rate, according to data from BestPlaces and the Census Bureau.
Enforcement
While Lynn and Tortorello both believe current sex offender requirements aren’t enough for the proposed homeless shelter in Norman, they disagree on how the city could more strictly enforce the requirements.
During the city’s Tuesday study session, Tortorello suggested the city allocate money to create a database that would identify sex offenders and keep them out of the facility. He later said for him and Le Monde parents, the main issue is that the city doesn’t vet people who stay in the shelter.
City manager Darrel Pyle said city staff would be happy to create a database that complies with state law.
Tortorello said Friday he was also concerned violent offenders would stay at the shelter.
After The Transcript told him NPD keeps record of both violent and sex offenders in the city, Tortorello said he plans to propose NPD help create the database.
“We already have the information now. It’s a matter of cross-checking that,” he said.
NPD is neutral on the proposed homeless shelter location because it’s on state land and not in their jurisdiction, spokesperson Sarah Jensen told The Transcript in an email.
Lynn said the city should also include drug and alcohol abuse in its shelter discussions. But he also argued a database “does nothing to mitigate the problems of putting a homeless shelter 20ft [sic] from a school.”
“The database is only a goodwill gesture to show that the city might even have a shred of concern on this issue,” he wrote.
Lynn also claimed the city previously tried to put the shelter in the same building as Le Monde.
Pyle said the city considered a building at the Griffin site for the shelter but looked elsewhere after the school sought a permit to occupy that building. He said city staff never considered co-occupying space with the school.
During the Tuesday meeting, Lynn suggested Cleveland County sheriff’s deputies, who have jurisdiction over the proposed site, arrest staff if a sex offender is found at the shelter. Knighton argued that under state law, authorities could likely only prosecute staff members if they knowingly harbor a sex offender.
Lynn, an attorney, said Friday he interprets the law differently and would hope law enforcement would arrest staff who accidentally allow sex offenders to stay there. He said “it would send a very hard message against this lunacy.”
“I hope the sheriff’s office would arrest every single one of them,” he said.
The Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Lynn’s suggestion.
Public or private?
Tortorello and Lynn agree Norman shouldn’t provide homeless services, but the city’s current situation leads them to different conclusions.
The property owner of the current shelter has told the city they don’t want Norman to keep using the building for that purpose. Business owners in downtown have also complained to councilors that the unhoused in the area have negatively impacted their operations, including leaving needles and feces at their backdoors, Tortorello said.
“It is not the job of municipal government and taxpayer dollars,” Lynn wrote. “This is the lane of nonprofits and charities.”
While Tortorello agrees with this principle, the city is in a dilemma with the property owner and area businesses, he said.
“We’ve come to a situation where something has to be done, and there are no other entities with the resources to do what needs to be done. So that’s the dilemma,” he said.
In Oklahoma City, nonprofits and the religious community do most of the homeless relief work, Straughan said. But he said these organizations will never have the kind of money government agencies have.
Straughan also said nonprofits and religious organizations have to ask for funding, while tax dollars go directly to government agencies.
“Their resources are always going to outstrip the resources of the faith community and the nonprofit community,” he said. “It’s that simple.”
Seems miss Kelly Lynn has an attitude problem:
And it seems miss Kelly Lynn's hate extends elsewhere:
