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Our highest priority in the State of Maryland
and the most sacred priority of any government
at any level
is the public safety.
I'm Governor Martin O'malley and today I wanted
to talk with you about some of the things
we're doing together in Maryland
to protect all of our children from predators,
as well as some of the things we can do together
to make our children safer.
In the past three years working with law enforcement
in every part of our state,
together as One Maryland, we've driven violent crime
down to its lowest level since 1987,
including the steepest 3 year reduction in homicides
since the 1970s and a 46% reduction
in juvenile homicides
over the same period of time.
But, in our state where we are united by our
belief in the dignity of every individual,
and our belief that there is no such thing
as a spare Marylander,
the loss of even one innocent life is unacceptable.
Our Administration has set the big and important
goal of reducing violent crime against women
and children by 25% by 2012,
and in 2007
I proudly signed Jessica's Law
to take violent sex offenders off of our streets.
Working together with partners throughout our state
we have a number of initiatives underway that
are designed to better protect our children
from *** predators.
These include the use of emerging technologies
like clinical polygraph examinations
computer monitoring
and GPS tracking,
which we're currently using to track
231 sex offenders.
And because we're working together to close
the backlog that we inherited of 24,000
unanalyzed and 15,000 uncollected DNA samples,
we've been able to use that newly uncovered evidence
to arrest 106 sex offenders,
but we can and must do even more to protect our children.
This session our Administration is asking
the General Assembly
to pass an aray of tough new reforms
to protect our kids.
Specifically we are proposing, number one,
to require the most serious sex offenders
be monitored by law enforcement
for the rest of their lives,
thus aligning Maryland with 24 other
states which currently have some sort of
lifetime supervision law
on their books.
Number two,
we've introduced legislation in
this year's General Assembly
to better align Maryland sex offender laws
and the terms and the language used
so that we can better cooperate and coordinate
with our federal government.
Not only will this allow us to draw down federal
grants into the future to help protect our kids,
it will also make sure that no predator ever
thinks he can come the Maryland in order to
exploit some sort of language loophole.
Number three,
we have introduced legislation to classify
person's convicted of child *** and
indecent exposure to minors
as sex offenders
and require that they register as such.
Number four,
we've introduced legislation to require more
employees at facilities that
care for, supervise children
to undergo a criminal background checks.
And number five, we've introduced legislation
to reform the Maryland *** Offender Advisory Board
so that its members will actually be required
to have relevant experience and expertise
so that the board's charge will be targeted and focused
on important priorities, like
developing risk assessment criteria so
that we can better supervise offenders.
We can pass these important reforms,
but we cannot do it alone.
I hope that you will call or write your Senator,
or your delegates, or both
and ask them to support this important,
common sense legislation this session.
I encourage you to visit our Crime Control
and Prevention web site to learn more.
Working together we can do a better job of
protecting, strengthening, and defending
our hard working families.
Thanks very very much.