The Mayor of Surrey has put the federal government on notice after a high-risk sex offender was released to live in her city.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Surrey Police Service announced 58-year-old Marinus Willemse had been released from custody under strict conditions.<\/p>\n
Sgt. Tige Pollock says the conditions include a curfew, having no contact with any victims of his offences, not possessing any knives or sharp objects, and not attending public parks or swimming areas where children under 16 are present.<\/p>\n
The SPS says Willemse poses a \u201csignificant risk to women and children in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a circumstance where a gentleman has served out his sentence, and so therefore he cannot be detained anymore. But the courts have gone to the length of issuing a recognizance because there are concerns that he may reoffend,\u201d Pollock explained.<\/p>\n
When asked about Willemse this week, Mayor Brenda Locke says she is calling on Ottawa to change Canada\u2019s release laws.<\/p>\n
Locke says she isn\u2019t happy with Willemse calling Surrey home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis person is not welcome. He should be in jail or in a locked facility. He is not welcome in my city,\u201d Locke said.<\/p>\n
Willemse\u2019s criminal history dates back to the 1980s, convicted of crimes such as forcible confinement, attempted abduction, kidnapping, and sexual assault with a weapon.<\/p>\n
Locke says Surrey residents have asked, but she doesn\u2019t know his exact location.<\/p>\n
The mayor says she has written to the federal government to make her concerns known.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not the first time we\u2019ve had somebody released into Surrey, and, quite frankly, I think the federal government has to take a strong look at how they are releasing these kinds of criminals into our cities. This is completely unacceptable, and this person is a high risk to offend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mayor of Surrey has put the federal government on notice after a high-risk sex offender was released…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-488071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}