LOWELL -- When Sunday ___ (The Father) was arrested on his front lawn in front of family and his neighbors last May for failure to register as a sex offender, he claims the Billerica police incorrectly labeled him a "dangerous sex offender.''
He argues that the Billerica police "attempted to criminalize the defendant as a dangerous sex offender.'' The Father, who is black, also suggests he is the victim of racial profiling by the police.
A court hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, when he, a Level 1 sex offender (least likely to re-offend) will argue that he was improperly charged with failure to register as a sex offender and resisting arrest.
Neither he nor the Billerica Police Department could be reached for comment.
The incident that triggered the court battle began on May 21, 2013, when Billerica Officer Scott Peloquin pulled over the Father's three sons. When Peloquin learned that the boys' father was at home, he told the boys he was headed to their house.
That action put the boys "under fear and intimidation by (Peloquin) driving behind them ... through the streets and neighborhood to their home,'' the father alleges.
The father wrote that he was targeted because he is a Level 1 sex offender.
The father, who is representing himself, argues in court documents that because he is only a Level 1 sex offender, the Police Department improperly disseminated his name as a sex offender via the arrest log. He claims that posting created "curfew and boundary limitations'' for his family, which is active in the Billerica football program.
In 1986, the father pleaded guilty to assault to rape and unarmed robbery in Suffolk Superior Court, because he says he was in the midst of exams at Northeastern University and didn't need the distraction.
He was sentenced to 20 years in state prison, all of which was suspended, with probation for two years, according to the court paperwork the father provided. In September 2003, he was able to get the court case sealed.
"The registration board (SORB) was not formed at the time of the domestic incident that occurred between the defendant and his girlfriend in his apartment 30 years ago and discharged by the court in 1988 after probation,'' the father wrote.
In a letter from Sept. 28, 2004, to then-Billerica Police Sgt. Gerry Roche, SORB classified him as a Level 1 offender and notified the police that he is allowed to register as a sex offender by mail.
"There is no in-person registration at the police department," the SORB letter states.
Billerica police have indicated that as part of his plea in Suffolk Superior Court, he was sentenced to lifetime registration as a sex offender.
After the father was arrested, his name, as with all arrests, appeared on the department's Facebook page, in various newspapers, as well as on the Internet.
The failure-to-register charge was dismissed in Lowell District Court on Dec. 17, but the arrest is still on the Internet. At his court hearing, the father will ask a judge to dismiss the resisting-arrest charge.
The father has affidavits from neighbors ____, of ___, who wrote in an affidavit that they saw the father try to show the officers his legal paperwork he kept in a blue file and did not resist arrest. ..Source.. by Lisa Redmond
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