By Doug Miller
According to a Long Beach housing official, Rodriguez received up to a year of public assistance for his rent, described as "hundreds of dollars per month," which, as a convicted felon, he is not eligible for.
A spokeswoman for the Nassau County district attorney's office, Katie Grilli-Robles, said that no charges had been filed, but that the matter was under investigation.
In the meantime, Rodriguez's current address is the Nassau County Correctional Facility. According to police, when Rodriguez was evicted he moved to Baldwin, where he was arrested at 3:40 a.m. July 3 and charged with stalking a young woman.
Rodriguez was originally convicted in 1993 of a knife-point rape in Manhattan. He was arrested in Long Beach twice last year for harassing school girls, and served six months in the Nassau County jail.
Because he was convicted of a rape that occurred before New York State enacted Megan's Law, Rodriguez and his attorneys have argued that he should not be subject to the law's community-notification procedures. However, a special appeals court ruled against him last spring, and he was added to the state's sex offender registry.
Officials could not explain how a convicted sex offender wound up on public assistance, but one put it succinctly, saying, "He lied on his application.
"He's been terminated - he's out," the official said. "Simultaneously with us terminating him, we let him know and let the landlord know, and he immediately vacated the vicinity."
The end of Rodriguez's residency in Long Beach can be traced to an unfortunate coincidence: He chose an apartment next door to a member of the Long Beach City Council. When Rodriguez lost his appeal and became a publicly known person, Councilwoman Mona Goodman said she was informed that a second Level 3 sex offender was living in the building next door to her.
The first was Andrew Millar, a convicted pedophile. Goodman said she had complained that she was never notified by the police about him because, as an adult female, she was not deemed to be at risk. She found out about Millar through her own research.
"I called the police and asked, 'What happens when my nephews visit?'" she said Tuesday.
When Rodriguez lost his notification appeal, Goodman was informed by the police, since Rodriguez's victim was an adult female. "I called the police and said, 'I know there is Section 8 housing in that building,'" she said. She added that she was acting entirely on a hunch, but one that was proved correct, and an internal investigation revealed that Rodriguez was accepting Section 8 vouchers because, officials said, he had not checked the box on his application asking if he had a criminal record.
Meanwhile, the city's new corporation council, Carolyn Cairns Olson, said she has been working with City Manager Charles Theofan and Goodman on expanding the city's notification regulations. As it stands, Olson said, Level 2 offenders merit notification of target victims at the police department's discretion, while Level 3 offenders have their names, descriptions and photographs put on the Internet.
In addition, Olson and Goodman said the city is considering copying several communities in New Jersey, where Megan's Law originated, which have enacted local ordinances banning convicted sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of schools, day-care centers, parks or playgrounds. Brick Township, in southern New Jersey, has even added bus stops to that list.
Meanwhile, Rodriguez's legal troubles seem to keep getting deeper. Besides his arrest on the stalking charge, when Rodriguez moved to Baldwin, a Nassau County Police spokesperson said they will be filing additional charges against Rodriguez because he never notified them of his change of address.
Comments about this story? DMiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
