(Stillwater) — A Cushing man who was convicted of aggravated indecent liberties with a child in Summer County, Kansas, ten years ago appeared in court Monday on a felony charge accusing him of loitering at Memorial Park in Cushing.
Joshua W. Crites, 29, a registed sex offender with the Payne County Sheriff’s Office, was ordered to return to court on Jan. 11, 2010, when he can ask for a preliminary hearing. He remains free on a personal recognizance bond.
State law prohibits sex offenders from loitering within 300 feet of a public park, playground, licensed child care facility, elementary, junior high or high school, according to the charge filed by Payne County Assistant District attorney Jill Tontz.
Crites was arrested at Memorial Park shortly after noon on June 9, for an alleged sex offender zone of safety violation and public intoxication, Cushing Police Officer Carson Watts wrote in an affidavit.
The Cushing officer had been sent about 10 minutes earlier to Memorial Park to a bench just southeast of the amphitheatre around the area of 6th Street and Thompson Avenue regarding a suspicious male, Watts wrote in an affidavit.
The reporting party told police that a white man was sitting at a park bench reading a book while wearing black shorts and no shirt, the affidavit said.
“The reporting party also said the male has been sitting in the same place off and on for the last few days,” the affidavit said.
When the officer asked the man for his identification, “I saw that it was a driver’s license that was also issued to sex offenders,” Watts wrote in his affidavit.
“I then asked Joshua that since he was a sex offender if he knew he was not supposed to be in a public park and he said ‘yes,"” the officer alleged in his affidavit.
“While placing handcuffs onto Joshua, I noticed an odor of an alcoholic beverage about his breath and person,” the officer alleged in his affidavit.
“When I asked Joshua if he had any weapons or anything illegal on him, he told me that he had a couple of beers inside his bag.
“I also found beer had been poured into his sports bottle, where Joshua had been drinking it while at the park.
“I opened Joshua’s bag and found a four-pack of Busch beer cans, with three of the four being empty, and the other was still cold and unopened,” the officer wrote in his affidavit.
If convicted of committing a sex offender zone of safety violation, Crites could be given as much as one year in the county jail and a $2,500 fine, court records show.
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