(10/13/06) WOODBURY ? Nassau County NAACP representatives accused Long Island?s social service agencies Friday of deliberately placing convicted sex offenders in minority locations.

While protests and town meetings in Gordon Heights, Miller Place and Mastic provided a forum for the community?s uproar, Suffolk Social Services says the perception is completely false. Suffolk officials claim sex offenders and the homeless find places to live based on negotiations with potential landlords, not county placement in poor areas. Nonetheless, the NAACP is calling on the county to form an agency to oversee the placement of registered sex offenders.

Residents lump other types of halfway houses in with sex offender residences, according to members of a Huntington Station house for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. They say some halfway houses are completely voluntary and should not be shunned or confused with the county-mandated housing.