Albuquerque TV station KOB's website is carrying a story about a convicted sex offender from their area, apparently out on bond from another crime, who turned up on a cruise ship.
No one is alleging any wrongdoing on the part of the unnamed cruise line, because they aren't required to do a background check on their passengers. But there are two interesting aspects to this case.
The first is that man was discovered and arrested when he returned to Florida, apparently thanks to a Department of Homeland Security regulation that cruise lines submit their manifests (and identifying information about the names) to the department. As we've reported in the past, this program is regularly responsible for identifying passengers who have outstanding warrants for their arrest and routinely arresting them as the disembark their cruises at a US port. This was the case with this man who allegedly did not have permission from the courts for this trip.
The other interesting aspect of this item is a matter of journalist ethics. The lead in the article on KOB's website says the man "wound up on a Mexican cruise surrounded by children." The trouble with this is the aspect about the children seems to have been inserted just to add drama to the story. Nowhere else in the article does it mention anything about children being involved on the cruise. The only mention is in the embedded video piece from the station where the detective says he [the detective] has "been on several cruises and there's a lot of young kids there." It doesn't appear the man was "surrounded by children" any more than if he had gone shopping at the local shopping mall.
In any case, the man was arrested on several charges when he returned to Florida, including for leaving the jurisdiction without permission, and is awaiting extradition. There is no allegation that the man did anything improper while on the cruise ship. Nonetheless, it does give you a creepy feeling because you don't know what the people sitting next to you at the show in the theater may have done. Of course you don't know what the people sitting in the next booth at your local fast food restaurant may have been convicted of either.
