KNOX—After a homeless sex offender was spotted three days in a row, sleeping in his parked car on Ryan’s Road in Knox, next to Thacher Park, he was arrested by the Albany County Sheriff’s Department.

Jonathan R. French, 54, who has stayed at a motel on Central Avenue in Albany, was arrested on Nov. 21 for obstructing government administration, a misdemeanor, after not answering police questions.

Police say French is a registered sex offender; no data is available for those who don’t know French’s personal details, like his birthdate, social-security number, or address. If he were a level-3 offender, considered the most likely to repeat, information would be available, even without those details.

Sheriff Deputy John Sherling said that the Voorheesville patrol station received a radio call Sunday morning about a parked car at the end of Ryan Road. Sherling responded to the scene and, when he did an information check of the vehicle and driver, found that French was a registered sex offender, the police report says.

French told Sherling that he was taking a nap before doing some hiking in the area. Sherling told The Enterprise that there wasn’t much he could do at that time because maybe this was true.

But then the next day, Monday, Sherling saw French’s vehicle pull into the Hops Field parking area at Thacher Park and he watched French enter the restrooms, the arrest report says.

Sherling told The Enterprise that he then went back to the patrol station to get another deputy to accompany him. Together they returned to the parking area, but French and his vehicle were no longer there, Sherling said. The officers then checked Ryan Road where Sherling had spoken to French the day before.

Sherling added that the medic who called in Sunday’s report told police that he also saw the car there on Saturday.

On Monday, after French’s car had been parked for three days at Ryan Road, the sheriff deputies interviewed French regarding his sex-offender status.

The registry had French’s address as homeless, the police report states.
Sherling said that he asked French where he was staying and his address, but French refused to answer any questions, Sherling said. "As a sex offender, he has to answer our questions," Sherling told The Enterprise.

When asked what questions a sex offender has to answer, and which ones he doesn’t, Sherling responded that he has to give an address, and French wouldn’t.

When asked if it were illegal for a sex offended to be homeless, Sherling said that he was under the impression that a sex offender had to have an address, but that he is now waiting for the state registry to get back to him on that.

A representative from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services Sex Offender Registry told The Enterprise on Tuesday that a sex offender can register as homeless.

Sherling told The Enterprise that French wasn’t arrested because he was homeless but rather was arrested because he wasn’t cooperating with the police and answering their questions.

There had been no reports of French’s approaching anyone, or any other problems, Sherling said.
"He was rude to us," Sherling said. French claimed "we were harassing him," Sherling said.

The arrest report also states that, after French was arrested and brought back to the patrol station in Voorheesville, he continued to refuse to answer any questions and refused to sign his fingerprint card.

French was arraigned and remanded to Albany County’s jail.

The sheriff’s department couldn’t charge French with trespassing because he was in a public state park, Sherling said, and it couldn’t arrest him for illegally sleeping overnight in the park because they had no proof of that. Sherling said he only saw French during the day — his shift is from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m.