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Carteret County Sheriff's Department deputies arrested 46-year-old Jimmy Brown Sunday night for assaulting, exposing himself to or taking indecent liberties with children.
Deputies say it all started last August. This is the second time officers have arrested Brown for targeting children.
“I didn't do nothing,” Brown shouted at our camera Wednesday morning, just after he made his first appearance in court.
He says he's not guilty of the 64 charges he's facing.
But his neighbors tell a very different story.
“He was kind of an aggressive, huggy-touchy type,” said Teressa Deal, one of Brown’s neighbors in his Mill Creek neighborhood.
At first Deal and her step-daughter thought nothing of his touchiness. Now, they call his actions disgusting -- and Sheriff Asa Buck agrees.
“These are very serious charges,” Buck said.
Brown actually spent a handful of months in prison after he was convicted of taking indecent liberties with a child in 2006.
Data from the Department of Justice shows jail time rarely stops sex offenders from striking again -- more than half of sex offenders are arrested again for the same offense after they get out.
It's a troubling trend for Buck -- so troubling, in fact, he recently hired an extra deputy whose only job is to track the county's 57 registered sex offenders.
Beyond that, he says there isn't much his department can do to keep sex offenders from offending again -- because neither federal nor state governments provide money to help local police fund their sex offender programs.
It's an obstacle that could be keeping law enforcement from preventing predators from striking again.
Brown also faces almost two dozen other charges for trespassing, breaking and entering and communicating threats.
He's in the
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