New partnership helps law enforcement monitor sex offender registry

OSAGE COUNTY, Okla. — Osage County residents are now able to know not only who sex offenders are, but if they live in their neighborhood too.

The Osage County Sheriff's Office is now partnered with OffenderWatch to keep track of those who are in the sex offender registry and which neighborhoods they're in.

Knowing your address is important, but knowing who your neighbors are and if there are sex offenders in your area is just as important. Many people are unaware of sex offenders in their area.

Osage County Undersheriff Gary Upton said the new partnership is a value to the community.

"We’ve signed on with national sex offender registry called “OffenderWatch” and we’re one of almost half the counties here in Oklahoma that signed on with this," Upton said. "It helps us track sex offenders not just here in our county but if they migrate between state lines or county lines."

Upton said this gives the sheriff's office tools to actually track offenders and allow people who live in the area to receive notifications when there are any changes to an offenders listing.

"You just basically type in the name of the person you’re looking for or the particular area you’re concerned about, and you’ll see a list of the offenders in that area," Upton said.

Upton said with Osage County being nearly 2,200 square miles, it takes over an hour to get from one side of the county to the other, so knowing who is a sex offender and where they are located is important.

"For us, there’s value in it because it’s a very large county with a lot of space to cover and so for deputies to be able to go out and do those physical checks on a regular basis, it means a lot of ground that’s covered," he said.

Despite already having an offender database, Upton said the partnership with OffenderWatch has paid off.

"We saw the success that other counties were experiencing from this registry ad we saw the benefit was to them we want to be proactive in our approach to law enforcement, we want to use technology to our advantage and to the citizens advantage so the tools that it provides has really paid off for us," he said.

OffenderWatch has a mobile app that allows you to locate nearby sex offenders in your area and alerts your phone if one is nearby.

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