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| Photo by Paula Beltrán |
| Pat Lykos, flanked by representives from the city and county |
It’s gotten tougher to be a fugitive sex offender in Harris County, a group of law enforcement officials announced Monday.
The three main local agencies dealing with sex offenders are merging their databases and monitoring operations and have improvements planned for how they go about tracking offenders who have tried to slip off the grid.
“In this economy, it’s always better to combine resources with other agencies, so we don’t overlap and so we can do a more thorough job,” said Harris County Sheriff’s Office Major Michael Wong.
Wong added that although “it’s just the nature of the business that some
[sex offenders] will fall through the cracks,” this new system will
ensure that “sex offenders will have a one stop place to come — it’ll
actually be easier for them — and fewer people will fall [through the
cracks of the state-of-the-art new system].”
Harris County District Attorney Patricia Lykos thanked Texas State Senator
Tommy Williams and State Representative Debbie Riddle for introducing
and pushing legislation for a single point of registration for convicted
sex offenders.
HPD and the Sheriff’s Office will work with the Harris County Inter-Agency Sex Offender Council, she said.
The reorganization will have another important aspect, Lykos said: crime
victims and sex offenders will no longer have to be in the same room
when visiting the Lockwood location, which was the norm until now.
Felons
have seven days to register after they’re released but as most are “flat
discharges” (meaning not released under parole supervision) their
failure to report usually goes unnoticed until it’s too late.
Up
until now, law enforcement agencies depended on the kindness and
timeliness of the prison system to notify via fax each of the 34
individual municipalities every time a convicted sex offender was
released back into the specific community.
Under the new plan,
the prison system will now automatically transmit all paperwork
electronically to the formerly HPD-exclusive 8300 Mykawa Rd. location,
headquarters for the new task force.
If needed, Lykos said, she will write a personal check to the prison system to ensure that they purchase a scanner.
Michael Dirden, HPD’s executive assistant chief, said the changes would improve the process in several ways.
“This
is an additional measure of accountability. We’re not duplicating.
We’re giving law enforcement officers, real-time info,” said Dirden.
“This
is effectiveness, this is efficiency, this is what government is all
about, protecting our people,” Lykos summed up the value of the
initiative.
Last year HPD registered approximately 3,700 sex offenders and 1,800 registered with HCSO, stated Dirden.
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2010.