Tracking sex offenders breaking the law

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) - The U.S Marshal's office has been going door to door to track down 100-thousand missing sex offenders.

Officials said here in Ohio, 150 sex offenders were at large. No one knows where they are. Once they registered with their local sheriff's office, they disappeared.

"Most important to me is I want to know where they are," said Deputy U.S Marshal Bill Taylor, who was assigned to cover 48 counties in Ohio.

Many offenders were slipping away to areas known to have lax jurisdiction.

"My desire is to lock up those who have abused the weakest of us. Either elderly or children. When I prioritize the offender, a tier-3 offender who raped a baby is at the top of my pile. I'm not sure those people can ever be cured," said Taylor.

In the last year, the U.S Marshal's office has teamed up with local authorities to conduct sex offender sweeps.

"It's not a negative for the offenders because we're not knocking on their doors as a SWAT team. Generally its just a couple of investigators verifying that they're living there," said Taylor.

The effort was paying off. Just recently, U.S Marshal's got a guy who was not living where he was supposed to be, and they learned that he had been re-offending.

"A 9-year old girl also revealed that the sex offender had also been abusing her," said Taylor.

The good news is that since last May, federal agencies have helped arrest 11, 853 sex offenders for violating registration rules.

"Not all offenders are dangerous, probably the smallest percent of them are dangerous, but if you can identify the most dangerous ones from me, it makes my job easier," said Taylor.

You can always log onto your county sheriff's, or the state Attorney Generals website to see a list of sex offenders who live near you.

The Department of Justice has now created a national sex offender registry. Every sex offender in the country is listed here. You can log on to www.nsopw.gov. to check out the listing.