Lea County Sheriff’s deputies completed an annual sex offender compliance operation this weekend that resulted in arrest/hold orders for five of the some 100 registered offenders in the county.
A list of offenders and their registered locations can be found at www.offender-watch.com. A number of the offenders listed are incarcerated at the Lea County Detention Center.
Sheriff Byron Wester said the annual check is about public safety.
“You want the safety of everyone in the community and to make sure anyone who is on the registry is in compliance and for the most part, the majority of the time most of them are compliant,” he said.
On Sept. 24-25, the Lea County Sheriff’s Office Sex Offender Registration Unit completed the compliance operation and five arrest/hold orders were issued by New Mexico Adult Probation and Parole. Wester said not all of those hold orders were related to violations of the probation or parole in the regards to the sex offender registry.
“They were for a multitude of things,” he said. “Not all were directly related to the sex offender registry.”
Countywide there were 103 compliance/ verifications completed by Deputy Vivian Budrow, the deputy in charge of the Sex Offender Registration and Tracking Unit and the ICAC Task Force for the sheriff’s office.
Compliance checks are done to assure the convicted sex offender is living where they report they’re living and to assure they are in compliance with the rules of their release. Compliance checks were completed in every community within Lea County.
Wester reminded residents sex offender information is available on the sheriff’s office website at www.leacountysheriff.com. To access the information, click on the links button and search the OffenderWatch. Hobbs had 57 sex offenders listed, Lovington had 30 and Eunice and Jal each had three listed. Tatum’s OffenderWatch results indicated two sex offenders, while Monument and Maljamar each had one listed.
“It is the goal of the Lea County Sheriff’s Office to assure that the citizen of Lea County are given the tools to see if sex offenders are living in their area, and to make every effort possible to verify the compliance of those offenders with their required registration, per New Mexico state law,” Wester stated.
Sheriff Wester would also like to remind anyone with questions or concerns regarding the Sex Offender Registration pro gram to contact Deputy Vivian Budrow at the sheriff’s office. “If someone does a check and finds there is an offender living in their neighborhood, the best thing to do would be reach out to Deputy Budrow,” he said “She can answer any questions they may have.”
Budrow can be reached at 396 3611 or by email at vbudrow@leacounty.net.
