AUGUSTA — Deputies and detectives with the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office have spent the last three weeks verifying where each of the 156 registered sex offenders in their jurisdiction are living. They also have charged some of those they checked.

Their efforts were part of Operation Roll Call, which Kennebec County Sheriff Ryan Reardon launched in March in an attempt to better monitor those on the sex offender registry.

The operation will conclude this week, according to a statement from Reardon, but in the coming months, deputies will check the whereabouts and addresses of registered sex offenders more frequently than they have in recent years. Each registered offender will be checked at least once a year and records will be kept, Reardon said.

While the department used to have a part-time employee who performed that work, the grant funding for that position ran out six years ago and the department has not been able to carry it out at the same level since.

While there is no state law requiring “law enforcement agencies to check on registered sex offenders in their jurisdictions,” Reardon said, “it is vital to me that we know where each of them is to ensure the safety of children and our communities. Having the registry without verifying the information from time to time renders it useless and nullifies the intent of it in the first place. This is important work.”

As a result of efforts put in by the deputies and detectives over the last three weeks, the office found that 10 percent of individuals on the registry had reported inaccurate addresses or were not living at their registered addresses, Reardon said. Thirteen of the individuals have been charged with probation and registry violations.

The office regards 30 of the registered offenders who were checked as high risk, and three of those high-risk offenders were charged for alleged violations, Reardon said.

Detectives are still investigating other violations and will be filing more charges.

Beside the charges that have resulted from Operation Roll Call, the office will use its findings to create a better monitoring program in the future, the sheriff said.


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