It was the first time out of the box for a new unit, the Sex Offender Investigations Branch of the U.S. Marshals Service. And it began with 61 case files of people convicted of raping, molesting or fondling minors or adults.
Of the sixty-one cases, an administrative ‘filtering process’ closed 24 cases: The offenders were either dead, locked up or in the hands of other jurisdictions.
The squad then tracked down the 37 others, completing 235 early-morning compliance checks, leading to 14 arrests.
All were charged with failing to register and/or failure to verify address change, under Megan‘s Law.
In addition to the arrests, the Marshals Service said, “leads were developed and forwarded to other agencies for enforcement.”
Forty officers in all participated — from agencies that included the Hudson, Passaic and Morris county prosecutor’s offices, Port Authority police, the state Corrections Department, and Paterson and Newark police, among others.
The unit’s mission is to protect the public from sex offenders and offenders against children by assisting jurisdictions in locating and apprehending sex offenders who violate sex offender registration requirements.
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