Arvada Police leads Colorado in adopting OffenderWatch for sex offender monitoring.

The Arvada Police Department has become the first in Colorado to implement the OffenderWatch sex offender tracking system and app — and hopes that other departments in the state will follow its lead.

APD announced its participation in the program, which will see the department utilize the sex offender registration and notification tool, along with the company’s Family Safety app, on Jan. 2. OffenderWatch is a Louisiana-based company with 4,000 law enforcement department partners.

APD Public Information Officer Chase Amos explained the benefits of the OffenderWatch system.

“In the simplest terms, OffenderWatch is a sex offender registration tool and community notification system,” Amos said. “Community members will benefit by being able to more easily search for registered sex offenders near their homes and sign up for email alerts regarding newly registered offenders in their area.

“Another huge benefit for residents is the OffenderWatch app,” Amos continued. “Through the app, parents can track a child’s location and be alerted if their kid is near an offender’s house for a significant period of time. The app also sends alerts to parents of any communication from registered sex offenders through call, email or text.”

Prior to the adoption of OffenderWatch, Amos said a sex offender had to manually complete a lengthy form for their initial registration and every time they were required to re-register, which will now become automated with OffenderWatch’s integration.

Registered sex offenders also no longer have to call an APD detective to report life activities, such as getting a new phone number, vehicle or email address, which are required to be reported under state law. Now, sex offenders can make those changes to their OffenderWatch profile online.

Amos said the automation of that, and alerts that OffenderWatch provides APD when a sex offender is arrested or released from custody, will both save detectives time and increase offender compliance.

The program also allows APD to be connected to a multi-state network that includes all of Colorado’s bordering states and encompasses over 900,000 registrants, allowing the department to better collaborate across jurisdictions.

“For us, OffenderWatch allows us to access a nationwide database of over 900,000 registrants, allowing us to better collaborate in investigations across state lines and more easily transfer registration information to and from other jurisdictions when an offender moves from or to Arvada,” Amos said.  

“Additionally, OffenderWatch is an easy-to-use platform that will make us more efficient during the offender registration process,” Amos continued.

Amos said that while APD is the first department in Colorado to adopt OffenderWatch, he hopes other local agencies will follow.

“We are the first agency in Colorado to implement OffenderWatch, but it is used in all of our bordering states so we think/hope we’ll see other Colorado agencies pick it up too,” Amos said.

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The Arvada Police Station building Credit: Dolly DeHerrera