OffenderWatch’s Mapping Tool Helped Organize Sex Offender Sweep in New Mexico

At the end of October 2019, the Lea County Sheriff’s Office in New Mexico decided to check that its registered sex offenders still lived at the addresses where they had registered. The office’s Sex Offender Registration and Tracking Unit prepped for “Operation Scat Cat,” checking and verifying addresses for 134 offenders in their jurisdiction.Vivian Martinez has been working at the Sheriff’s Office for 17 years and managing sex offenders for 8½ years.“OffenderWatch makes it really easy to organize the offenders in different parts of the county,” said Vivian Martinez of the Lea County Sheriff’s Office NM Sex Offender Registration and Tracking Unit. “We used OffenderWatch for mapping the sex offenders, doing searches on different towns in Lea County to find where they were located. The mapping systems is really helpful when you’re preparing for an operation.”Vivian Martinez has been using the OffenderWatch platform for years. “I was impressed by how OffenderWatch was able to add or remove from the system, so it was more user-friendly and easier to enter data,” she says. “Data entry is quick and easy if you have all the information you need.”During the operation, the office made two arrests (active outstanding warrant for failure to appear and failure to report a new address).