Crime Scene

I came across an interesting online resource recently. A group called Family Watchdog has “online maps here”:http://www.familywatchdog.us that they said records where sexual offenders live in the community. The link, as you’ll see, asks for a city, state and zip code, then maps the area. A toolbar link also provides a simple list.

I emailed the company to inquire if they were part of an official law enforcement agency. The response from their customer service department was that it was a private company, but that all the information is based on individual states’ sexual offender registry. Their site includes the following “about us” information:

Steve Roddel, founder of FamilyWatchdog.us, began a 25 year career in Information Technology as an 18 year old computer programmer in the United States Marine Corps. He was been employed and consulted to some of the largest corporations and government entities in the world, which prepared him for the challenges presented by FamilyWatchdog.us. He is married and has three children and one grandchild.

FamilyWatchdog.us was formed as a result of the senseless murder of Jessica Lunsford. Mr. Roddel, concerned about the safety of his own family, tried to locate sex offenders in his own neighborhood. Using his state’s sex offender registry, he was unable to locate 4 sex offenders in his immediate area, one that was about 600 feet from his house. Using his knowledge of Information Technology, Mr. Roddel successfully mapped offenders from his state’s registry, and was able for the first time to present a map of sex offenders – where they lived, and where they worked. Initially, Mr. Roddel was simply going to create a map of sex offenders for his own state, but upon discussions with other people in other states, decided to set the goal of mapping offenders across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. FamilyWatchdog.us is proudly the only sex offender registry in existence that is able to map registered sex offenders from all states.

It’s an easy to search database, although I don’t know how complete or up-to-date the information is. With that disclaimer, see what you come up with yourselves. And don’t forget you could always look up the state “sex offender registry”:http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/nsor/search_index.htm yourself. You simply need to sign up and you can search that site by zip code or municipality.