CINCINNATI (WKRC) – Rapists and predators are included in a long list of sex offenders who are required to register where they live.
In Hamilton County, more than 1,500 sex offenders a year register. They’re photographed, fingerprinted and required to report where they live, work and go to school. But a Local 12 Investigation uncovered hundreds of these sex offenders go missing each year in Hamilton County alone.
Hamilton County Deputy Margo Kuderer – along with Deputy Adam Breeze and a third deputy – works in a cramped office in the corner of the courthouse, registering sex offenders.
If they fail to register where they are living, the deputies report them and a warrant is issued.
“As of 2018, we have issued about 205 felony warrants,” Kuderer said.
That’s 60 percent of all felony warrants issued in the county.
Deputies in the sex offender unit believe the real number of missing sex offenders is even higher. So how many don’t register?
“500? 1,000? Don’t know,” Breeze said.
To find those who don’t register, the deputies take to the streets, alone, in search of the perpetrators. They knock on doors, tape signs to polls in parks and ask whoever answers the door to verify whether the registered sex offender is living at the address.
Part of the difficulty is the location where some offenders report they’re living – such as in a car, on a street corner, in a park or even in the woods.
“We have homeless, so we will go to a homeless camp or trucking through the woods or wherever they’re claiming,” Kuderer said.
The biggest issue, deputies say, is they face a lack of money and resources.
“There is no funding,” Kuderer said of her unit.
Ohio Revised Code Section 2950.13 requires sex offenders to report an address to their county no matter where they live, which is then added to eSORN, Ohio’s sex offender database that is maintained and operated by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. That state law is backed by a federal mandate.
But zero dollars are given by the state or even federal government to help these units track sex offenders that go missing.
That has left Hamilton County with only three deputies, operating out of a 13 x 9 office to register, then track the more than 1,500 sex offenders.
“The only thing the state offers is the offender watch system that we use statewide to register,” Kuderer said. “That is it.”
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