Hundreds of Registered Sex Offenders Arrested in Georgia

With the approach of Halloween, Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson proposed a state-wide crackdown on the sex offenders who dodge these laws.

"In the state of Georgia, sheriffs are tasked with verifying all sex offenders in the county," said Sheriff Wilson. "They have to register with the sheriffs. And so when I came in as president in July I thought it would be great if we could all come together as sheriff across the state working towards this initiative especially during the week of Halloween when children are out predominantly trick or treating."

Operation Watchful Eye was born.

With the help of 116 other sheriffs and other agencies, well over ten thousand sex offenders were checked on during the last week of October.

221 of them were arrested, 31 cases of drugs found, and most surprising to Sheriff Wilson, dozens of weapons were seized.

"These are people who are convicted felons and should not have firearms but through this initiative, these firearms were taken off the street," Wilson said. "Hopefully this will prevent someone from being hurt. These guns should not be in the hands of someone who’s been convicted of felony offenses."

This was the first ever coordinated effort of its kind.

"Pretty much all week long we went out and did supervised visits with the probationers to see if we could find any violations," said probation officer Tim Laney. "They were unannounced. We just showed up. Halloween night they had a five p.m. Curfew so we were out making sure they were home and weren’t out in the community."

Laney says 60 to 70 percent of sex offenders are child molesters.