The Associated Press
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) -- With a green light from the courts to enforce Albuquerque’s sex offender law, police have made rounding up and registering offenders a full-time job.
The department has assigned four detectives to a new unit that identifies and locates unregistered offenders. That’s half the number of detectives assigned to work in the city’s homicide unit.
“They’ve got a major task to do,” said detective Jeff Arbogast, spokesman for the department. “There’s more sex offenders than there are murderers.”
The department’s move comes after a state district judge last week upheld parts of the city law passed last year.
The ordinance requires adults convicted of a sex offense against a child since 1970 to register with police. The city will keep photographs of those registered and may also record dental imprints and DNA.
State District Judge Wendy York upheld the registration requirements but ruled that rules prohibiting sex offenders from being alone with a child were unconstitutional and unworkable.
A similar state law requires sex offenders dating back to 1995 to register with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department, and the identities and addresses of registered offenders are posted on a Web site.
Mayor Martin Chavez said the four-detective team faces “a tedious task.”
In a small office tucked away in the lower level of the department’s main station, the team works with court records to find unregistered offenders. Street maps cover the walls, and a photo and fingerprinting machine is set up to register walk-ins.
As of Thursday, 225 sex offenders had registered with the city, Chief Public Safety Officer Nick Bakas said. Sixty of those were offenders from the 1970-1995 period who would not have had to register under the state law, he said.
It will cost the city about $250,000 a year to pay the four detectives and a sergeant who work in the unit, according to the department’s fiscal manager.