Tracking Sexual Offenders in Your Neighborhood

Floridians who want to track registered sexual offenders and predators near them are getting some additional help from the state.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement upgraded its sexual predator and offender Web site to include more detailed information about past crimes and details about their vehicles and boats.

For instance, visitors to the site at www.fdle.state.fl.us can find out more about the seriousness of past crimes along with the case number and end result of the case. A link is also provided to the related circuit court clerk's office that will have the actual file on site with more details about what happened and when.

In addition, the make, model, tag number and color of the person's registered Florida vehicles are also listed, which can be helpful to parents who want to keep closer tabs on offenders who live near them. Those details could also be helpful in finding abducted children in some cases.

The FDLE Web site has information on about 39,000 offenders who have victimized children, adults or the elderly. A particularly helpful feature of the site is that it allows researchers to plug in an address or Zip code and find out just how close an offender lives.

Pictures and addresses of the offenders are provided.

Tom Gallagher, the state's chief financial officer, has suggested the site be modified further to allow parents to do a search on whether a license tag number belongs to a vehicle registered to a sex offender.

Source: Florida Association of Realtors