Marion County targets sex offenders on east side near Brookside Park
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Marion County Sheriff’s Office on Friday conducted sex-offender sweeps.
Marion County is home to the majority of sex offenders in Indiana.
The sheriff’s office has pushed to address what it calls the excessive number of sex offenders in Marion County. “You have to watch out for your kids because not everybody else is doing it for you. We are trying to do our best to be sure we alert you,” said Sheriff Kerry Forestal.
The county has more than 1,800 registered sex offenders, but not all of them are living up to the rules. Every deputy assigned a car performs checks multiple times each year just to keep up with the demand of having so many sex offenders.
On Friday, the sheriff’s office conducted surprise offender compliance checks as part of its East Indianapolis Sex Offender Operation. The first stop was home to seven registered sex offenders. Deputies also tried looking for fugitive violent predator Robert Collins Jr., who is wanted on two counts of failure to register. Collins was convicted in Hancock County for child molestation and sexual battery involving a child.
“We had kids over here in Brookside Park. If you lived in the 800 block of North Olney, you’d walk by 14 sex offenders to get to the park,” Forestal said.
“It lets people know that the sheriff’s office if you’re a sex offender and you’re non-compliant we’re out looking and hopefully it reassures people in the community that we’re doing our job, we’re following up with these things and we are taking action,” said Capt. Mitch Gore, public information officer with the sheriff’s office said.
The second stop was home to two registered sex offenders.
Overall, officers want a safer community, and they’re depending on the internet to pressure those who are noncompliant. Sheriff Forestal said, “The fact that you put it out, we put it out on the Facebook it gets people to one come down and comply or move and I’m OK with that, too.”
To maintain awareness of sex offenders in a neighborhood, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office added a Sex Offender Registry to its website. The registry will allow people to enter any local address. It will then provide a list of all registered Marion County sex offenders living within a one-mile radius within the boundaries of Marion County. If you are looking for information about a particular sex offender registered in Marion County, the registry can help there as well.
