Canyon County Idaho Prosecutor Tim Fleming, together with United States Attorney Wendy Olsen, United States Marshall’s Kevin Platts and Brian Underwood, Sheriffs Smith, Raney and Nielson from Canyon, Ada and Bannock counties, together with the numerous Police Department partners in their counties, and County Supervisors, all jointly announced a leadership sex offender task force and collaboration built-around OffenderWatch(r) to monitor and track sex offenders across the entire southern portion of Idaho.  The Canyon prosecutor, invited by the US Attorney and US Marshall, spearheaded a COPS grant request, that was judged to be one of the finest requests and programs every reviewed by the Community Oriented Policing program (COPS) within the Dept of Justice.

Built around the unique OffenderWatch(r) capabilities of electronic, seamless, multi-jurisdictional information sharing and collaboration between ALL registration, enforcement, pursuit and enforcement agencies – enabling all agencies to access all data on all offenders, any time from anywhere – this new Task Force will support increased compliance checks and enforcement in Idaho as well as electronic registration.  Nearly half of the population and sex offenders in Idaho are now covered by OffenderWatch(r) agencies with more joining every month!

Strategies Identified by the Task Force, and enabled by OffenderWatch(r)
The task force has developed four strategies to improve public safety and prevent crimes by sexual predators and offenders:
• Monitor: Each jurisdiction will use the same OffenderWatch(r)  software to monitor sexual offenders. Partnership through this software will provide tools to manage and share offender data, as well as provide citizens numerous community safety services that empowers them to be proactive. Also, monitoring online activity of peer-to-peer programs, social networking site and other online forums where sexual predators seek out children.
• Educate: Extra training for law enforcement will encompass investigations, forensic examinations, interviews and other vital training necessary to prosecute sex offenders and predators.
• Investigate: Track down and identify individuals who use technology to entice children, as well as individuals engaged in manufacturing, distributing, and possessing child pornography. Also, investigate child abuse and sex-offender registration violations.
• Prosecute: Specialized prosecutors will prosecute multi-jurisdictional child sexual predators and exploiters and enforce state sex offender registration laws.

Congratulations Idaho – you are setting the standard for cooperation, collaboration and interagency partnerships nationwide!!  We are proud to work with you.