WA- Homeless sex offenders tracked by satellite

11-4-2008 Washington:

A spy in the sky is keeping track of the riskiest sex offenders. Satellite tracking is monitoring their every step.

"Looking at the terrain, I'm guessing he's sleeping on that hillside," says Jeff Haberman, a community corrections officer, as he watches a homeless sex offender move around town in 'real time.'

The sex offender has a global positioning system (GPS) device strapped to his ankle.

"Now it looks like he's walking up to an area where I know there' are sometimes free breakfasts," says State Sen. Debbie Regala, as she gets briefed on the system by Haberman.

"It looks like he got on a ... looks like he got on LINK. They ride the transit quite a bit."

All homeless sex offenders - 90 of them so far - must now wear GPS devices as they move around town so the state always knows where they are.

For the sex offender there actually is a benefit to wearing one of these - because if a crime is committed this device will prove they weren't anywhere near the scene.

The call for tracking came in the wake of the Tacoma kidnapping and murder of Zina Linnik by sex offender Terapon Adhan.

Though, Regala says, even if he'd been wearing a GPS, it wouldn't necessarily have stopped him.

"There's no way that wearing something like this prevents you from committing a crime," she says.

But it does help put offenders at the scene of the crime - or eliminates them from suspicion.

And if a sex offender cuts off the device, like David Torrence did earlier this year, there's nothing to prevent these offenders from going on the run. But the system is alerted immediately - and so is the victim in the case.

To get first-hand experience, Sen. Regala is getting her own tracking device for the next several days. As she headed off the system already had a lock on her.

Corrections officers say not only can they track the homeless offenders, but the offenders know they're being watched.

And starting this month all Level-3 sex offenders, the most serious kind, are getting a GPS for the first 30 days after they're released from prison, whether or not they provide a home address. ..News Source.. by Keith Eldridge