By Maggie Ybarra
El Paso Times
EL PASO, Texas — Violent sex offenders who have violated their parole or stopped registering their whereabouts with the state will now have their faces plastered on a Texas most-wanted list.
The Texas Department of Public Safety has instituted a Texas 10 Most Wanted Sex Offenders program, which consists of listing the dangerous sex offenders and their last known locations.
Tela Mange, spokeswoman for the DPS, said the program officially started Monday.
“We’ve been looking at it for a while. We actually did a program similar to this back in the late ‘90s and decided that it was time to bring it back,” she said.
Mange said she expects the program to be more successful the second time around because of the variety of venues the public can use to provide the department with information.
People can submit a tip about a sex offender’s location through the DPS website.
They can also call the Crime Stoppers hot line at 800-252-TIPS or text the letters “DPS” followed by a tip to 274637 (CRIMES) from their cell phone.
And the Criminal Justice Division of the Governor’s Office has authorized a crime stoppers reward of $1,000 for tips leading to the arrest of someone on the Texas Top 10 Most Wanted list.
The number of sex offenders increases every year partly because there are more offenders and partly because, over the years, the Texas Legislature has modified its requirements for who needs to be added to the registry, Mange said.
There are 597 registered sex offenders in El Paso, said police spokesman Darrel Petry.
He said 20 of the them have failed to register their current addresses with police.
Statewide, there are 2,001 sex offenders who have failed to register or have reported their addresses as “unknown” as of July, Mange said.
She said she hoped people who know the offenders or see them regularly will tip the DPS off to their whereabouts.
“Somebody knows where they are,” Mange said. “A girlfriend knows where they are. Their mama probably knows where they are.”
Copyright 2010 El Paso Times, a MediaNews Group Newspaper