24 nabbed in sex offender sting

TULSA — Authorities arrested 24 people during an operation that focused on sex offenders who registered as homeless to deceive law enforcement.

Operation Hide and Seek started after the U.S. Marshals Service contacted Tulsa Police Department in March about collaborating to target homeless sex offenders violating their registration.

Sgt. John Adams, who heads Tulsa Police Department’s child exploitation and sex offender unit, said 31 registered sex offenders were listed as homeless at the start of the operation. Sex offender registries require homeless individuals to list an area of the city in which they are staying. Ten of the individuals listed a field near Garnett Road and Interstate 244.

The agencies conducted eight around-the-clock compliance checks for the offenders from early April through mid-May. Arrest warrants were issued for those who were never found in their listed areas.

“We just took all of our sex offenders who were registered as homeless. The ones that we could find, they were in compliance,” Adams said. “The ones that we were not able to find (were not). If we found them just one time where they told us they were, we considered them to be in compliance.”

By the end of the operation, authorities arrested 23 sex offenders for failure to register and one offender with a warrant for child molestation. Two of the individuals were found to be living outside Tulsa, Adams said.

Some of those arrested were homeless who were living somewhere outside their designated area, while others reportedly lived in houses and lied about their transience.

“These are individuals who were lying and pretending that they were homeless so they could continue to live where they wanted and continue to do what they wanted despite the fact that they were sex offenders,” Tulsa County First Assistant District Attorney Erik Grayless said. “That’s unacceptable.”

Grayless said it’s common for sex offenders to take advantage of the city’s vulnerable and under-represented homeless population to further their criminal activities.

It’s now the responsibility of the District Attorney’s Office, he said, to “aggressively prosecute” the suspects and hold them accountable for their actions.

Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan said collaborations such as Operation Hide and Seek prove to be highly successful at crime reduction.

“We take sex offenders very, very seriously,” Jordan said. “They’re a scourge to our community. It puts our children, our women, basically our helpless people at risk of being victims, and we’re just not going to allow that to happen.”

Part of the purpose of the registry is to alert parents where sex offenders are living so they can educate their children and keep them safe, Adams said.

When individuals fail to properly register, he said they are essentially hiding in the community.

“The offender who comes in and is compliant, he’s not a concern to me because we know where he’s at and we’ve verified where he’s at. We can go there any time,” Adams said. “It’s the ones that are failing to give us their address. They’re intentionally lying. They want to avoid detection. Those are the ones that we focus on.”

Tulsa police will continue to work with U.S. marshals on various operations throughout the year, Adams said.