Saratoga County Sheriff Michael Zurlo and the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office announced a newly launched sex offender registry and public notification website. 

The website, called OffenderWatch® will add the local agency into a nationwide network of over 5,000 law enforcement agencies. The new service is a citizen-friendly, easy to use website that enables citizens to search for potentially dangerous sex offenders and predators, which may be in close proximity to their homes, places of work, schools, churches and day care centers, the department said.

Citizens can access the site here. 

The information is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and is updated in real time by the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office as offender information changes and is reported.

 Citizens may search an address of interest, see a general map and a listing of all offenders within a user-defined radius between a quarter mile and up to five miles. 

Citizens can then register the address to be 

continuously monitored by the Sheriff, who will send to them an email alerting them if an offender or predator should register an address within their specified radius of their address. Citizens may confidentially register as many addresses as they like, at no cost.

“Citizens have a right to know who may be living near them and could potentially pose a threat to their families. The New York sheriff’s offices and police departments using OffenderWatch® have the most up to date information on all offenders registered in the state and I am happy to be able to provide that information to them,” said Sheriff Zurlo. 

The sheriff has also made available additional web based resources designed to educate and inform the public at the department's website, found here. The purpose of the program is to lessen the anxiety of citizens by proactively alerting them should an offender/predator move within proximity to them, and to provide the highest level of security and safety to all Saratoga citizens. The program also enables the Sheriff to verify that offender addresses do not violate any safety buffers that may be implemented around protected institutions in the county, such as schools, day cares and parks, and helps law enforcement schedule compliance checks for 

verifying information provided by offenders. The Sheriff also assigned a Deputy on a full time basis to ensure sex offender compliance and complete address compliance checks.