Cobb parents can now find out if their kids get too close to a sex offender. Here’s how.

Michele Newell
·2 min read
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Cobb County has the second-highest amount of sex offenders in the state of Georgia, according to the state Department of Corrections.

According to the Georgia DOC, more than 600 registered sex offenders live in Cobb County.

Cobb County Sheriff Craig Owens announced a partnership with the OffenderWatch Network. OffenderWatch has numerous features, including tools that generate alerts across jurisdictions based on an offender’s home, work or school address.

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“You can access OffenderWatch via the Cobb County Sheriff app. It will let you see on your phone our registered sex offenders in Cobb County. No matter where you are in the county, it will show where they are. We’re doing everything we can to keep our community safe with this new technology and partnering with OffenderWatch. No longer will our community feel that they do not know where our sexual offenders are in our county,” said Sheriff Owens.

The Cobb County Sheriff app has been around for a year, but the sex offender tab has new features and enhancements.

“When a registered sex offender moves out of the county, it will save us countless hours looking for them. Now we know when they are outside the county. OffenderWatch also allows the sheriff’s office to collaborate on investigations,” said Sheriff Owens.

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The new features can also be beneficial to parents.

“When the child is loitering around a sex offender’s home, the parent will get a notification saying, ‘Hey, your child’s been loitering around this home, this is a known sex offender.’ The newest portion of the app is that the family has an opportunity to add a name that they don’t want the child in contact with,” said OffenderWatch National Director of Business Development F.J. Eastman.

The Cobb County Sheriff mobile app is free to download. The sex offender tab can be found on the front page of the mobile app.

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