RENO — In an ongoing effort to make Halloween safer for the children in our communities, Nevada Child Seekers recently partnered with local law enforcement agencies and the U.S. Marshals Service are conducting “Operation Trick-or-Treat,” a five-day joint law enforcement operation to arrest sex offender fugitives and to ensure compliance with sex offender registration requirements by sex offenders in Clark County and Washoe County. 

This annual joint operation, a partnership of 35 officers from eleven city, county, state and federal agencies, was conducted from Oct. 24 through 28 and its goal was to arrest as many sex offender fugitives as possible and to conduct compliance checks on sex offenders suspected of being out of registration compliance. As of Friday, 21 fugitives had been arrested, 14 of which were sex-offense related. Additionally, over 100 compliance checks were conducted and about 90 percent were found to be compliant. This high compliance rate is excellent news and we attribute it to the ongoing, year-round collective efforts of law enforcement in Nevada. Numerous other sex offenders were located and cleared as either being compliant, deceased or incarcerated. Several other non-compliant sex offenders have been located in other states and information on those offenders has been forwarded to the local police and/or U.S. Marshals office in that state. The local law enforcement agencies participating in this operation will follow up and initiate investigations toward the goal of prosecuting the local non-compliant sex offenders and the U.S. Marshals Service will initiate federal investigations toward the goal of prosecuting the non-compliant sex offenders who crossed state lines. 

The Operation Trick-or-Treat task force partners and Nevada Child Seekers want sex offenders to know that law enforcement will be out in force during the week of Halloween to protect the children of Nevada. They also want parents to know there are several ways to keep their children safe on Halloween. Law enforcement is on their side, but they can also follow a few of these tips:

Don’t allow children to go trick-or-treating alone in neighborhoods;

Children should never go into homes without permission of their parents, and remember the “Always Ask First” rule; and

Teach children to “Shout Out Loud” and scream if someone tries to trick them with special treats or tries to grab them.

For further information about Nevada Child Seekers, visit www.nevadachildseekers.org.