Ever wonder if your neighbors are secretly not so friendly?
The sex offender registry is public record, and new neighbors are legally supposed to announce themselves as sex offenders if they've been convicted. But that transparency can be hard to come by — unless you know about CrimeReports.com.
The website is a great resource for local crime data. Some police departments use it to show the community where crimes are taking place. But even in places where the local PD doesn't participate, the whole country has been mapped with addresses and photos of sex offenders.
The criminals are marked on the map with red triangles. Orange triangles symbolize two sex offenders living at one address. Click on the triangles to see details on the offenders.
In Capitola, Soquel and Aptos, the site shows about 16 sex offenders, about half of the total in Watsonville. Three sex offenders live in a two block radius of one another on Soquel Drive just west of the Quik Stop gas station.
Neighboring Santa Cruz and Watsonville far outnumber mid-county as far as sex offenders, while Capitola's sex offender population is similar to other Bay Area cities like Burlingame and Millbrae.
Do you worry about your neighbors? Are you surprised to see how many sex offenders are in Capitola? Did you think there would be more? Tell us in the comments!
