Thursday, 4:30 PM
Dragnet captures almost 11,000 fugitives, including 433 in Mass.
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff
A week-long sweep targeting unregistered sex offenders, gang members and other violent criminals has led to the arrest of 433 fugitives in Massachusetts and 10,773 nationwide, according the US Marshal Service.
In the third and largest dragnet of its kind, dubbed Operation Falcon III, deputy US Marshals teamed with 46 state, federal and local law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts to hunt for some of the region's most wanted fugitives between Oct. 22 and 28.
Those arrested in Massachusetts included 67 convicted sex offenders, including 30 who were not registered as required by law, and 73 reputed gang members.
"We did try to target as many gang members and sex offenders as possible,” said Acting US Marshall William Fallon.
All of those arrested face state charges, but federal prosecutors are currently reviewing the cases to determine whether any of them will be prosecuted in federal court under the recently enacted Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which makes it a federal crime to fail to register as a sex offender and travel interstate. The law was named for Six-year-old Adam Walsh, who was abducted from a Florida shopping mall and murdered in 1981.
Nationwide the 24-state sweep netted 1,659 sex offenders -- including 971 who failed to register with authorities as required by law -- in what the government called the largest number ever captured in a single law enforcement effort.
The sweep "has made our nation's neighborhoods and children safer by taking off the streets some of the worst sex offenders, violent felons and gang members," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in a prepared statement.
Hundreds of state and local law enforcement authorities and more than a half-dozen federal agencies -- including the U.S. Marshals, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the State Department -- helped in the roundup.
The nearly 11,000 fugitives arrested across the country included 364 gang members and thousands of others sought on kidnapping, robbery, burglary, carjacking and weapons charges. More than 230 weapons were collected.
Those totals represent a fraction of doors knocked on, liquor store drive-bys, construction site surveillances and tips chased down by agents during the weeklong sweep.
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.
