Exclusive:The number of registered sex offenders missing from Leeds revealed - with eight 'high risk'
Police are currently tracking 1,235 registered sex offenders living in Leeds
Police in Leeds have lost track of 12 registered sex offenders, the Yorkshire Evening post can exclusively reveal.
New data, obtained by the YEP through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, revealed that 12 registered sex offenders living in the Leeds district are currently classed as missing with their whereabouts unknown.
Five of these are currently classified by West Yorkshire Police as being ‘high risk’ offenders with a further three classed as ‘extremely high risk’.
One medium risk, one low risk and two unclassified offenders are also currently listed as missing.
In total, the YEP can reveal that police are currently tracking 1,235 registered sex offenders known to be living in the Leeds district area.
268 of these are listed as ‘high risk’ sex offenders with 14 classified as ‘extremely high risk’.
Five sex offenders are currently listed as missing in Bradford, with three more from Wakefield and Kirklees, and a further two missing from Calderdale.
West Yorkshire Police said that registered sex offenders are managed in the community by dedicated Public Protection Officers (PPOs) and Public Protection Review Officers (PPROs) who all work within District based Safeguarding teams.
A risk assessment is made on each offender to determine the risk level whilst they are at liberty within the community.
PPO’s and PPROs review offenders in accordance with their risk assessment and they are supervised by Detective Sergeants who will ensure that any breach of the legislation is fully investigated and the offender brought to justice, whenever that is possible.
This includes cases where an offender’s whereabouts are unknown.