Texas' Top 10 Sex Offenders: New List Gets Quick Results

Photo courtesy DPS

Antonio Garcia, one of two Houstonians on the sex-offender list

​The Department of Public Safety has started a new "10 Most Wanted Sex Offenders" feature, and you'd have to say so far, so good.

The list went online at 8:30 yesterday morning, DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange tells Hair Balls; by 10 a.m. they'd received a tip and by 4:30 p.m. one of the top 10 was in custody.

"A thousand-dollar tip is a big incentive for people," she says.

You'll be glad to know that Houston is repping big-time: two of the 10 spots are from here.
DPS briefly had a top 10 sex-offenders list in the 1990s, Mange said, but gave it up. Now that online access and search engines are such everyday things, this current attempt likely won't suffer the same fate.

Most of the people on the list have either failed to register or registered just once and then never kept in touch with authorities, she says.

"These are guys we need to get back in jail," she says. "Generally, if you're a sex offender and you're trying to hide where you are, it's because you're up to no good. If you are trying to stay straight, you are dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't.'"

So take a look at the list and see if your neighbor's on there. It could be worth a cool grand to you.