Halloween is today, and that got us thinking about your kid’s safety. Do you know who’s behind the doors your kids are knocking on?

We set out to verify if Bibb sex offenders report to jail on Halloween.

Just a few final touches and Nevaeh Simmons’ costume is ready for Halloween, but her mom, Nakeza, says their door is the only one she will be knocking on.

“It’s very scary. That’s why for the last three years we haven’t been out. Just trick-or-treating door-to-door,” says Nakeza.

Nakeza says she has always worried about people poisoning candy, so they have a family party on Halloween, but she says she has never thought about sex offenders posing a threat.

“I don’t have any idea where the sex offenders are,” says Nakeza.

If you are interested in seeing a map of where sex offenders live, click this link.

We reached out to Lt. Chris Harrell from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office to see where registered sex offenders are on Halloween in Macon.

“The sex offenders that we’ll have in jail on Halloween are ones that are serving their time from violations against the registry or ones who have pending charges that are waiting to go to court,” says Harrell.

So we verified that no sex offenders in Macon do not report to jail on Halloween. The only ones in jail are already there.

Harrell says offenders on parole or probation will have to go to the probation office during the hours kids are out. As for the other registered sex offenders, he says they make an extra effort on Halloween.

“We physically go out to the work employment addresses and the residences where the sex offenders have registered with the sheriff’s office and check and make sure the information they provided with us is correct,” says Harrell.

James Hill of the Georgia Department of Community Supervision says the State Board of Pardons and Paroles allows parole officers to impose curfews and provide specific reporting instructions for sex offenders.

We reached out to other Central Georgia counties to see what their policies are.

In Baldwin County, Detective Haley Beckham says they continually check offenders addresses throughout the year, but around Halloween she says some years they check and some years they do not.

In Houston County, Cpt. John Holland says they increase the amount of check on Halloween and leading up.

“Very shocked cause that’s crazy because you wouldn’t even think about that especially for a holiday,” says Nakeza.

She says knowing that some registered sex offenders are at home on Halloween is enough to make sure her family stick to trick-or-treat alternatives.

HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — A recent decision from the Georgia Supreme Court is shaking up the way law enforcement tracks some sex offenders.

For years, Georgia law required lifelong electronic tracking for “sexually dangerous predators” even after they completed their sentence, including their time on probation or parole.

However, in a ruling released Monday, the state’s top court said no more.

RELATED: Lifelong monitoring of ‘sexually dangerous predators’ unconstitutional, Georgia Supreme Court rules

In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that lifelong monitoring after a completed sentence violates the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search.

The court reasoned that an ankle bracelet feeding location data to law enforcement constituted a never ending search.

Defense attorney Frank Hogue thought the court got it right.

“I think it’s a good decision because it holds the Fourth Amendment center to our values of privacy against government intrusion,” said Hogue.

On the law enforcement side, the response was mixed.

Lieutenant Kent Bankston with the Houston County Sheriff’s Office said those post-sentence ankle monitors were reserved for serious offenders, including those who committed crimes against children.

“When you’ve committed rape, you know, or any type of felony such as that,” said Bankston.

But he said the ruling wouldn’t keep the sheriff’s office from doing their job.

“I understand the public concern, but it’s not going to change the way we do things,” he said.

Offenders who were formerly wearing the tracker will remain on the sex offender registry and will still have to provide their address to law enforcement. Bankston said law enforcement will, in turn, continue to verify those addresses with in-person checks, as they always have.

He also noted that the “predators”–the group of sex crime offenders the Georgia Bureau of Investigation deems most dangerous–make up a very small portion of Houston County’s sex offender registry.

Of 287 people on the registry, Bankston said only five were classified as predators.

Bibb County had similar numbers. 

According to Sgt. Clay Williams, the county has 404 offenders total on the registry. Five of them are deemed predators.

Bibb County Sheriff David Davis was still angry at the ruling.

In a Facebook post, he said the ruling has ‘essentially removed the shackles from monsters in our society.’

He went on to ask legislators to find a way to bring the monitoring program back.

Hogue says a short concurring opinion shows that could be a possibility.

“(It) essentially tells the Georgia legislature ‘here’s an idea for how you can monitor these people with a GPS legally for the rest of their lives,” he said.

That idea, he said, is passing legislation that calls for lifetime probation sentences for the worst sex crime offenders. 

While on probation, the law provides them a diminished expectation of privacy. Under those circumstances, law enforcement could be able to legally track offenders with monitoring bracelets.

Photos: Operation Broken Arrow arrests

A 31-year-old convicted sex offender living in Forsyth County was arrested Wednesday after he reportedly failed to notify authorities about a new job.

According to the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, deputies took Jeffery Custer into custody at an area business after discovering he had been working there without notifying the sex offender unit as required.

A report from the sheriff’s office said deputies went to Custer’s registered home address on Heardsville Road, where they learned he had gotten a job last month at an area auto repair business.

Custer, who is being held at the Forsyth County Detention Center without bond, is required to register as a sex offender as a result of a 2003 conviction for sexual battery in Heard County.

The newly formed pro-active community enforcement unit at the sheriff’s office, as well as the agency’s reserve unit, have begun conducting regular visits to addresses provided by sex offenders.

As of Tuesday night, they had not found 27-year-old Curtis Joe Motes, for whom an alert was issued last week.

Motes failed last month to register as a sex offender, something he’s required to do after a 2006 conviction for child molestation in Hall County.

His last known address was 5774 Adrian Lane in Forsyth.

According to Georgia Law, any person convicted of a criminal sex offense in any state or territory must register once a year with local law enforcement, providing accurate information about where they work and live. They must also notify authorities if they move.

Forsyth has 113 sex offenders who are required to register, according to the sheriff’s office. Eighteen of those are currently in jail.

By Jerry B . . . In 2006, Defendant  Zeno committed two delinquent acts that occurred when he was age 14 and 16. Because of the nature of the two acts, his case was transferred from juvenile court to adult criminal court where he pled guilty to rape of a child, sexual assault, criminal attempt (rape), criminal attempt (incest), and indecent assault. The trial court sentenced him to an aggregate sentence of four to eight years’ incarceration followed by five years’ probation, and informed him that he would be required to register as a sex offender. In August of 2017, Zeno was found guilty of violating the terms of his probation and parole and was sentenced to 2 to 10 years of incarceration.

Zeno challenged the registration based on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Ruling in In Re J.B.,107 A.3d 1 (Pa. 2014) that “SORNA’s registration requirements improperly brand all juvenile offender’s reputations with an indelible mark of a dangerous recidivist even though the irrebuttable presumption linking adjudication of specified offenses with a high likelihood of recidivating is not ‘universally true.’ . . . The application of SORNA’s current lifetime registration requirements upon adjudication of specified offenses violates juvenile offenders’ due process rights by utilizing an irrebuttable presumption.”

The Commonwealth, however, argued that since Zeno was tried in criminal court rather than Juvenile Court, he was eligible for registration as a sex offender.

A panel of Superior Court justices disagreed with the Commonwealth and ruled that because Zeno was a juvenile when he committed the crimes, he does not have to register as a sex offender. In Re J.B. applies to him. See the decision here.

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JACKSON, Ga. — Thousands of kids will hit the streets for trick or treating this week and law enforcement officers from around the state are sharing how they will alert neighbors to the registered sex offenders living next door.

Some sheriff’s offices put signs on doors, others do routine checks throughout the night to make sure registered offenders are following the law about not decorating or hosting trick-or-treating. In Butts County, Sheriff Gary Long said deputies in his county are putting ‘No Trick Or Treat’ yard signs in front of registered sex offenders homes in their county.

The warning feels like a target to some who live with registered sex offenders.

“There have been threats made. Hot heads saying just take a gun to their heads,” said one Butts County mom, who didn’t want to be identified.

Georgia state law prohibits registered sex offenders from placing Halloween decorations on their property. The signs have the universal “no” symbol over a trick or treat bag underneath the message “NO TRICK-OR-TREAT AT THIS ADDRESS!!”

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A sign being placed in the yards of sex offenders by deputies with the Butts County Sheriff’s Office in advance of Halloween.

“That poster that is causing that hysteria is posted at my property and I have not done anything wrong,” she said.

The woman said her husband is on the sex offender registry list for a relationship he had with an underage woman when he was 20 years old.

“There’s so many levels,” she said. “There’s such a gray area…but yet they happen to be treated all the same.”

MORE | Georgia town to hold registered sex offenders at City Hall for 3 hours Halloween night

Vickie Henry, president of Women Against Registry, said the yard signs can lead to harassment.

“They are not the threat that people perceive them to be,” she said. “And those signs are just going to make things worse.”

There are more than 50 sex offenders in Butts County, according to Sheriff Long. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations’ website shows close to 31,500 registered sex offenders in the state.

The idea to put yard signs in front of registered sex offenders homes came after organizers decided not to have an annual trick-or-treating event.

“The big challenge that we face here in Butts County, for years and years and years and years they’ve always done Halloween on the square and on Halloween night we would have anywhere from 2,500 to 4,000 children,” the sheriff told 11Alive.

“There are some sex offenders that are not happy,” Long said. “But I’m not in the business of making them happy. I’m in the business of keeping safe communities and making sure that our children are protected.”

Each county has an offender watch page on its website and a link to the statewide sex offender registry.