KRQE / Albuquerque, NM - 6/7/2008

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Four times this school year police found sex offenders at Manzano High School because of a new security program that now may disappear as its grant funding ends.

Even though the two registered sex offenders had business at the school, the alert received by police shows the value of the security technology, according to the Albuquerque Police Department officer who brought the program to Manzano.

Stephen Landry, convicted of four counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor, visited the school three times. And Richard Stubbs, convicted in Iowa of sexual abuse with a minor, was at Manzano once.

Each time Raptor Technologies notified school officials. The driver's license of every visitor to Manzano is scanned, and Raptor quickly checks the person against registered sex offenders in 48 states.

"When we get the hit I automatically get a page to my phone that tells me that there is somebody on campus," APD Officer George Trujillo told KRQE news 13.

Trujillo, the school's resource officer, got the grant that paid for raptor. He said the system proved its worth by spotting the two offenders:

"Both of them either had a student or a visiting student; they had a reason for being there," Trujillo said. "But what it does is it alerts us that they're on campus.

"We're able to track that person. We're not allowing those people just to wander our campus." Wherever he is, Trujillo can use his laptop computer to sign onto Raptor and monitor every visitor on campus, even those who are not a threat.

Without Raptor he may have go back to checking the campus on foot next year:

"My hope is that we are going to have the system in place," he said.

"What I plan on doing is go out and soliciting the funding."

The Raptor program costs a school about $1,500 the first year and between $500 and $1.000 per year after that. Manzano is the only school in Albuquerque Public Schools district with it in place.

APS administrators said they have no plans to pay for this program or to make it district wide.

KRQE | Reporter: Michael Herzenberg | Web Producer: Bill Diven