A new round of attack ads in the governor’s race drew an angry response Thursday from a group of prosecutors, firefighters and former law enforcement officers.

The group, led by Pierce County deputy prosecutor Mark Lindquist, said during a news conference at Gov. Chris Gregoire’s campaign headquarters in Seattle that ads funded by the Republican Governors Association attacking the governor for “losing track” of 1,300 sex offenders are misleading and should be pulled.

In one ad, a woman who describes herself not only as a mom but also “head of surveillance for Cindy” says she’s on “constant lookout” since discovering that 1,300 sex offenders went missing on Gregoire’s watch. A young girl on a bicycle is cautioned not to go too near the street, and a man walking a dog looks over at a group of children gathered around an ice cream truck.

“We know they’re out there, but thanks to Gregoire, we have no idea where,” the mother says.

“It sounds like the plot of a late-night scary movie,” another ad begins.

Jill Strait, spokeswoman for Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, responded to the ads’ critics by noting that 14 law enforcement unions endorsed Rossi for governor, including the Seattle police and King County police guilds.

“Christine Gregoire thinks Washington is safe enough, but we don’t agree with her and neither do law enforcement organizations across the state,” Strait said. “It makes their job harder that the state does not know where over 1,300 sex offenders are located.”

The basis for the ad appears to come from the Washington State Patrol, which keeps the repository for the state’s sex offender registry. As of Oct. 1, the State Patrol’s database showed 1,381 missing sex offenders out of 20,152 statewide, according to Capt. Jeff DeVere.

Sex offenders are required to register at their local sheriff’s department and periodically check back in. When an offender fails to check in as required, the sheriff’s department reports that to the State Patrol and that person shows up as “missing” in the database, DeVere said.

But that figure doesn’t provide an accurate picture, according to Don Pierce, executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. Pierce, whose organization works with local sheriff’s departments in the tracking of sex offenders, said the information in the database is collected through a largely manual system and is not up to date. Some of the people classified as missing are in jail, have moved out of the state or died, Pierce said.

He said that Operation Crackdown, which Gregoire started, helped to reduce the number of missing sex offenders.

“To say there are 1,300 missing sex offenders is a slap in the face of the sheriffs and police chiefs we represent,” Pierce said. “Sure, there are a handful here and there where we don’t know where they are.”

Work is under way on a new, statewide system that will provide real-time information about sex offenders and their location, Pierce said. The system, which was supported by Gregoire, will allow citizens to register an address and receive e-mail notification whenever a sex offender moves into the neighborhood, he said. It should be up and running in about two months, Pierce said.

Jason Hagey: 253-597-8542

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