Cherokee County law enforcement officials have kicked off a new strategy to verify the address of registered sex offenders.

Officers from the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office and Georgia Probation at noon on Thursday launched a 12-hour operation to check on all 167 offenders living in the county. Of that total, 17 are in jail.

Last year, there were 138 registered sex offenders living in the county. The growth is the result of offenders from other jurisdictions moving into the community, according to Lt. Jamie Gianfala of the sheriff’s office.

State law requires the sheriff’s office verify the addresses of all registered sex offender once a year.

Cpl. Bob Post of the sheriff’s office said the agency verifies all addresses twice a year and randomly checks in on offenders throughout the year.

“Some (offenders) will get verified eight or nine times a year,” Post said.

Thursday’s operation, which used the sheriff’s office Violent Incident Proactive Enforcement unit, was the first of its kind for the agency, according to Sgt. Chris Haffner. The name of the operation was Holiday Sex Offender Address Verification Enforcement, or SAVE.

The new strategy exercised through the operation is to check on as many of the verifications as possible within one window, Haffner said.

The blanket approach is a departure from the past technique of using deputies from the Uniform Patrol division between emergency calls. Haffner said that system took weeks instead of hours.

Gianfala, who is a member of the VIPER unit, said Thursday’s operation was a pilot program to see how the process could be streamlined for increased efficiency.

“It is a chance to get everyone together and see what kind of success we have,” he said, adding that the sheriff’s office will “evaluate the good and the bad” and determine whether future countywide checks should be done the same way.

Within hours of beginning the operation, the sheriff’s office already had made one arrest for drug charges and another is pending due to an offender not living at the address where he was registered. Two people, not sex offenders, also were picked up on open warrants when found at addresses on the list.

Haffner said the agency takes monitoring registered sex offenders very seriously and keep close tabs on them.

“We want to be very proactive and know where these people are at and for [the people on the registry] to know that we are out there looking for them,” he said, adding the sheriff’s office wants sex offenders to know their addresses are not just data in a file.

“We are actually checking up with it,” Haffner said.