Cops arrested 20 people in a sex-offender sweep Thursday, and in the process stumbled on an unexpected prize: a “drug factory.”
Members of the New Haven police’s Special Investigations Unit carried out the sweep with members of the U.S. Marshal Service Violent Fugitive Task as well as state law-enforcement agents. They were looking for 45 people wanted in New Haven, Hamden and West Haven for failing to register as sex offenders. A “few” of the 20 arrestees were also charged with violating probation, according to a release; one was charged with first-degree sexual assault.
They went to one Shelton Avenue apartment to learn that their target no longer lives there. They did find five marijuana plants growing there; the current occupant admitted that the room, part of a rooming house, was his. They arrested him and confiscated the pot, three grow lamps, and a cell phone.
