With the help of a state grant, the Ventura County Sheriff's Department plans to step up its efforts to supervise registered sex offenders.

Along with sheriff's departments in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, the department recently secured a grant from the state Office of Emergency Services and formed a Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement, or SAFE, task force, officials said.

The tri-county task force is getting $687,750 for the effort this year.

Ventura County's share of the grant is $239,000, said Sgt. Tim Waite, a member of the Sheriff's Department's sexual assault unit who helped write the grant proposal.

The department plans to use part of the grant to fund a temporary position for a detective who will focus on registered sex offenders, Waite said.

The money will also cover overtime pay for deputies, which will allow them to spend more time checking on offenders, he said.

Since the grant was approved in March, the department has conducted three small sweeps to check on some of about 1,000 registered sex offenders in Ventura County. During the last sweep April 27, two offenders were found to be out of compliance with registration regulations.

Waite wouldn't describe the frequency of sweeps before the grant, but he said the new money will allow officers to be more proactive.

"Some of the individuals were actually surprised that we came out knocking on the door. They hadn't had a compliance check in a while," he said.

The state funds will also buy new equipment for deputies, finance training on how to enforce new laws and deal with sex offenders, and pay for programs to educate the public about how to use the Internet sex offender registry.

Many similar Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement task forces are operating statewide, and some have been very effective, said Robert Coombs, spokesman for the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

Sex offenders are less likely to repeat their crimes when they are in stable living situations, Coombs said.

To deal with them, agencies must assess the risk of individual offenders, monitor them and educate the community without creating hysteria about the presence of criminals who are already social pariahs, he said.

"The problem of sex offenders in communities is a very complex one; it can't be solved with one tool or one office," Coombs said. "For this particular type of offender, you simply cannot treat them like every other offender. You need a customized approach, and a SAFE team can do that."

The best SAFE teams cooperate with law enforcement agencies as well as healthcare officials and victim's advocacy groups to ensure that offenders have treatment and supervision, and that the community has a nuanced education about their presence, he said.

The Sheriff's Department plans to partner with county probation and parole agencies as well as the District Attorney's Office and Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the SAFE team, said Capt. Jerry Hernandez, a department spokesman.

But while the agency plans to send deputies into the community to talk about the sex offender database, officials have no plans to work with nongovernmental advocacy groups, he said.