The longtime site of Bel Air Copy & Print Center on Main Street is now home to the sex offender registry unit of the Harford County Sheriff's Office.
The Sheriff's Office took over the unmarked, black-curtained storefront at 110 South Main to house its Megan's Law unit, which keeps tabs on the county's sex offenders.
Lt. James Eyler, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, said Wednesday the unit has long been housed at the Sheriff's Office headquarters, at 45 South Main.
"All they have done is moved across the street and have a separate office," Eyler said about the headquarters. "They were already working on overcrowded conditions, so this really frees up conditions there."
The agency is also leasing 110 South Main to make work easier for employees, who had to walk over from 23 North Main, where the domestic violence unit and Child Advocacy Center are located, when sex offenders came in to register.
"It gets them out of the main office. Now these individuals are over at a separate location," Eyler said.
The unit conducts registration, verification, notification and monitoring of anyone who has committed a sex offense against either a child or adult.
Megan's Law has required public notification of convicted sex offenders since 1996, after 7-year-old Megan Kanka was abducted and murdered in New Jersey by a previously-convicted sex offender.
How frequently offenders must come to the office depends on the offense, he said, but 86 percent of Harford's offenders qualify to register every quarter, the most frequent level of registration required.
Eyler added that offenders are heavily monitored, including getting unannounced home visits from county officials.
"It's pretty labor-intensive, to be honest," he said.
Eyler explained most sex offenses happen between people who know each other, not strangers.
"The public typically thinks of these people as being predators," he said. "It's typically a crime of confidence."
The secretive-looking nature of the storefront is only to avoid confusing the public, he said.
"That building is not staffed 24/7, and they didn't want to confuse the public with having 'Sheriff's Office' on the front of it," he said.
The building has two full-time and one part-time employees, he said.
Eyler said the Sheriff's Office leases several satellite buildings, including some covert ones, so the arrangement is nothing unusual.