Safe Passage routes rife with sex offenders
BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK Education Reporter September 28, 2013 12:10AM
A Safe Passage sign is posted near a building on Washington Blvd., where a registered sex offender lives along the route for children walking to De Priest Elementary School on Chicago's West Side. | Jessica Koscielniak / Chicago Sun-Times
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Updated: September 28, 2013 8:49AM
When children walk the stretch along Montrose Avenue through the heart of Uptown to Brennemann Elementary School, they already deal with violence and gang tensions.
But like children at most of the other schools that received new Safe Passage routes, another potential danger lurks: registered sex offenders, especially those deemed predators who victimized children.
A Sun-Times analysis found that 48 of 53 Safe Passage routes at schools that took in children from closed schools have sex offenders registered along them or within 1/8 mile — a full city block. Five routes have 10 or more, and 17 have more than five, according to that analysis of the routes and the Illinois State Police sex offender registry.
With about 2,700 sex offenders registered in Chicago with State Police, some of them were bound to cross Safe Passage routes. The