BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK AND BETH HUNDSDORFER
News-Democrat
Enforcing Illinois' new law prohibiting a child sex offender from living within 500 feet of a state licensed in-home day care will require research and manpower, said top metro-east police officials.
The measure has been signed into law by Gov. Rod Blagojevich. It resulted from News-Democrat stories in February reporting that hundreds of child sex offenders lived too close to home day cares and that a 2006 statute designed to protect the day cares was defective.
Law enforcement agencies say that while the law allows them to arrest child sex offenders living within 500 feet, locating home day cares and determining which are operational will take the cooperation of the licensing agency: the Department of Children and Family Services.
"We would like to know where all the day care homes are, for a lot of reasons, not just because of sex offenders," Collinsville Police Chief Scott Williams said. The city recently passed a new ordinance requiring child sex offenders to live at least 1,500 feet from a day care or school.
"If DCFS would let us know, we would put them on our map; it's as simple as that," Williams said. "We can't take them into consideration if we don't know where they are."
One solution might be to required day care operators to register their addresses with police, Williams said.
Jimmie Whitelow, a spokesman for DCFS, said Monday that his agency is "not ready at this time" to answer a variety of questions about how state staffers will help law enforcement implement the new law. DCFS is not responsible for enforcing the statute.
"It's really getting very time-consuming to check on all these people," St. Clair County Sheriff Mearl Justus said. "Our people have been telling me that. We are really spending a lot of time on this, and I know it's important. But it's time consuming."
Justus said that while studies show child sex offenders often assault children they know and that laws restricting where they can live may be ineffective, the law is still important.
"I think it's important because there are very, very few of those cases where people like these offenders are helped through counseling," he said. "The medical profession believes that there is damn near no effective way to help those people.... The recidivism rate has just gotta be sky high."
O'Fallon Police Chief John Betten said his department also will have find out just where the operating in home day cares are located.
"What we're going to have to do is take a look at where it is that we have conflicts and see how we should follow-up from there," he said.
"We're sort of in the enviable position here of having a relatively low number of these sex offenders," he added. "But at the same time, when you start looking at 500-foot circles around day cares, and thousand-foot circles around schools, suddenly we really start to really see our circles beginning to overlap, making it increasingly difficult to enforce but also important to enforce."
Madison County sheriff's Maj. John Lakin said the key to enforcing the new law lies with DCFS and an updated list of day cares.
"Shouldn't we be able to get a list from the state?" Lakin asked. "Then we will have to determine where these day cares are and make sure they are operational. And then check if there are any child sex offenders living nearby."
Contact reporter George Pawlaczyk at gpawlaczyk@bnd.com and 239-2625. Contact reporter Beth Hundsdorfer at bhundsdorfer@bnd.com and 239-2570.
