Being designated Level III sex offenders means these men are among those deemed most likely to repeat their crimes, whether by violating conditions of their release, or by waiting out authorities’ court mandated supervision and then hunting for new victims or again attacking people they have already victimized. So, there is a sustained (if not actually increasing) population of these predators right smack in the middle of Elliot Park. There is also a concentration of them in the nearby Phillips neighborhood. And, for that matter, in Jordan on Minneapolis’ North side.
Residents of these areas - particularly Phillips and Jordan are growing quite worried about what’s been going on — and with good reason. Phillips and Jordan have, despite Minnesota Department of Corrections’ assertion to the contrary, been stuck with the largest number of high-level offenders in the entire city. The pattern of placement speaks for itself. Why aren’t folk out in suburbia regularly seeing police-posted flyers that read: "COMMUNITY NOTIFICATION MEETING: This flyer is being distributed to people living in an area where a Level III SEX OFFENDER is residing?" Why aren’t suburbanites more and more often showing up for these police-sponsored meetings and being handed another piece of paper headlined: "SEX OFFENDER INFORMATION FACT SHEET: RISK LEVEL NOTIFICATION"? How come, as long as these miscreants are being placed in our midst, their distribution isn’t being handled so that suburbia gets an even share?
Well, the answer is real simple. Suburbia is where politicians who make these decisions live. They don’t want sexual predators living around their children and women-folk. And they sure don’t want such predators living around their moneyed constituents and campaign donors, who would scream blue-bloody murder at having their privileged, pristine existences sullied by stigma and threatened by danger. They’d raise pure hell at any such intrusion by miscreants from the real world. So, the rest of us get stuck with the problem. Hans Christian Andersen Elementary School in Phillips, for instance, is within walking distance of the home where three convicted sex offenders live.
The well being and life concerns of citizens on the low rungs of the social ladder simply don’t count. Consider this. More than 20 percent of the nearly 11,000 sex offenders who are required to register with the State of Minnesota have gone missing, according to Ann Marie O’Neill, head of the registration program. That’s 2,227 convicted sexual predators. Of that number, nearly half didn’t return verification letters from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Another 896 letters came back from the Post Office as undeliverable. Probation officers reported the other 49 who couldn’t be found, saying they had fled or couldn’t be tracked for another reason. These dangerous people
