Ames Police are waiting to hear from county officials to enforce the relocations of child molesters.

Chapter 692A of the Iowa Code, put into place this summer, mandates any person who has committed a criminal offense against a minor cannot live within 2,000 feet of a school or child care facility.

Ames Police, working with the Story County attorney and the Story County sheriff’s office, will be following in the steps of the Des Moines Police Department, which already informs child molesters living too close to schools or child care centers that they must relocate. The three-agency joint effort will be identifying and plotting on a map the municipal areas affected by the state sex offender registry law, and the map will be available to the public, Story County Attorney Steve Holmes said.

“It’s going to define all the facilities like schools and day care centers and define the areas that are excluded from residence by registered sex offenders,” he said. “It’s to aid in recognizing where these facilities are because it’s no small task.”

Based on data the agencies are compiling, Ames Police Commander Randy Kessel said, “There is a small percentage of the city that offenders can reside – maybe the extreme north and southwest, but I don’t know how far that’s going to be.”

The new location of Ames Middle School did not have a big impact on areas available for offenders to live since the school is in the same area, as it moved from State Street to Mortensen Road, he said.

The majority of sex offenders in Story County reside in Ames, according to the Web site of the Iowa Sex Offender Registry.

To ensure counts of sex offenders remain correct, officers cross-reference the letter they receive from the state identifying registered offenders with those on the registry’s Web site and check the listed addresses quarterly, Kessel said.

“If someone has moved and not notified us, then we work with the county attorney’s office. We have one officer assigned to [the sex offender issue] who usually works with the community resource officer, and, if new offenders are moving into an area, we make sure they have registered the correct address with the county,” he said.

Ames Police also notified residents living in neighborhoods with offenders.

“Along with notifying people living within a two-block radius of the offender, we try to make phone calls to the area’s neighborhood association representative,” Kessel said.

Officers also provide nearby residents with a photo of the offender from the registry’s Web site and a paragraph explaining who the individual is, he said.

Not all sex offenders follow the new law, however.

Since January, Ames Police has filed charges against two offenders who were not registered properly, Kessel said.

Offenders who fail to register can face aggravated misdemeanor charges for a first offense and up to two years in prison; second and subsequent offenses are Class D felonies and violators can face up to five years in prison, according to the registry’s Web site.