POKÉ MONSTER PANIC
Game taking kids to city homes of fiends
Pokémon GO is inadvertently luring its young players right to the homes of “high-level” sexual predators, an alarming investigation has found.
A report titled “Protecting our Children: How Pokémon GO and Augmented Reality Games Expose Children to Sex Offenders” revealed that the cute cartoon creatures are popping up in front of the homes of registered sex offenders across the city.
“Unfortunately, Pokémon GO has opened up a door to sexual predators,” said state Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx), whose office teamed with that of state Sen. Diane Savino (D-SI) to conduct a two-week investigation.
Investigators visited the homes of 100 Level 2 and 3 sex offenders who committed “heinous” crimes against children — or who were convicted of possessing child pornography — and found Pokémon characters popped up directly in front 57 percent of the time.
The sex offenders are either on parole or probation and are not per- mitted within 1,000 feet of a school.
The mobile game, which uses a cellphone’s camera and GPS functions to virtually populate real-world locations with the digital monsters, also placed “PokéStops” and “gyms” — where players can train their Pokémon — within a half-block radius of convicted pedophiles’ residences 59 percent of the time.
A Pokémon-related item appeared near residences of the sex offenders 73 percent of the time, according to the investigation.
Players of the game can also use a “lure” at a PokéStop to attract Pokémon characters to a specific location, which the senators fear may be used by sexual predators to bait children to a certain area.
“A sexual predator who downloads this game holds a guide in their hands — a virtual road map to hunt down their prey,” Klein said.
Klein and Savino are planning new legislation to protect children from encountering sex predators while playing the game that has swept the nation.
“The one thing we know about sexual predators is they gravitate towards opportunities that give them access to their victims. So they are going to use this in a way to lure their victims to them,” Savino said.
Their legislation would prohibit certain Level 2 and 3 sex offenders from playing so-called augmented-reality games and require the game’s developers to scrub all objectives within 100 feet of the residences of sex offenders.
There have already been reports of the game taking players to the homes of sexual offenders in other states, including California.
The maker of Pokémon GO, Niantic Labs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.