In this gang-riddled Chicago neighbourhood, keeping kids safe on the way to and from school takes an army of parents and police.

Cruisers block the road in front of Crane high school, cops stand guard on the steps and street corners and video cameras mounted on streetlights capture whatever they may miss.

As the students spill out of the towering building, Matthew Smith (52), scans the crowd wearing a blazing yellow "Parent Patrol" vest.

"Where my babies at?" he mutters.

About 15 students find Smith and he herds them onto a city bus, where he and "Granny" Williams watch over them as they make the dangerous three-kilometre two-bus journey home to their housing project.

A police cruiser shadows them as backup.

Some 24 Chicago public school children have been slain since the academic year began in September, 21 with guns. Nobody knows how many have been badly beaten or shot.

Just one was killed on school grounds — an 18-year-old boy shot to death in a parking lot on a Saturday afternoon — and school officials say their buildings are safer now than they have been in years.

There has also been a steady decline in overall murder rates in Chicago and across the nation.

Gang tensions

But a recent flare up in the gang tensions which have long gripped some Chicago neighbourhoods has captured the attention of community leaders and the local media because so many children were killed in broad daylight.

One was a 10-year-old boy struck by stray bullets on the way to buy candy at the corner store.

"We have to take our communities back block by block, mile by mile, neighbourhood by neighbourhood until we stop this violence," said Alderman Bob Fioretti, who helped organise the parent patrols.

The slaying that frightens these particular kids is that of Crane student Ruben Ivy (18), who was shot to death a block away from school during a 7 March brawl.

'It ain't safe nowhere'

Evelyn Riley (16), was one of hundreds of students who stayed home from Crane because they were afraid of being caught in the crossfire of retaliation.

Riley skipped two weeks of school, and only came back when local officials launched Operation Safe Passage, which uses parent volunteers and police as escorts.

The programme has now spread to four other troubled schools and Riley hopes it will continue indefinitely because she does not feel safe on the streets.

"I still wake up worrying about my life because of what happened at my school," she told AFP. "It ain't safe nowhere. Because anywhere you go you could get shot."

Nakeila Taylor (17), has a more fatalistic attitude and did not bother staying home.

"Anything can happen anywhere so there's no reason for me not to come to school," she said.

Things have calmed down in the weeks since the shooting, she said. People in her neighbourhood are not hiding in their homes anymore and the Abla housing project is getting lively again.

Lull can't be trusted But she does not trust the lull in violence.

"It's not over," Taylor said. "Something's going to happen. If it's not now, it's later."

Smith is determined to make sure nothing happens to these kids on his watch.

Every morning he waits for them at the housing project's community centre. And nearly every afternoon, he waits for them when the bell rings.

"I'm going to step in front of anything that might happen," he said at the most dangerous spot on the 30 to 40 minute commute: the bus transfer point.

"I'm not going to let nothin' happen to another one of these children."

Smith has 11 children, most of them grown. His 17-year-old daughter is at Crane and he worries that she makes her own way there and back, instead of taking the bus with him.

He is proud of the two dozen kids who show up every morning to be escorted to school and worries that they do not all get out of the building in time to catch the bus back with him at the end of the day.

"These children want to be educated," he said. "Even though they're not our children, they belong to us."

AFP