During the 2007 STN EXPO, attendees were introduced to a speaker who carried almost four decades of experience in the criminal justice profession along with a friendly and disarming demeanor. After being introduced at one of the morning sessions, he quickly delved into his area of expertise — child abductions and the predators behind these heinous crimes, which have ended in the deaths of many innocent children and teens.

Dr. Duane Dobbert, forensic examiner, noted author, professor at Florida Gulf Coast University and member of one of Florida’s Child Abduction Response Teams, has trained a number of police officers, school districts administrators and, more recently, school bus drivers on how to spot the predators that reside in every community, sometimes under the radar of local law enforcement.

It Takes One to Meet Thousands
Soon after the publication of Dobbert’s second book, Halting the Sexual Predators Among Us, he invited detectives, law enforcement officials and school administrators from counties in southwest Florida to a seminar on the topic. Jeff Stauring, a compliance officer from Collier County Public Schools, was in attendance and became very interested in how this type of training could be used when vetting school district personnel. He soon invited Dobbert to train all of the districts’ administrative and counseling personnel.

“I developed the training program for school bus drivers and delivered it during the preschool in-service training, and the rest is history,” recalled Dobbert.

Since that initial training session, Dobbert has trained school transportation personnel from more than 5,000 school districts with a program called School Bus Drivers: The First Line of Defense Against Sexual Predators. Pupil transporters are given a detailed profile on the different types of predators and what drives them to prey on children.

“Our drivers were very surprised that such situations existed,” said Stauring. “It was eye opening to all of us that predators are not opportunists but actually seek out victims.”

Since his department’s initial training, Stauring’s drivers have filed with the local Sheriff’s office almost two dozen suspicious stranger reports. In every case, a driver was able to identify something that seemed out of place.

“Bus drivers are the first line of defense for the student passengers. They have first-hand knowledge of the students and geographic locations,” added Stauring.Taking the Training and Running With It

Brent Chaston, the director of transportation for the Park City, Utah, School District and a speaker at the 2008 STN EXPO, returned from last year’s conference with the information from Dobbert’s training as well as a passion to immediately recognize any offenders in his area.

“I work with a very dedicated and professional group of people. When you talk with a driver about the kids on their bus, invariably they will identify the students as ‘my kids,’” said Chaston. “Knowing what to look for has been very helpful in identifying persons who may be in the wrong place, and this has greatly helped our law enforcement agencies in keeping our kids safe and in addressing other concerns.”

Chaston’s first stop was the local Sheriff’s office, where he was able to identify the current known predators in his county. He used this information along with the sex offenders’ pictures obtained from a county Web site and put it all on a poster that was passed around during his department’s annual in-service training.

“I had prepared 8- by 11-inch copies of this information for them to keep on their buses. It was interesting that the drivers wanted copies of these pictures for their personal vehicles, as well,” said Chaston. “Parents who come into our building and see this poster ask us what it is for. When they find out, it is very reassuring to them to know we go the extra mile in our efforts to keep their children safe and secure.”

Working Closely with the Pros
Since the passage of Florida Senate Bill 120 in 2004, certain sex offenders have been prohibited from living within 1,000 feet of a school bus stop. The Department of Corrections is also required to notify local school district within a specified time period of the location and residence of these sex offenders, who are subject to conditional release supervision. After this bill took effect, George Andres, the chief mechanic and driver trainer for Sumter, Fla., District Schools, and Conrad Porter, a correctional probation specialist with the Florida Department of Corrections, began working together in identifying and keeping track of these offenders.

While sitting through Dobbert’s hour-long training session at the Florida Association for Pupil Transportation’s 2006 Mid-Year Transportation Directors Meeting, Andres discovered that his county was “overrun with sex offenders.”

“It’s a big issue on parents’ minds, and its a big issue on our drivers’ minds. Our drivers are pretty diligent in knowing where offenders and predators live because they constantly visit the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Web site,” said Andres.

His relationship with Porter has made keeping his students safer a much easier job. His department works hand-in-hand with Andres in locating bus stops and assisting the district in enforcing its policy of keeping sex offenders off school grounds.

“The relationship with the Sumter County School System is outstanding,“ said Porter. “There is open communication concerning sex offenders. The partnership between agencies has assisted greatly with the safety of children in our area.”

Andres also enhanced his drivers’ efforts by bringing Dobbert to his district to perform a complete training program that offered additional insight into what behavior to look for around bus stops.

“Anybody could be standing there; you don’t know who it is,” added Andres. “Being able to understand when a child speaks to a stranger and what it really mean if someone approaches them is very important.”

Each month for the past two years, Andres has printed new pictures and information on all the offenders in Sumter County and has hung them in the drivers’ lounge area. A majority of his drivers also check the county Web site on their own. On one occasion, a man loitering around one of the district’s bus stops caught a driver’s attention. The driver went to the FDLE Web site and found that there was a sex offender living in the area that matched the man’s description. Local law enforcement officers paid a visit to the man, who subsequently stopped hanging around the stop.

On the other side of the country, Debbie Garmen is also keeping a close eye on the offenders in her small northern California community of Red Bluff. The transportation director for Red Bluff High School District, which transports about 1,700 kids daily, took Dobbert’s advice after seeing him at the 2007 STN EXPO. She printed out information on all 74 sex offenders in her area and created binders for each of her drivers.

“We were able to get three predators off of our streets,” said Garmen, who works with the local district attorney and also complied a binder for the town’s para-transit services. “They were able to identify some people on their routes who are no longer allowed to ride on the bus when they pick up students at one of the school sites because of their status as a sex offender.”

These are just a few examples of what many school districts are doing to keep their students safe and keep predators at bay and, at times, behind bars.

“In all of my 39 years of service I have never met a group of professionals more dedicated and active in getting the job done and protecting children,” said Dobbert. “School bus drivers are truly my heroes, and I wish everyone in the United States would realize the wonderful service they provide to our school age children.”

Reprinted from the January 2009 issue of School Transportation News magazine. All rights reserved.