Cops teach kids, parents cyber-safety

Police Officer Faith Carter is the Crime Prevention Officer for the 111th Precinct in northeastern Queens, but the crime she talks about happened on Staten Island.
A 13-year-old boy was found handcuffed to a tree, having been sexually assaulted and abandoned by a predator he “met” on the Internet.
Officer Carter is traveling to schools, libraries and just about anywhere that kids or parents or both can learn to be safe when online.
At one of these “Cyber Safety Workshops,” at the Bayside library at 214th Place and Northern Boulevard, Carter played tapes of televised news reports about online sexual predators.
In one report, several adult men in their 40s, among them a special education teacher, an emergency room doctor and a rabbi, made online “dates” to meet a 14-year-old boy who would ostensibly be home alone.
The men, who engaged in sexually explicit online conversations not with a teen, but a reporter, were all eventually removed from their positions and prosecuted.
What’s most important, in Carter’s view, is that kids understand that instant messaging and web sites like “MySpace” or “Facebook” connect to the whole world, and that the people on the other end may not be what they seem.
“Predators will keep track of everything you say, and then agree with you so you’ll like them,” Carter explained to the kids. “After a while, they want you to like them more than your parents - so you’ll want to get close to them,” she warned.
While such tales get most of the attention, experts say that only about five percent of kids on the internet get solicited online. Yet in Queens, with more than 500,000 kids under the age of 18 and many with computer access, that number translates into thousands.
The other problem is “cyber-bullying,” where kids are intimidated or manipulated by other kids, into posting compromising photos, revealing their passwords or other risky behavior.
To the adults, Carter offered this counsel. “Educate yourself. You’re the parent,” she said, “don’t be intimidated by your kids.”
Intimidation is supposed to flow downhill in the cyber-safe world. Parents should pay attention to how much time their kids are on the internet, what sites they view and what they have on their home pages.
Carter said it’s a bad idea to put the computer in the child’s room, away from the rest of the family. “You should be able to glance over and see what they’re doing,” she said.
“You have to talk to your kids,” Carter stressed, explaining, “It shouldn’t all be about discipline. Have them teach you about the internet - it will be good for both of you.”