News and Information Hoover to screen for sex offenders Tuesday, October 16, 2007 – A new security measure being piloted in Hoover schools aims to identify convicted sex offenders before they get past the front desk. Front-office employees at three Hoover City Schools are requiring parents and other visitors to hand over driver licenses or green cards so they can be computer swiped to check for convicted sex offenders. A positive match alerts police and school officials by text message and e-mail. The identification scanner, which looks like a slightly oversized eyeglasses case, can read any U.S. government IDs and a Mexican government issued ID card. If Hoover implements the new security measure systemwide, it would join a growing number of systems nationwide that are using new technology to learn more about the people who visit their campuses. The technology being piloted in Hoover also allows school officials to print out visitor passes with more detailed information, including a person's driver license photo, arrival time and destination in the school. "The system is not just to track sex offenders. It's to track visitors and volunteers," said Hoover police Lt. Maurice "Mo" Canady, Hoover schools police liaison. "It's imperative for my kids and all kids in the school district that we know who's in the building." Canady described it as a proactive security measure because there have not been problems with sex offenders in Hoover schools. It is being tested at Green Valley and Shades Mountain elementary schools and Berry Middle School for two to four weeks before a decision is made about whether to implement the checks at all 17 Hoover school campuses, Canady said. Raptor Technologies, a Houston company, is providing V-Soft, a Web-based software application, for a free trial. It would cost $1,500 per school the first year and $400 or so per school in subsequent years, Canady said. More than 3,000 schools across the country use V-Soft, said Samuel Olivares, a technician for the company, who was in Hoover on Monday training school employees. The system checks the first and last name, as well as the birth date, of a visitor against a database of convicted sex offenders that's pulled from state databases and updated every two weeks, Olivares said. It's all information that is available to the public, Canady said. A mismatch could happen when a visitor has the same name and date of birth as a sex offender. But school officials can determine it's not the same person by comparing the photo identifications or physical descriptions, Olivares said. School officials would develop protocol for the new system, Canady said. They would have to use discretion and handle any matches case-by-case, he said. David Thompson, president of the Alabama Association of School Resource Officers, said he doesn't know of any other Alabama school system with a similar program. "It'll just make you more aware of potential problems," he said. "I'm sure all schools watch visitors closely when they're around children. But it would let people know ahead of time that this person has a history, and they would be extra diligent." Thompson said even with the tool, there still are gaps that need to be addressed - specifically, when parents are convicted sex offenders. "Everybody thinks of a sex offender as this strange person you stay away from and you can tell right off the bat they're a sex offender, but a lot of sex offenders are parents, and they still have rights as a parent," Thompson said. "But where does that conflict with the rights of the school and the rights of other parents?" Also, school officials would need to consider what to do in instances where parents lack identification, Canady said. That has been an issue for some schools, Olivares said, and some parents don't like handing over their driver licenses. |
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