Sgt. Robert Garofalo advises parents to watch their child’s computer use
By: Stephanie Brown
MONROE It’s a big cyberworld out there, are your kids protected?
That was the question at the center of a technology seminar held March 23 at Brookside Elementary School. The district held the event in an effort to educate parents of fifth- through 12th-graders about risks the Internet can pose to their children.
Sgt. Robert Garofalo of the West Windsor Police Department lead the seminar, which was titled "Child Safety and the Internet."
As a member of his department’s computer forensic and investigative unit, Mr. Garofalo said he has seen firsthand the dangers of the Internet. During a recent investigation, he said he helped track down an individual who, although he had been living in his car, had used public library computers to search and save children’s Web site profiles.
"It’s not that you don’t trust your kids," he said. "You don’t trust the people they’re hanging out with, all the other people on the Internet, all the pedophiles that are out there and trust me, I know, I’m telling you, they are out there and are closer than you think."
As a patrol officer in 1994, Sgt. Garofalo worked the crime scene where the body of 7-year-old Megan Kanka was found.
"Standing next to her lifeless body the entire night, that is something that will always stay with me," he said, noting that in Middlesex County, there are 137 registered Tier 2 and 3 sex offenders.
During the seminar, Sgt. Garofalo presented a PowerPoint demonstration walking parents through Internet profiles, instant messenger, newsgroups, MySpace, and blogs.
He showed the parents actual Monroe students’ profiles on MySpace. Many parents were shocked to see the profiles of students who attended Woodland School who claimed on their pages to be 20 or 30 years old.
Sgt. Garofalo gave parents advice on how to safeguard their children.
First and foremost, he recommended keeping the family computer in a common area, not in the child’s room.
"You want to be able to see the screen when walking by," he said, adding that a lot of kids minimize screens when they hear someone approaching. "Be aware as soon as you walk by if your kids minimize the screen. That’s bad."
He also recommended filtering and monitoring content on the computer. Software like NetNanny can help filter inappropriate material, while monitoring software like Spector Pro or AOL Guardian allows parents to keep track of where their children go online. Sgt. Garofalo highly recommended using AOL parental controls.
"Even if you have Comcast, you can set AOL as the gateway to the Internet," he said.
Sites that help educate parents on the uses of the Internet, like www.isafe.org and www.cybersmart.org, were also recommended.
Above all else, he stressed parent-child communication.
"Talk to your kids," he said. "When kids get at that age, yeah, they don’t listen, but you still have to maintain some sort of control."
With AOL Instant Messenger, for example, he said parents can set up an exclusive friends list which allows their children to chat with friends only.
"If your child wants to add another friend, they must ask first," he said. "Then you can call that friend’s parents and make sure it’s OK with them."
Stephanie Belzer, a parent of a Monroe Township High School freshman, said she would like to have that much control over her daughter but "basically that’s an ideal world."
Ms. Belzer was one of about 30 parents who attended the seminar in an effort to "play catch up," as Sgt. Garofalo called it.
"These kids, they’re so savvy," said Evelyn Levy, who has two sons attending Monroe Township High School. "Mine changed my own password for AOL, and I had to ask him what the new one was."
Still, parents agreed it was their duty to stay up to date.
"It’s absolutely important that we know what the kids are doing," said Ms. Belzer. "But how many kids are in the high school and how many of us are here?"
District officials and teachers said they are doing everything possible to safeguard students while in school, but it is up to the parents to do the same in the home.
"One thing we realized is that we do a lot of things to protect the kids at school, but to get them to be protected at home it’s really important to have information available to the parents," William Wetherill, district coordinator of educational technology, said before the seminar.
The school district blocks sites like MySpace and AOL Instant Messenger and monitors the students’ uses of the Internet on school computers. Middle school and high school students also have to agree to an Acceptable Use Policy, which states that they understand their responsibility as users.
According to the school district’s Web site, under the Acceptable Use Policy students are expected to protect their account from unauthorized use, which means keeping their password secret, to use the facilities only for the expressed intended purpose as defined by school administrators, and not to access inappropriate material.
"We’re incorporating Internet safety all the time into our curriculum and instruction, but we also need to make parents aware of not only what we do as a school, but also what they need to do at home," Mr. Wetherill said.
Sgt. Garofalo said he could not stress enough the importance of parents’ duty in safeguarding their children.
"Be aware and be involved," he said. "Monroe police and I give you permission tonight to be a parent as much as you want."