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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 8, 1987)
7 Protect yourself: Crime prevention pays says. “This is because people set their backpacks down and look away or they take off their rings and watches to wash their hands and then turn to reach for a towel and when they turn around the jewelry is gone. ” Being aware is the key, he says. Awareness is a cornerstone of the Neighborhood Watch Program, one of the more visible crime prevention activities in the local community. This program has a few rules to follow, but interested neighborhood groups need only call either the Bryan or the College Station police to set up a meeting. The rules include a 50 percent neighborhood participation in the Bryan area and a 75 percent participation in the College Station area. Participants also must mark their belongings with their driver’s license numbers and follow police recommendations, says Sgt. Dale Cuthbertson of the Bryan Police Department. Cuthbertson says that marking valuables is very important in the event of a theft. He says to use your driver’s license number when marking objects, with indellible ink or with an engraver. Your social security number cannot be traced or verified, he says, because the Social Security Office won’t give out any information about social security numbers. According to Cuthbertson, one of the most important audiences for safety education is children. Children today are faced with more dangers than the children of past generations, he says. Getting into a car and taking candy from strangers are still problems among the young, but today these same little children are being offered drugs. And many are accepting. This is where the McGruff puppets and slogans, as well as other fun learning techniques, step in to teach children about crime prevention. McGruff comes in a variety of sizes, from puppet to life size, and both Bryan and College Station plan to use him for all he’s worth. When puppets such as McGruff are used, Cuthbertson says that the children learn and remember much better because the learning is fun. However, he disapproves of the newest McGruff campaign that states “users are losers, ” because the department stresses positive reinforcement and believes that everyone is a winner, Cuthbertson says. “Everyone’s a winner, but drug users have stopped winning,” he says. “We use the words “winner” and “user” — not “loser” — because the kid who’s using drugs already has a low self-esteem and if you tell him he’s a loser if he does drugs, that just reinforces his bad self-image. ” Although the College Station department is not currently using the McGruff puppets, Lt. Bemie Kapella says the program will get under way at the end of this month. McGruff is just now coming on the local scene because College Station police previously used puppets such as Officer Ollie, a boy, a girl and a raccoon to teach about safety in the home and in school, he says. Kapella says he thinks the McGruff puppets will be very successful because of the media attention and because children are already receptive to the department’s $15,000 robot, named F.R.E.D.D.I.E., short for Futuristic Robot Equipped with Devices Designed to Inform and Educate. The robot stands 5 feet 2 inches and weighs 190 lbs. and the money used to purchase Freddie was donated to the deparment. Freddie has a camara in his head and a T. V. in his chest and is fully equipped with a VCR and 8-track and cassette players, Kapella says. This allows Freddie to talk to the kids and play videos to teach them about safety for their belongings and themselves, he says. The Bryan Police Department also has a robot, but he looks like a police car, not a person. His name is P.C., Cuthbertson says. “P.C. stands for Police Car, Prevent Crime, Pretty Cute, or whatever else the kids can think of,” he says. This $3,600 machine was also paid for with donated funds, Cuthbertson says. P.C. talks directly with children via a transmitter built into his body. An operator listens to the children’s questions through a receiver and he in turn answers them through the transmitter, he says. P.C.’s eyes blink and move and his lights flash, all with the help of the operator. He tells the kids about stranger danger, safety and drugs, he says, by relating it to the car. “P.C. says such things as ‘You wouldn’t leave me outside would you?’, ‘Don’t get in the car with strangers’ and ‘What would happen if you put sugar in my gastank?’,” he says. The Bryan police are also using a program called Police Inquire, which allows children a chance to ask questions about policemen in order to get to know them and learn what they stand for. Cuthbertson says that the children also get to sit inside the police car and play with some of the gadgets. In addition, the College Station Police Department is Safety tips: •Don’t leave your personal •Lock all doors and windows before leaving even if you’ll only be gone a few minutes. •Never leave the curtains open if you aren’t home. •Register bicycles with the University police. •Try not to travel alone at night. •Have keys out while approaching your car. •Look in the backseat before getting into your car. driver’s license number. introducing a unique program this week. If you’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to be a real police officer, now is your chance. The Citizen Police Academy is designed to give the public a better understanding of the problems faced by police officers, Kapella says. The program runs for ten weeks and 25 people can join, he says. Another section will start in January. The class meets one night a week for three hours and participants get the chance to meet several different officers and ride with an officer on actual patrol, he says. This program is a totally new concept, Kapella says, and the only other one like it is in Austin. The whole purpose is to correct the misconception people have of police work because of the popular television shows, he says. “It’s nothing like T.V.,” he says.