From the heartland — Michigan’s Newaygo Public Schools — comes a warning that’s scary.
But probably not the way it was intended to be:
Dear Parent: This morning, near 95th & Clay Street, some students and an adult reported a suspicious vehicle near one of the bus stops. The vehicle is described as a white “rusty” minivan that slowed down and stopped near some students. We do not have evidence that the driver of this white minivan interacted with students. We did have students and another adult concerned about the presence of this vehicle, however, and subsequently filed a report with the State Police. The purpose of this letter is not to alarm people, but to advise adults to remind their students of the importance of being aware of their surroundings and not to engage in conversation with strangers. I thank you in advance for your assistance in protecting our students. If you have any further questions, please contact me at 231-652-6984, ext. 8565. With Pride and Respect, Peggy A. Mathis Superintendent
Not that I am on the side of predators, but I do have one piece of advice for anyone contemplating that career: Get a different color van.
Seriously. It’ll just make your life a little easier. – L.
41 Comments
I have a white rusty mini-van. Sometimes my husband drives it…near schools! Quick, somebody call the police! (And how do they know it was a man driving? Surely they were not foolish enough to get close enough to tell!)
There’s a tumblr dedicated to tracking suspicious white vans (tongue in cheek) http://megasuspiciouswhitevan.tumblr.com/
We just had an incident this week, here is the more sane response from administration:
Yesterday afternoon we were informed of an incident in our neighboring district, in which a man in a vehicle approached two separate bus stops and spoke with a fifth grade female student at each bus stop, offering them candy. Both students responded “no” and promptly reported the incident to school personnel. School officials contacted local law enforcement and were able to provide significant information from the involved students that led to the apprehension of a man that is a registered sex offender.
Firstly, it is important to acknowledge the two students for their awareness, their recognition of an unsafe situation, and their reporting the incident to school officials. Their
actions are commendable and reinforce the importance of educating all our students of how to respond in these unsafe situations that do occur regardless of where we live.
Secondly, it is important that we do not allow the fear and anxieties that we feel from these incidents to guide us, but this incident reminds us we must continue to have dialogue with our children to improve their awareness to recognize unsafe situations, and what they should do to protect themselves and others. lt is our efforts as a “village” that keep our communities safe and allow us to live in freedom.
Our safety and freedoms are dependent on all of us.
I will have to remind my husband that if he is driving the minivan that he needs to NOT slow down when he sees kids at bus stops, because while the natural inclination is to be safe and slow down, he really shouldn’t because they will think he is a perv. If he just had the long hair and not the beard, I think he could pass and wouldn’t get hassled.
@CatLady…
So instead of them living in fear, you husband should take that on? There’s a false dichotomy there. He should just go about his business, and the rest of the world needs to HTFU.
My partner and I have a little one coming in February, so I suppose I’ll end up coming across this at some point in the next several years. I intend to stand my ground and the panickers be damned – I can’t control their reactions to me [driving past/walking by/insert scenario here] their precious little snowflakes.
I slow down when driving, a lot. Especially near groups of kids because, you know, safety and random darting into the road. Sometimes when I’m driving, I stop to take a call, check a map or GPS, get my bearings if I’m in an unfamiliar area.
I was unaware that these normal driving behaviors could be deemed suspicious if they happen near children. Thanks for the warning!!!
These students and the adults that were concerned enough to file a report with the State Police (does this community not have its own police department, or a county sheriff?), were they not concerned enough to see the license plate? Seems to me that if they did, it would be an easy job for the STATE POLICE to contact the driver, find out what innocent activity he was engaged in, and let the school know before this warning was issued.
And about not engaging in conversation with strangers? On the first day of school, the school itself is full of strangers. So, for that matter, are many other places kids go and where we expect them to be polite (grocery store, any store actually….). Glad we’d prefer to raise a generation of rude people scared of everyone.
Not to be contentious, Beth, but I don’t think there was any need to contact the police at all, nor would police be justified in tracking down the driver. What would the police ask him? Why he stopped his van “near” some students? I’m no attorney, but that doesn’t sound like probable cause to me. Instead, it sounds like harassment.
We should be reminding our kids periodically about what they shouldn’t do with strangers. We shouldn’t need a slow-moving white van to remind us. Scary lapse of logic there – but all too common.
There is an Austrian site, mimikama.at (in German), dedicated to uncovering Facebook scams, which has to debunk white vans, usually outside schools, every other day.
We got a robo-call about a similar incident a while back. It didn’t happen at my kids’ school, but at another one in the same district, across town. Apparently some old guy made the mistake of speaking to children he didn’t know and was witnessed doing do, and then the witness freaked out and called the school and the cops on the poor guy. Turned out to just be somebody in a beat up truck who was lost, and nothing more. But we got robo-calls and letters home about how the district is “committed to the safety of all the children,” etc., etc.
And then just this week, some dumbass 14 year old took a pellet gun to school and the whole damn city freaked out. I know that school shootings happen and people are worried about that sort of thing, but even my kids’ elementary school went on lockdown, due to a freshman at a high school 6 miles away bringing a pellet gun to school.
It says this happened at an intersection and bus stops are often at corners. Could it be this guy was simply obeying traffic laws and stopping for a stop sign? Or does the school rather adults in cars they deem suspicious not obey the traffic laws and speed past through intersections?
WHAT???!!!! White vans are still allowed in the USA?? :O
Sounds almost racist…
Yeah, I hear about ominous people in white vans near the schools from parents around here sometimes. Funny thing is, the white vans I’ve seen around have been official vehicles of one sort or another. City or school, I’m not really sure as the logo is really small.
“With Pride and Respect” should be “With Fear and Ignorance”.
“These students and the adults that were concerned enough to file a report with the State Police (does this community not have its own police department, or a county sheriff?)”
Just as a side note, in Pennsylvania, if a small community does not have its own police force, and most boroughs under 5,000 or so do not, and nearly all townships do not, the state police are the agency with primary jurisdiction. The county sheriff’s department is more of an arm of the courts than an actual law enforcement agency, though they do have arrest powers. Don’t know if it’s the same in Michigan, but in many small Pennsylvania towns or townships, calling the state police would be the only appropriate thing to do. So it might be here as well.
“calling the state police would be the only appropriate thing to do.”
Sorry, let me clarify — calling the state police would be the only appropriate thing to do *in a situation where calling law enforcement was the appropriate thing to do anyway.* I agree with others that this is not one of those cases.
pentamom said: “Just as a side note, in Pennsylvania, if a small community does not have its own police force, and most boroughs under 5,000 or so do not, and nearly all townships do not, the state police are the agency with primary jurisdiction.”
With all the fear, I’m surprised there can be any jurisdiction, no matter how small without its own police force. How hard can it be to appoint a single sheriff in a small town?
As for the described situation. As Lenore always explains, not speaking to strangers means you’d be raising hermits. Everyone is a stranger at some point. You can talk to them, just don’t go off with them. Since this guy never even interacted with the students, it was a complete overreaction.
How dare a driver actually slow down in the vicinity of children! In fact, how dare he even be on a public road in the vicinity children he doesn’t know! Doesn’t he know how fragile these previous young lives are?
@Neil M, I obviously didn’t make myself clear. I do not think it was remotely appropriate for anyone to file a police report or contact the school. But since they did, and they were so very “concerned”, the least they could do is get a piece of simple information like the license plate. And, if the police were unable to blow off this complaint (do they have to proceed with an investigation once a formal complaint is made?), they would have at least been able to follow up and notify the school that there was no need for terror, or emails, or stranger danger warnings.
My sixteen year old neighbor recently purchased his first motor vehicle, which is old and white, and his friends all refer to it as his “rape van”. I will have to warn him of the dangers of driving slowly near bus stops.
Captain Overreaction!
Thoughts:
1. So… we don’t slow down or stop by bus stops anymore?
2. Isn’t the white van a mocked stereotyped joke these days?
3. Not related thought, but… is there going to be a problem with young boys reaching adulthood having spent their childhoods being told that all men, the men they will one day become, are perverts and rapists at worst and had better just keep to themselves at best? A hopeless future for young males.
Oh gosh, this makes me want to buy a rusty white van and write “suspicious white van” on every side, driving at the recommended reduced speed limit around schools.
You say that kidnappings and other things that helicopter parents are trying to reduce have not gone up in the years but instead down. But how do you know that abduction rates when down because if our improved efforts over the years to reduce things like this?
Wow, the perv in the white van sure gets around. There are at least a dozen white van pervert warnings each year in my Canadian city. Either it is the same guy, and he has quite a range, or they should have a paint colour called “pedophile white”!
It’s Van-a-White!
Seriously… maybe the driver just slowed down to be cautious about kids who might wander into the street.
“@CatLady…
So instead of them living in fear, you husband should take that on? There’s a false dichotomy there. He should just go about his business, and the rest of the world needs to HTFU.”
no, instead of living in fear of being arrested and put on the sex offenders registry for simply doing the sensible thing and slowing down when you see kids who might jump in front of your car, you should speed up and get out of there as quickly as possible, despite that increasing the risk to those kids (and to yourself, because when those kids do jump in front of you you’re now in even more trouble than had it happened at lower speeds).
It is not illegal for someone to obey a school zone speed limit simply because he’s a male. Therefore, I would not register as a sex offender for doing so.
JT Wenting, exactly. He should get arrested for something OTHER than being a perv, as he is not a perv.
Most states now have laws against distracted driving – no using cell phones or texting while driving. WA even wanted to outlaw GPS units as being distracting. (It didn’t pass.) So the alternative to breaking the law is to PULL OVER! Which I do once every third week or so. If people are SO scared, and there were adults there…why don’t they go ask the person what they are doing? They might be a lot happier with the explanation. Doubtful that a perv trolling for kids will kidnap an adult in front of those kids. And they might actually be able to help someone get to work on time by giving them directions.
Imma get me one of these and drive it past all the schools in town…
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_UcVIAB2XTlE/TAHMUcqTuJI/AAAAAAAABTg/SBAwb8VIfpA/s1600/_DSC3022NITRCHM2010.jpg
I saw a rusty ice-cream van once. It was like something out of a horror film.
It is a very silly and paranoid letter, though.
Isn’t living in all this fear exhausting???
A white van would be a great Halloween costume. I just hope I remember for next year.
@ks -you must live in Toledo! That whole episode bugged the hell out me. A pellet gun! And, he had a knife!! A steak knife? A butcher knife? A butter knife? A, god forbid, POCKET KNIFE? The media doesn’t tell us these things; it just prefers to scare us with cries of “guns” and “knives”. I remember last year how the East Side was up in arms about a couple of kids near a school with BB guns!
@Brian, hahahahahaa good one lol. Don’t forget to post photos, I will organise the fundraising for your bail, as you will surely be arrested for the grievous crime of having a sense of humour… The children must be protected from you… Hahah
@maggie2
“I remember last year how the East Side was up in arms about a couple of kids near a school with BB guns!”
In my high school it was a tradition to bring squirt guns to school on the last day of the school year.
I’m sure if anyone tried that today they’d end up in prison or worse (“suicide by cop”).
D said:
“You say that kidnappings and other things that helicopter parents are trying to reduce have not gone up in the years but instead down. But how do you know that abduction rates when down because if our improved efforts over the years to reduce things like this?”
Well, of course we don’t, because that kind of thing is nearly impossible to measure. However, just because a given measure *might* increase safety is not a compelling argument in favor or adopting that measure. You have to weigh the cost of that measure in time, money and effort against the benefits it will produce. So we could spend millions of dollars to staff police departments with resources sufficient to investigate every adult who comes within 90 yards of a child, sure, but will that increase safety? And how do we measure success?
“You say that kidnappings and other things that helicopter parents are trying to reduce have not gone up in the years but instead down. But how do you know that abduction rates when down because if our improved efforts over the years to reduce things like this?”
(A) ALL crime is down, indicating a decrease in ALL criminal behavior, not just abductions.
(B) Where there is a will there is a way. While the actual crime – the kidnapping of Jane Doe instead of Sue Smith – may be a crime of opportunity, stranger abduction is not generally a spontaneous crime. It is a fantasy that has been brewing in the mind of the kidnapper for awhile. Locking down children just changes the available means of getting them not the desire to do so and eventually that desire will succeed.
(C) Helicoptering is very much a middle/upper class thing and not at all common poorer populations and yet there has been no increase in kidnapping of those unhelicoptered populations.
(D) The level of stranger abductions was never beyond extremely rare even at it’s highest point, so it has just moved to even more extremely rare. The idea that we should curtail the freedom of millions of kids to reduce something that is already extremely rare is ridiculous.
Of course it had the words “Free Candy” spray painted on the side as well, similar to this one.
This is just sad and I don’t have much else to say. Except it’s not just the school, but paranoid parents as well as students. And it’s all due to this culture of fear and suspicion we’ve been living with for while. I’ve heard of one parent who won’t let their child walk to school, not because of the sex offender list, but because of whoever isn’t on the list but should be. How do you deal with this mentality? The more security, the better they feel.