Police show online dangers to school workers

Lieutenant urges becoming familiar with available apps.

PANAMA CITY — The conversation started innocently enough.

Panama City Beach police Lt. J.R. Talamantez, posing as a 13-year-old girl named Tiffany, logged onto Omegle, a website that connects two strangers anonymously and at random to talk or video chat. The website bills itself as “a great place to meet friends,” but Talamantez wasn’t looking for friends. He wanted to show Bay District School Board members, district staff and principals of the district’s 37 schools how easy it is to encounter and engage online with sexual predators.

After entering “kids” as an interest for Tiffany, Talamantez and the audience dove in. And it didn’t take long.

The first person they connected with said his name was Nick. He said he was from North Carolina. After asking how old Tiffany was, he said he was 18, asking “is that okay?” Tiffany replied it was fine.

“Well, I bet you’re very pretty, Tiffany,” he wrote back.

“What you’re going to see here is the precursor to grooming,” Talamantez explained, leaving the chat. “These guys will say all the right things at the right time. Your kids are going to continue that conversation.”

Talamantez has given his presentation, Parents Against Predators, at several schools in the district, aimed mostly at arming parents with tools to protect their children from online predators, a task that is growing monumentally more difficult as new, anonymous social media sites and phone applications are launching and gaining steam in schools. Tuesday’s workshop, which also tackled cyberbullying and drug use, was meant to loop in educators on what they need to look out for, and what their students often are subjected to in their digital lives.

“Your kids? There’s two of them. The one you see in front of you and the one that lives in here,” Talamantez stated, holding up his phone. “The person in here, you don’t know.”

Pointing district staff to a website, safesmartsocial. com, Talamantez recommended educators familiarize themselves with different apps, what they look like and what they do. The apps are color-coded based on how safe they are for children and teenagers. Some, including Facebook and Instagram, were given the green go-ahead, because they can have parental locks and filters and can be monitored.