Community Corner

Bellevue Parents Can Get Tools, Tips to Keep Kids Safe

Saturday's Child Safety Day at the Market Place @ Factoria features free and low-cost bike helmets, child ID kits and lots of information.

When parents worry about keeping their children safe, scenes from TV news and late-night dramas can fuel that big fear—that someone will kidnap their son or daughter.

In reality, children are more likely to be hurt in a car accident or falling off their bikes, or to be bullied by someone online, than they are to be abducted by a stranger, said Bellevue Police Officer Rob Wood.

On Saturday, parents can get tools to help them handle all these threats at the Child Safety Day put on by the , Savvy Parents Safe Kids and the .

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Families are invited to the Market Place, also known as the Factoria mall, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for information, demonstrations and activities aimed at supporting safe, fun, healthy kids and families.

The first 50 children will receive free bike helmets fitted by Bellevue police officers, and additional helmets will be sold for $9.

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“One of the safety fair helmets has saved a kid’s life,” Wood said, recalling an accident on nearby Newport Way in which a child on a bicycle was hit by a car. The doctor credited the helmet for keeping the child safe. “If you save one kid’s life, it’s worth it,” said Wood, who works at the police station in the mall and has participated in the safety fair for more than a dozen years.

The police department looks at county statistics each year to figure out how children are being hurt so it can provide relevant safety information to parents.

Car accidents top the list, Wood said, so there’s an emphasis on properly installing safety seats and making sure kids are correctly buckled in.

Head injuries from riding bicycles or other toys are also common, so the department offers low-cost helmets to children.

But it’s not just physical injuries that can hurt kids.

“Our commitment is to reduce injuries and accidents, but it’s also about reducing victimization of kids,” Wood said. So this year, the safety day will include a booth about bullying, staffed by police Lt. Lisa Patricelli, who leads the department’s school resource officers.

The booth will include information about cyberbullying and “basic Internet safety for kids,” Wood said. “We teach kids how to use the computer and how to identify when people ask the wrong questions on the computer.”

Parents can pick up copies of Internet safety pledges for young children, as well as for teenagers, with guidelines for how to stay safe online.

And even though stranger abductions of children are rare, the police department offers Operation Child Safe, a national program that gives families a free ID kit for their children. Volunteers at the safety fair take a child’s picture, fingerprints, physical description and other information. That information gets put onto a computer disk that is mailed to the parents. The department doesn’t store the information, Wood said. Beyond the abduction scenario, the disk could be useful if a child gets lost while a family is on vacation at Disneyland, for example, Wood said. A family could share it with park security, which could then send a description and photo to employees to help locate the child.

The department expects to handle about 100-150 of the ID kits Saturday, Wood said. “We have to turn people away at every fair. There’s a line each year.”

Other participants in this year’s fair include the Girl Scouts, Hopelink, Super Sitters and the Kids Quest Museum. The city plans to bring in an aid car, and maybe a police cruiser, for kids to check out up close, though the recent mall remodel might make it a tight squeeze, Wood said.

Bellevue Patch will be at the event, so stop by to say hello and pick up some goodies for you and the kids.

 IF YOU GO:

What: Child Safety Day

Where: The Market Place @ Factoria, Center Court , 4055 Factoria Mall S.E., on Factoria Boulevard.

When: Saturday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.


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