Free Fingerprinting, Safety Tips Offered

Parents and their children will have the opportunity Saturday to learn habits and techniques for safely navigating the world at WeTip’s 1997 Mother’s Day Fingerprint and Photo Session.

Sponsored by WeTip’s Children’s Awareness Program, the event will provide free fingerprinting and photographing, as well as lectures by police and guidelines for parents, beginning at 11 a.m. in Sherman Oaks.

“This is more or less an educational thing,” said Mike Lewis, program director for WeTip Southern California. “We want to introduce law enforcement to the children at an early age. There’s more to it than just printing.”

Creating an identification file will be the main focus of the event, Lewis said, but getting children to open up to their parents or other adults and encourage personal safety are also important.

“It’s a lot of responsibility, but we’re going to do what we have to do to educate these kids of the dangers,” he said. “And we want to get kids talking. We want them to know that they don’t have to be quiet. They can report anything anonymously without getting in trouble.”

The annual event, to be held at David Park’s L.A. Tae Kwon Do Center, 14444 Ventura Blvd., was being planned before the abduction and killing of a 10-year-old Beaumont boy last month and before the recent attempted abductions of other children.

But Lewis said organizers are mindful that the incidents may have increased public awareness of the dangers and they are hoping parents act on that by attending.

“What we’ve been screaming about the past 11 years, people are realizing now with all the coverage,” he said.

WeTip hopes to reach 5,000 children a year, beginning in Southern California and then the rest of the country, Lewis said.

For more information, call (818) 715-9328.