Cyber-Safety Focus of DA's Visit to Northborough Schools

"Smart phones and tablets allow people to communicate – for good or bad – anytime and anywhere," Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. points out.

"The biggest issue for parents is that their kids are far more tech-savvy than they are. Parents need to try to keep up. They also need to make sure the lines of communication with their children remain open so they know what’s going on," Early said during an e-mail interview Monday. 

Tuesday, Early's Community Outreach team will make three cyber-safety presentations in Northborough: at the Melican Middle School, to parents, at 8 a.m.; to Melican sixth-graders; and then to parents at the Zeh School at 6:30 p.m. The Northborough PTOs are sponsoring the evening session, which will include a question and answer period.

"When I ran for office in 2006, I said that I would rather prevent a crime than have to solve one, and prevention programs have become a priority since I became District Attorney in 2007. My Community Outreach team has made presentations to more than 300,000 people, a large majority of whom have been students," Early said.

"Why do we do it? Again, prevention. We know that these programs work. Juvenile crime has declined significantly throughout Worcester County because of the work of many. Our hope is to head off a problem before it causes a bigger issue down the road. That’s how you will eventually see the numbers reduced in our jails.

"We make presentations on a variety of topics, everything from distracted driving to domestic violence and safe dating, but our most requested programs are about bullying and cyber-bullying."