It is a warm summer day. You hear the song “The Entertainer” in the distance chiming from the ice cream truck’s loudspeaker and you race to buy your favorite ice cream – from the neighborhood sex offender.
Not the ending one hopes for when thinking about children and ice cream trucks. The issue about the lack of a screening system to know who exactly is driving local ice cream trucks, and what kinds of backgrounds they have has recently surfaced.
New York and Illinois have already banned sex offenders from driving ice cream trucks. Riverside and San Bernardino county leaders are considering laws to do the same. California, though, has no current law to keep a sex offender from driving an ice cream truck and selling popsickles to children.
There is, of course, Proposition 83, which requires cities and counties in California that license local massage parlor owners or massage therapists to deny a license to any individual required to register as a sex offender, but protection needs to be extended to children.
The proposed California laws would apply to all unincorporated county areas and require background checks for drivers. It would bar those convicted in the last five years of sex offenses or other crimes (including burglary and selling drugs), from driving the goodie wagons.
“These guys are totally unregulated,” said John Field, chief of staff for the law’s author Riverside County Supervisor John Tavaglione. Field added, “Maybe it’s time to make them go through some kind of process so we know who is out there dealing with our kids.”?
Criminals have a right to be rehabilitated, allowing them to work and live in our communities. However, there are certain work opportunities that, if filled by sexual predators, could compromise the safety of children.
Pedophiles should not be placed in positions where the temptation to molest children is obvious. The main purpose of ice cream trucks is to treat children to something pleasant and cool.
Allowing sex offenders to drive ice cream trucks and interact with children is like placing a brownie in front of a child and telling her or him to “look, but don’t touch.”
If the child is well disciplined, she or he may be capable of resisting the temptation. If the child becomes too tempted and gives in, then a problem arises. In the case of the sex offender, it is not just a brownie that gets eaten, it is a child that could get hurt.
When it comes to children, it is our job as a conscious society to make sure that they remain safe. Think twice about sending your children – or little brothers and sisters – out to an ice cream truck. It may be driven by someone with a history of sexual assault.
Jackie Taheny is a senior journalism major and a contributing writer for the Daily Forty-Niner.
