I remember those days.

Parents of my generation can look back upon the summer ritual of flagging down the ice cream man as a fond memory. A quarter bought a red, white and blue Bomb Pop. Ice cold to the touch, you tore the wrapper off, tossed it to the street, squealed in delight when your tongue momentarily stuck to icy goodness and smiled brightly as your lips turned a bright red or blue.

Mom or dad may have watched from a distance as you made your purchase. Most likely they didn’t bother. They had nothing to fear. In those days everyone trusted the ice cream man.

Times change.

Struggling in an age of paranoia, parents today will march right out to the truck, make the purchase, eye the ice cream man with suspicion and keep their kids out of reach. Public perception of the ice cream man has turned sour. Perception is reality and every ice cream man is a potential pedophile. One need only look at the battered truck, peeling labels and smoke belching from an exhaust pipe.

Times change, indeed.

Recently, Tennessee lawmakers decided to study background checks for ice cream truck drivers over the summer. According to an article at CommercialAppeal.com there is need “to work out matters such as who should pay for the background checks, who should conduct them and penalties for violations.”

Any employee of any company should go through a comprehensive background check that includes the following:

* Social Security Number Trace

* County Criminal Records Search

* Motor Vehicle Records Search

* Nationwide Background Check

* Sex Offender Registry check, both statewide and national

The same should hold true if the truck is operated as an independent contractor. Anyone that interacts with children in a potentially unsupervised way MUST be background checked. The legislature in Tennessee, or any state, should mandate a thorough background check as a part of the licensing process.

A thorough criminal background check as part of pre-employment screening or even post-hire screening is a low cost endeavor when compared to the incalculable human cost that could occur.

Thomas Kenney is a web writer based in Southern California. His primary interests are creating safe environments for at-risk populations and works through his company, PreScreen Solutions, to achieve that.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Thomas_Kenney

But first, let me tell you a little story. I know a single mother who was looking for a house. Her main requirement was that it had to be safe for her children. After months of looking she found the perfect house on a cul-de-sac in a great neighborhood and the price was right, too. After moving in one of her neighbors stopped in to welcome her to the neighborhood. One comment from the neighbor got her attention, though. She said she really admired her bravery.

Naturally my friend was curious what that meant. After pressing the neighbor she told her that her new next door neighbor was registered sex offender. That’s why the house had been priced so low – because nobody wanted to buy it because of the sex offender. And that’s why the previous owner was desperate to sell. And apparently the the offender really liked young children.

Needless to say my friend was frightened. She couldn’t turn right around and sell the house so she ended up installing a new fence and alarm system. And her kids never left the house without her. That’s no way to live. And it’s a shame because it is so easy to perform a sex offender search. And it doesn’t cost anything.

Thanks to the internet and the need for people to be aware of their surroundings the government has made it much easier to find out if offenders are lurking in your neighborhood or wherever you may be moving. And it will tell you exactly where they live and include photos. I know my wife was shocked the first time she did a search to find out how many offenders were near us. Of course this is for information purposes only, it does not give you the right to camp out on their lawn or otherwise harass them. You may want to but it is against the law.

Not all details are included on the sites. It won’t necessarily tell you their exact crime but will give you a good idea of what they may have done. And having this information could have saved my friend a lot of grief and money. So how do you search? It really is easy.

Go to Google or your favorite search engine and search for “Sex offenders in [your state]“. This should show you the state site where you can find everything you need.
Do you really know who’s living next to you?

David Lemon is the owner of TDL People Search. You can visit his site at http://www.tdl-people-search.com where you can search for anyone you’d like to find as well as perform background checks.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Lemon