Child Safety

With no votes to spare, the state Senate on Tuesday approved legislation requiring all bicycle riders in California under the age of 18 to wear crash helmets or pay a fine of $25. A 21-13 vote, the precise majority required, sent the proposal back to the Assembly, which narrowly approved it two months ago. If it wins Assembly passage again, as expected, it will go to an uncertain future at the hands of Gov. Pete Wilson.

It's not often that an article appearing deep inside the paper touches a nerve with readers. But the story of a 2-year-old Kentucky toddler accidentally shot and killed by her 5-year-old brother with a rifle he received as a gift drew nearly a dozen letters, a sizable haul for a short article appearing on Page A-13 of Thursday's Times. Reader Lynn Segal of Woodland Hills, whose letter was published Friday, objected to the article being "relegated" to inside the paper, arguing that "firearms responsibility is one of the top issues of our time.

The California attorney general and Los Angeles city attorney said they would file a lawsuit today against Mattel Inc., Toys R Us Inc. and 18 other companies, accusing them of making or selling products that contain "unlawful quantities of lead." The move follows major recalls of toys, lunchboxes, children's jewelry and other goods during the last year by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in Washington.

The law sounds logical, at least at first: If a parent caused a child's death through abuse or neglect, then the other children in that parent's care can be made court dependents, and child welfare workers can remove them from their home. Imagine a house in which a child was beaten to death, or died of starvation. It stands to reason that other children living there are at risk. The home is dangerous, and if government ever is justified in taking children from their parents, that's when it should be done.

It was the light fixtures that turned off the Castaic school district trustees. Since September 1994, they have been trying to secure millions of dollars in federal earthquake-mitigation funds to move the 638-student Castaic Elementary School, which sits in the shadow of the dam that holds back half-mile-long Castaic Lake and is bordered by high-voltage power lines and oil pipelines to boot. The paperwork pace has been maddeningly slow, board members say.

The school locker, long feared as a repository of drugs and weapons, is making a comeback. Some administrators are returning the metal boxes to campus, figuring it's better than creating a generation of students with back problems. In one Orange County school district, a board member who watched a student wobble and fall over from the weight of her backpack has proposed reinstalling lockers in middle schools.

Parents aren't the only adults who should have up-to-date child safety information. For a free copy of "Helping Every Generation Care for Kids," write the National Safe Kids Campaign at 1301 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20004, or e-mail info@safekids.org.

A child-safety seminar will be held Saturday at the Gelson's Village shopping center in Calabasas. The event, at 22277 Mulholland Highway, will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will be on hand to fingerprint children and booths will be set up to offer tips on topics such as water and bicycle safety. The first 300 families will receive free safety identification kits that include iron-on labels designed to help identify lost or injured children.

Instead of the usual angst drivers might feel when pulled over for a traffic violation, gratitude was the common sentiment Tuesday morning when LAPD's West Bureau Traffic Division flagged down about 15 cars for improper child safety belt use. At a traffic checkpoint at Venice Boulevard near La Brea Avenue, officers provided instruction on the use of child car seats instead of writing citations. The effort was part of the biannual, weeklong America Buckles Up Children Mobilization Week.

Two years ago, Calabasas businessman Robert Sacks decided he needed to take a hard look at child safety in his home--and beyond--after his 2-year-old son, Brandon, almost electrocuted himself by sticking a nail into a wall socket. "I thought we had been pretty careful," Sacks recalled last week. But the accident "made me aware we had a problem in the house. I started looking into child safety in the home. But I found no information, no booklets, no agency in existence dealing" with the problem.

Susan Kang Schroeder ticked off the facts of the case: A man bought a 5-year-old girl from Vietnam, used her as a sex slave for more than a decade and forced her to invite over friends whom he molested during sleepovers. "She was made to do every possible sex act," Schroeder said with a bluntness she honed as a prosecutor. But this wasn't a jury. It was the seven members of the Huntington Beach City Council. And if the aim of the Orange County district attorney's chief of staff was to grab their attention with the story of one of the county's most notorious pedophiles, it worked.

It's no coincidence that National Missing Children Day is observed May 25. The date marks the disappearance of Etan Patz, the young boy who vanished 33 years ago and is now the subject of an intense search by the FBI and local authorities in New York. FBI agents this week dug up the basement of a home in Manhattan's SoHo district in search of his remains. Etan, with his flowing hair and soulful eyes, captured the public's imagination, and his disappearance in 1979 changed the way the nation handles cases of missing children.

Child safety seats are difficult to properly install in cars, according to an insurance industry research group, because of the design of most passenger seats. Joint research conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found that just 21 of 98 top-selling 2010 and 2011 model year vehicles have seat designs that are easy to use with child restraints. The low percentage was notable, considering that the auto industry is using a system called Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children - or Latch - that was intended to make it easier to install the safety seats.

Many preteens have dived into the expanding worlds of social networks and smartphone apps, but federal rules designed to protect their privacy are still in the era of Web portals and flip phones. Now, regulators want an update. The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday proposed tougher privacy protections for children younger than 13, broadening requirements covering the collection of personal information by websites and online apps, as well as how they obtain parental approval.

Long before Austin "Jack" DeCoster became a central figure in one of the largest egg recalls in history, he had paid more than $10 million in fines and suit settlements, his eggs were banned in one state and quarantined in another, and he was almost single-handedly responsible for new restrictions on child labor in his native Maine. He also was embraced by local governments in two states eager to reap the economic benefits of a large egg farm — even a rule-breaking one. Earlier this month, DeCoster's Wright County Egg farms in Iowa recalled 380 million eggs.

Los Angeles County's top child welfare official pulled back Friday from her published comments in The Times that the department was suspending efforts to reduce the number of children in foster care. Trish Ploehn, director of the county Department of Children and Family Services, was quoted in an article Friday as saying the efforts would continue "only when I can assure everyone that the work we do results in safety for the child who is going home" to his or her family. After a flurry of criticism flooded her e-mail and voice mail, Ploehn issued a press release later in the day backing off those remarks.

The death of 3-year-old Elijah J. Johnson while under the supervision of the Los Angeles County agency responsible for protecting neglected and abused children is a tragedy that should push the Board of Supervisors to action. The board should approve a new leadership team for the Department of Children and Family Services before public confidence is further eroded by this, the second death of a child in foster care in 13 months.

The Kiwanis Club will sponsor a Child Safety Day event today to help parents reduce the chances of child abuse, abduction and injury. Area residents are invited to bring their children for free fingerprinting and child safety information packets, which include a 16-page guide to stranger danger, bicycle safety, home safety, fire prevention, disaster preparedness, first aid and choosing child caretakers. The free event runs from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Pavilions market, 3433 Via Lido.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission on Tuesday announced the recall of about 635,000 cribs after the death of a 6-month-old child and dozens of reports of safety problems. The cribs, distributed by Barbados-based Dorel Asia, feature hardware that can fail, causing the drop-side to detach from the crib. When the drop-side detaches, it creates a space in which an infant or toddler can become trapped and suffocate or strangle, the agency said. In addition, the cribs can pose an entrapment and strangulation hazard when a slat is damaged.

The well-dressed woman in hoop earrings and glitter eye shadow took the podium. "Hello," she said, her voice gruff and resonant. "My name is Darlene, and I'm an alcoholic." "I'm the alcoholic who was sweetly hit upside the head when Children's Services took my son away two days before Thanksgiving last year." As Darlene Compton spoke on a November evening, her toddler son wandered the linoleum floor of the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting hall in South Los Angeles. Fussing as the night session entered its third hour, he smiled fleetingly when the recovering addicts handed him candies and a Twinkie.