Students throughout the country are turning to their devices for education as schools remained shuttered.

And Lathrop Police Chief Ryan Biedermann wants parents to make sure that they take an active role in supervising their children while they’re on the internet – hoping than active presence will protect them for those who may have ill intentions.

According to Biedermann, who previously worked as a child abuse and sexual assault detective for the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office and has brought some of those skills over to Lathrop Police when he took on the top role, the sheer number of young people using internet-connected devices will give predators an opportunity that they’ve never had before.

“Just be knowledgeable about what your kids are doing – talk to then in general not just about their cell phones or their computers, but everything else that they have that is connected to the internet,” Biedermann said. “Whether it’s PlayStation or an Xbox or an iPad – everything has the potential to be connected to the internet today.

“Just know what they’re doing and have access to their devices – and if they don’t want to provide that, then they shouldn’t have them. There shouldn’t be anything to hide.”

Since taking over the Lathrop office, Biedermann has been proactive at trying to keep predators off the streets – conducting a number of highly-publicized sting operations using underage decoys – to try and remove bad actors from the community and the surrounding area as a way of protecting young people.

While many parents are working hard to try and ensure that their students succeed using an online educational platform, Biedermann warns that just as everybody knows that young people are turning to their computers exclusively for schoolwork, the people with bad intentions know as well.

“Some kids aren’t used to having so much free time because they’re usually in school, and it’s important to stay on top of what they’re doing and what they have access to and the devices that they’re using so you can check and see that they aren’t preyed upon or doing anything inappropriate,” Biedermann said. “Bad guys aren’t going to stop being bad guys – they’re going to ramp things up.”

Manteca Unified has shifted to a walled system that only people with district credentials can access as a way to prevent outside interference, but schools across the country have had issues in the past few weeks. On Tuesday the FBI even went so far as to issue a warning about videoconference hijackings after a number of highly-publicized instances where school feeds on the popular video conferencing app Zoom were accessed by unauthorized individuals.

One California doctoral student who was presenting his dissertation to a faculty panel at CSU Long Beach this week had his presentation hijacked and pornographic images were shared with the group while the person shouted racial slurs.

While tech experts are encouraging people to use safeguards such as passwords and enhanced settings to protect their students – tutorials are widely available online – Biedermann said he’s concerned that the sheer amount of time that young people are being asked to stay entertained while indoors will make them complacent with what they’re doing and who they’re talking to.

And while that happens, he said, there are people that are just waiting for their opportunity.

“This is an unprecedented time – idle hands are not good, and these people are going to commit crimes or go back to what they know,” Biedermann said. “Kids that are cooped up are going to want to get out and get away, and people are going to prey upon that – it’s kind of creating a situation where there are more potential victims to prey upon because these kids aren’t in school where they’re supervised by teachers and staff all day.

“We haven’t seen a huge uptick in this yet, but if we go by Murphy’s Law, it’s going to happen, and parents need be very aware of what is going on.”

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.