Community Corner

Rofo Officer Certified in Child Passenger Safety

Mark Smythe, a daytime and full-time officer at the Royersford Police Department is certified in child passenger safety and wants to increase community awareness.

For more information about Child Passenger Safety, please review the one-page PDF documents attached to this story, courtesy of Officer Mark Smythe of the .

As of the beginning of April, the Royersford Police Department now has an officer in child passenger safety. Officer Mark Smythe, who has been a police officer for 15 years, completed the National Child Passenger Safety Certification Training Program at the end of March. He is certified for the next two years.

"It's a good thing for us, because it allows us to monitor," Smythe said. "I had somebody that I pulled over. She had her one child in the front seat. He didn't have his shoulder harness on and I don't think he was big enough to be in the front seat weight-wise. She had a 2-year-old in a car seat without even having a harness installed on it. Instead of giving her a hard time about it, I educated her on it."

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Child passenger safety can get complicated, with many makes and models of car seats, as well as regulations on your child's weight and size. That is exactly the reason why Smythe thought it was important for an officer to be enrolled in the program.

"I have four kids and I tell you, I was educated," he said. "When I first took this course, I had the baby seat, the booster seat and everything in between it. The first thing I found out was I had them installed wrong. It basically depends on the weight of the child also. If you have a really large infant, they suggest you have a certain type of rear seat installed."

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At the time, Smythe was the Community Relations Officer of the department. Part of that job was to review releases from county departments. After receiving a fax about the training program from the Montgomery County Health Department, Smythe approached Chief Kevin Schurr and asked if he could enroll. Schurr, according to Smythe, was happy to put him through the training, which only cost the borough $75.

"I'm on steady day work and have a lot of people come in periodically and ask if we can install car seats," said Smythe. "You have to be certified in it to do it for liability reasons of course. I got to the point where I was always telling them to go to another department to do it."

The training was one week of 40 total hours.

"It was pretty intense," Smythe said. "The first thing they tell us is there's over 400 different car seats out there, but most of them have the same basic elements on it. But it's trying to match that with the infinite amount of vehicles out there. So, it was a lot of nomenclature, repetitiveness and hands-on training. It was good."

Smythe said his certification renewal will not be as strenuous, but he will have to learn of any new laws or car seat products on the market. For example, this year, he said, seat belt law went from a secondary offense to a primary offense. Now, officers can pull drivers over strictly for not wearing a seat belt or having children properly restrained.

In the coming months, Smythe will be out in the community helping residents learn more about child passenger safety. He and other Royersford officers will be on hand at events like , , Community Day and even partnering up with the .

"I got permission from the chief to lend myself out for that if they need a technician," he said. "You know how it is with our departments, we all kind of network and intertwine with each other anyway."

As a word of caution, Smythe said he didn't mean to sound redundant or cliché, but...

"Always buckle your kids in," he said. "Everyone should be buckled up. I've been an officer for 15 years now and it's true - fatalities occur so much more when people aren't buckled in, whether it's a fender bender or an accident on the highway. It's so much safer to be buckled in."

He also asked the public to be more aware of the child safety restraints they own or potentially will own in the future.

"Just take the time to read," he said. "On the back of every car seat, they have expiration dates on them. If someone is going to say 'My kids are all grown now, use my car seat,' make sure that it's still that valid timeslot, because a lot of them don't fit the needs of the new vehicles out there. Or, if you go to a flea market and find one, you don't know if it's already been in an accident or not. It's always good to follow the labels on it and instructions that it comes with."

Again, for more information on child passenger safety, see the attached PDFs.


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