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Yesterday at 6:30 pm, over 250 school bus drivers from Boro Park gathered in Bais Yaakov of 18th Ave. for a very important safety training session organized by the Bus Transit Association and presented by retired Missouri State Trooper Captain Garry Moore. Captain Moore is a 34-year law enforcement veteran, serving 29 years with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, as well as eight years serving in the Governor’s Security Division under four Governors. Gary is currently working for the Center for Education Safety and is an active Marshal for the Missouri Supreme Court.

The event began with Yitzchuk Ber (Isac) Wollner, President of the association telling the audience that “almost 50,000 children step foot on 275 school buses in Boro Park every day, The school bus driver is the first person that a parent hands over their children to, entrusting them with their precious gems and hoping for a safe return, School bus transportation plays a critical role in the education for our communities students, and is an important component of a successful educational enterprise. It is a direct link between the parents and the classroom, and therefore we believe that every school bus driver must be rigorously trained on safety procedures on how to safely transport the children, and how to respond chas vshulem in case of an emergency

Dov Cohen, Legislative Director for Dov Hikind then spoke on his behalf. He expressed his gratitude to both Captain Moore for coming and making the presentation and to the bus drivers themselves for taking the time to listen to such an important training session. “Baruch Hashem we have 275 buses transporting our most precious commodity, thousands of our children. It is important to know what to do and how to react in the event of an incident involving a school bus” said Dov Cohen.

Alexender Gurewitz 19-A examiner and trainer for all Boro Park School bus drivers welcomed Mr. Moore by saying “that when someone is looking for a doctor he would look for the best, when someone needs a lawyer he will look for the best when we talk safety for our children we need the best, that’s why we invited Gary Moore who is the best in the field of training for school bus drivers”.

Garry Moore’s course was divided into two parts. The first hour was an overview to which he has exclusive rights on the actual footage and 911 recordings of the Alabama school bus driver shooting incident that occurred on January 28 2014. In that incident, a person befriended a school bus driver and showed up one day asking the driver to hand over to him two children. When the driver resisted he killed the driver, took one child hostage and fled to a self made bunker, where he held the youngster hostage for six days. He went on to explain how the FBI negotiated with the hostage, ultimately killing him, and rescued the child.

The second part of the session was dedicated to explaining how the driver should have acted in order to prevent being shot and taking a child hostage. Moore went into in-depth training on how school bus drivers could recognize JDLR’s (Just Doesn’t Look Right), how a driver should watch for out of the ordinary situations,

After Moore’s presentation, Yidel Perlstein, Chairman of community board 12 was called up to say a few words. “I was very inspired to see that so many drivers give up form their private time to come to these very important trainings this shows how much our school bus drivers care for the safety of our children” said Yidel Perlstein

Inspector Phillip Van Gostien from NYPD counter terrorism then took to the podium and said how inspired he was by this training and that it is very important for all drivers to develop a plan if they see something suspicious and know how to respond

Attending the session was Uri Frankel from NYC office of Pupil Transportation, NYPD Counter Terrorism, NYPD 66 PCT Community Affairs Office, NYPD Sheild, Pinny Ringel from the Office of the Mayor, Ira Tannenbaum form NYC Office of Emergency Management, Yanki Mayer from Misaskim, Ari Weiss, Moti Katz from BP Shomrim, Gabi Herskopf from Shomrim of Crown Heights, and Chesky Klein, community liaison for Dov Hikind. 

(YWN Desk – NYC)