MCPS Camera Recorded Sexual Abuse

In March of 2017, MCPS bus driver Salvador Rodriguez was charged with sex offenses against two 11 year old elementary school students.  

The Application for Statement of Charges filed in this case shows that in at least one of the incidents charged, the sexual assault was recorded on video.  

  2017 Salvador Rodriguez Application for Statement of Charges by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland on Scribd

MCPS Top Salaries $150,000 - $175,000 including Top Principal Salaries, Union President and Internal Auditor (School accounts)

These charts do not include benefits and perks.
First column shows salary for employees on spreadsheet. Example: $275,000 is base salary for Jack R. Smith.
Consultants are not included on these charts. 

Video: Mont. Co. Police Statements on Rockville High School 911 Response, Investigation, Security Review @mcpnews

Does MCPS Separate Alleged Perpetrators from Victims in School Sex Assaults? Richard Montgomery HS Sex Assault Charges

The Parents' Coalition has obtained a copy of a Montgomery County District Court charging document that details the March 18, 2014, arrest of an 18 year old Richard Montgomery High School student for a 4th degree sexual offense that is alleged to have taken place at the school on February 27, 2014.  The victim is a 14 year old student at the school.  The incident is alleged to have taken place in the school at 10 AM while school was in session.

The charging document was forwarded to the Parents' Coalition by a source that wishes to remain anonymous. Our source tells us that when the family of the victim contacted the school they were told to not tell anyone about this incident.

At 1 PM today we contacted the Montgomery County State's Attorneys' office for a comment on this charge as it had, as yet, not been covered in the media.

By 4:34 PM this afternoon the Richard Montgomery High School principal sent out a notice to parents informing them of this incident.  The Gazette reported on the incident by 8:30 PM this evening.

Unfortunately, Montgomery County does not redact the names of minors in charging documents, so we will not be making the actual document public.  We have seen this in other Montgomery County sexual assault cases and it is very disturbing.  Other counties in Maryland do redact the names of minors.

We were told by our source that the alleged perpetrator is still a student at Richard Montgomery High School.  The victim is also still attending Richard Montgomery High School.

Is this how MCPS deals with students when a sexual assault has been alleged and an arrest has been made? 
The victim and alleged perpetrator are left in the same school? 
Is there any concern that the alleged victim would be bullied or harassed?

The letter sent to Richard Montgomery parents and guardians this afternoon is very vague.  We have reprinted it below.  The Gazette article says:

...Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman Dana Tofig said the school has taken steps to reduce the number of places that students can hide from security. The measures include using mirrors and additional surveillance, according to Tofig.

Now remember that MCPS installed 70-80 state of the art security cameras at each high school.  The cameras are everywhere.  Did MCPS security cameras record this sexual assault?  We know the security cameras are not monitored, but did anyone review the tapes from this alleged February 27th incident?

MCPS is now saying security cameras are not sufficient and "mirrors" must be installed?  How many "mirrors" will each school get?
Remember that the security cameras are better than hiring additional security staff. That's the MCPS motto!

So what happened in this incident at Richard Montgomery High School? From the District Court charging document: 

(victim) agreed to skip class with (alleged perpetrator) and to meet with him in the hallway by the vending machine beside the attendance office. 

[sexual activity described] (victim) informed (officer) that this sexual act continued for approximately 20 minutes

Here's what Richard Montgomery High School parents and guardians were told today:

-----------------------------------------------
From: Richard Montgomery High School
Date: Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 4:34 PM
Subject: School Update 

A message from RICHARD MONTGOMERY HIGH SCHOOL

Dear Richard Montgomery High School Community, In late March, our school was contacted by the family of a female student about a possible sexual assault that occurred during the school day which involved a male student.  Given the seriousness of the allegations,  we immediately involved the police. The administration and security staff of Richard Montgomery High School worked closely with the City of Rockville Police Department and the Montgomery County Police Department as they investigated this incident. An arrest has been made in this case. As a result of this event, we are reexamining our security protocols and building supervision by the school administration, security, and staff.  As always, safety is our top priority at Richard Montgomery High School.   Together we will continue to provide a safe, secure environment for our students to learn and grow. If you have additional questions, please contact Mrs. Afie Mirshah.  Thank you for your continued support. *************************************** Nelson McLeod, PhD Principal, Richard Montgomery High School 250 Richard Montgomery Drive Rockville, Maryland  20852 301-610-8000

Gazette: Montgomery County schools face tougher emergency drill rules

...Following the revision of emergency plan guidelines for Maryland schools in April 2013, the Maryland State Board of Education amended state regulations later in the year in part to add a requirement that schools must conduct drills for evacuation, “shelter in place,” reverse evacuation, lockdown, severe weather and “drop, cover, and hold.”
The state expanded the types of drills local school districts and schools must perform to help them prepare for “a broader range of emergencies,” according to a May 21, 2013, letter from state Superintendent Lillian M. Lowery to members of the Maryland school board...

 http://www.gazette.net/article/20140115/NEWS/140119485/1022/montgomery-county-schools-face-tougher-emergency-drill-rules&template=gazette

$9 MILLION for non-monitored "security" systems this year in MCPS

If you read the ‪#‎MoCo‬ County Council Ed Committee memo from July 8, 2013, a TOTAL of $8.996 (just call it $9) MILLION will be spent on non-monitored "security" systems this year.

Just $5.86 Million discussed at this specific (July 8th) meeting: $4.186 MILLION in State taxpayer funds PLUS $1.674 MILLION County borrowed (i.e., money will have to be repaid with interest so actually costing MORE) thru GO Bonds, of which $1.5 MILLION is a shifting of planned monies from FY16-18 to FY15.

Nothing like borrowing from the future!

Oh, if you're counting, that other $3.16 MILLION is already coming from County coffers (but who's counting).

---Great financial leadership there---

Agnes Jones Trower

Council to Approve Fake Security for Schools - $5.8 Million

On Tuesday, July 16th at 1:30 PM the Montgomery County Council will hold a public hearing and then immediately vote to approve the expenditure of $5,860,000 for what is being called "school security."

Will this expenditure actually do anything to keep students safe during the school day?  The vast majority of these funds will go to an outside vendor for interior school cameras that will NOT BE MONITORED.  So the answer is no, these cameras do nothing to keep students safe in real time. These cameras are only used as evidence of crimes after the fact and bear no relationship to the real time safety of students.

The Montgomery County Council's Education Committee already discussed this funding request and unanimously approved it.  Listen to the discussion for yourself and hear MCPS' Robert Hellmuth, Director of School Security, say

  "The cameras are really never monitored."

Remember, Mr. Hellmuth puts cameras in schools so there will be less security staff!  

Twitter used for impromptu student rally at Gaithersburg High School

Patch:  Students Organize Counter Pep-Rally Using Twitter

After school officials canceled a pep rally, students at Gaithersburg High School today protested by organizing a riot-like rally of their own.
Students used Twitter and other social media tools to organize the protest rally.
The original rally, part of Spirit Week, a week-long homecoming celebration, was called off shortly before it was scheduled to start at 12:30 this afternoon after some students became "overly spirited," according to Gaithersburg Principal Dr. Christine Handy-Collins...

The Answer Sheet VALERIE STRAUSS

The Answer Sheet VALERIE STRAUSS


Blogging at washingtonpost.com/answersheet
 
Posts from The Answer Sheet this week:

In the category of "It makes you wonder," the student newspaper at Montgomery Blair High School reports that bathrooms on the second and third floors are being locked during lunch. Why? The school has a security guard shortage and couldn't figure out a better way to deal with it...

Gompers Inc or Gompers Not

To most parents of MCPS students, the name James Gompers rings no bells. But in the eyes of MCPS Director of School Safety and Security Bob Hellmuth, Gompers is one of the most knowledgeable and trustworthy security experts in the fields of video surveillance and visitor tracking systems.

How much do Security Director Hellmuth and the Board of Education really know about the man who is advising MCPS how to spend millions of dollars to secure our schools?

Security Director Hellmuth was so impressed by Gompers that he hired him to select millions of dollars of video cameras and computer-based visitor tracking systems for our schools. Hellmuth had so much confidence in Gompers that he even disregarded the MCPS procurement procedures and state laws that require that competitive bids must be solicited for large purchases. Even the selection of Gompers, Inc. as the security consulting firm was made on a "no-bid" basis by Hellmuth.

Gompers' main published credential is that he has experience in the security industry. He has written several minimally-technical articles about security cameras and related equipment and is a frequent presenter at trade shows. Gompers' articles are typically followed by the following statement, or similar wording:

James Gompers is founder and president/CEO of Gompers Inc., which is made up of Gompers Technologies Design Group (GTD Group), Gompers Technologies Testing and Research Group (GTTR Group) and the Gompers Alliance. The Gompers Alliance pools talent from top consulting firms in the security, communications and data industries. He has more than 20 years of experience in the security industry.”

Any résumé that Gompers gave Hellmuth would presumably have had much greater detail than provided above because Hellmuth let Gompers go right to work based on just a proposal that has never been signed by any BOE member or MCPS employee. (Perhaps, at some point, MCPS will be able to locate a contract that was signed by Nancy Navarro, who was the BOE president at the time that Gompers began providing his services.)

And what about those four business entities that Mr. Gompers runs? James Gompers lives in Illinois, and records from the Illinois Secretary of State (ISS) show that he has, indeed, registered four corporations and one LLC in his home state. What Gompers hasn’t done for several years, according to Illinois state records, is submit corporate tax statements for his companies. His failure to submit the tax statements led to involuntary dissolution of each of his companies.

(Click on any of the images below to enlarge.)

Even though disqualified under Illinois law from operating as a corporation, Gompers, Inc. issued proposals and provided consulting services to MCPS, and accepted payments from MCPS.

According to Illinois state records, none of Gompers' companies are in good legal standing, so Gompers should not have been doing business under any of his (disqualified) company names.

Maybe that's why MCPS hasn't been able to produce copies of any ratified contracts between Gompers and MCPS.

But even without a ratified contract, the BOE approved payments of over $61,000 to one of Gompers' non-existent companies for consulting services.

What we still don't know, though, is why Gompers has not filed the corporate tax statements for any of his companies in several years. While that's an issue for Gompers to resolve with the state of Illinois, it would seem to raise enough red flags that perhaps the BOE should review the quality of services and independence of product recommendations that Gompers provided to MCPS.

Weast spins Springbrook while replacing staff with cameras

The Washington Post is running the following statement from Superintendent Jerry Weast in an article on the Springbrook incident.

He praised a police officer assigned to the school for knowing one of the suspects well enough that the student ultimately confided in him. "It's truly about relationships," Weast said.

If Superintendent Weast believes this statement why is he out buying 13,000 security cameras and replacing security staff with cameras?

Why didn't Board President Nancy Navarro sign the contract for the purchase of the security cameras, and why wasn't this shift from people to cameras discussed at the Board of Education table?

MCPS: More cameras, less security staff in schools

While attending a conference* in Dallas, Texas in February 2009, MCPS Director of School Safety and Security Bob Hellmuth gave a video interview. In that interview, Mr. Hellmuth states that,

"It is so much cheaper to install cameras than it is to go hire additional security staff." (At minute 4:30)

In light of the news from Northwest High School, and now the news from Springbrook High School, when was the decision made by the Board of Education to forgo hiring security staff and instead replace people with cameras?

How much are the 13,000 (?) cameras that are being purchased to replace the existing cameras going to cost? When was the cost-benefit analysis done on this procurement and where are the results? Is it really cheaper to replace cameras than hire security staff? When did the Board of Education evaluate these options, review the costs and make this decision?

*Mr. Hellmuth attended a conference in Dallas, Texas during the MCPS "travel freeze" (click link and see page 5 of memo from MCPS COO Larry Bowers for statement on MCPS travel freeze due to budget restrictions)

First posted March 27, 2009 on the Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County blog. Updated and re-run in response to arrests at Springbrook High School.

Pre-Season News: Yankees win over Orioles

This blog and the Parents Coalition have devoted numerous keystrokes to publicizing the Dr. Weast and company's spending and travel courtesy of the taxpayers of Montgomery County.

Aren't you curious as to whether this is standard in other jurisdictions?

Here is a link to an article about a NY State employee, a fairly well paid attorney in the state's Division of Human Rights, who lost his job over $530 in charges to a state credit card and use of his office computer for his outside employment.

A jurisdiction that actually enforces its ethics rules. In Maryland, we can only dream that someday our crab claws will start nibbling at ethics violations too.

Security Webcast Scrubbed?

"I do have to start things off with some bad news ... Robert Hellmuth, the director of the department of public safety and security for the Montgomery County Public Schools has been called into a department of education meeting ..."
― Sam Pfeifle, Editor, Security Systems News

This webcast was broadcast live on Thursday, March 19, 2009. There is no record of an MCPS BOE meeting on that day.

(Related bad news is here.)

Hear it here:






The Essential Guide to Deploying HD Video Surveillance Webcast

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Education Presentations & Slid public schools

What Happens in Vegas.........

Don't miss the Montgomery County Public Schools presentation at the Sands Expo and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada!

Montgomery County Public Schools: Utilizing Design Standards to Ensure the Right System
1:00PM - 2:00PM (Wednesday, April 01, 2009)

Click HERE to read a conference brochure description of this one-hour presentation!

Panelists:

• John Murdock, Jr. - Vice President (Security Division), Netcom Technologies, Inc.
  
• Robert Hellmuth - Director, Department of School Safety and Security, Montgomery County Public Schools
  
• Paul Bodell - Vice President Sales and Marketing, IQinVision
  

(I hate to even bring this up....but isn't there a MCPS travel freeze? So who is paying for the trip to Vegas?)

Tight budget? Travel to Texas! Tout Products!

Did you know that MCPS had entered into a 6 year initiative to purchase 13,000 security cameras? See the press release below. Please note this is not a MCPS Press Release. Check the Board of Education minutes and look for this procurement! Please post a comment if you can find it! What happened to the tight budget? Teaching positions cut, but MCPS staff continue to travel? What happened to the freeze on travel? What do students get out of a marketing trip to Texas to endorse a product? What about Superintendent Weast's statement to the Board of Education: "All of our technology partners know they are not permitted to use MCPS testimonials in advertising." Superintendent Jerry Weast, January 7, 2009 answer to Question #9. NEWSWIRE

MCPS implements six-year initiative to upgrade to IP-based system

By Leischen Stelter - 03.03.2009

DALLAS--At TechSec Solutions here on Feb. 25, Bob Hellmuth, director, department of school safety and security for Montgomery County Public Schools, discussed his experience overhauling the video surveillance and visitor management systems at the 16th largest school district in the country. Hellmuth, who is charged with protecting 138,000 students, 21,000 employees and 200 schools, said that while the district hasn't had a large-scale incident, there have been several smaller incidents that have propelled the district to upgrade its technology. After a gun went off in a student bathroom, Hellmuth said it took security a significant amount of time to review the tape. "When we were looking down a hall full of students, we saw figures on the video but we couldn't identify them. It was worthless for us," he said. Fortunately, officers were able to identify the offending student by the backpack he was carrying. Currently, Montgomery County is in the second year of its six-year strategic initiative to upgrade its surveillance system from analog to digital. He expects to have more than 3,000 digital cameras installed in the school district by the end of the year and a total of 12,000 to 13,000 cameras by the end of the initiative. But, such an upgrade hasn't been easy. "We've learned lessons over the years and thrown money away because we didn't know what we were doing," he said. The district enlisted the help of a security consultant to design the initiative. "We needed to find somebody who could give us advice and who knew how to do this on a large scale." Paul Bodell, chief marking officer, iQinVision, whose cameras were used in the installation, said it was critical for organizations to clearly understand what quality of video they need in certain locations within their facilties. For example, when school authorities at MCPS were trying to identify a student in a crowded hallway, Bodell said the school could use what he called "general surveillance" to monitor the movement of students, but then install "forensic-quality" video at the end of hallways which could easily identify faces of students. Mix and matching different video needs can not only improve surveillance quality, but also reduce the cost of the overall installation. An important factor for making this transition was involving the district's IT department. "Originally they were standoffish - people don't like change - but once we had a meeting and explained what we wanted to do, IT was onboard. It was important that we brought them in right away," he said. And while the transition to a digital system has largely improved the department's efficiency and investigatative capabilities, it has also reduced costs, Hellmuth said. "More cameras mean less security people. We don't need as many security people and we can employ the people we do have better," he said. "We monitor cameras and look for patterns and if all of a sudden we see a group of people going toward an area, we know there's a problem and we can put someone there quickly." In addition to improving video surveillance, Hellmuth said it was imperative the district improve its visitor management system as well. "People took it as a joke because nobody was checking," he said. The district replaced its paper log system with an ID scan card system, which not only tracks student and visitor movement, it also captures volunteer work hours making it easier to recognize people who contribute to the school, Hellmuth said. The school will also use the system to track maintenance staff's work to ensure they are staying within their budget. To learn more about how Montgomery County Public Schools is improving its technology, register for our Webcast on March 19 at www.securitysystemsnews.com/webcast. Look for more on this story in the April edition of Security Director News. (Red highlighting added.)