San Diego Unified School District is ramping up its efforts against child abuse with a new addition to a mobile app designed for anonymous reporting.
As part of a multi-agency collaboration between law enforcement and educators, students and community members can now report suspected child abusers with the P3 Tips app.
“You would enter-in the information you want law enforcement to act on," SDUSD police Chief Michael Marquez said. "You hit the submit button, and it automatically goes to our partners here in the county.”
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Anyone using the app can enter suspect descriptions, addresses and vehicle information. The report then goes to the San Diego Police Department. If the allegations of abuse are toward an employee of San Diego Unified, the district police department also receives the report automatically.
The reporting tool is the district police department’s contribution to a countywide task force established in September to address and prevent student harassment and abuse.
Other collaborators on the task force include the San Diego District Attorney’s Office, the San Diego City Attorney’s Office and the San Diego County Office of Education.
As the chair of the task force, Marquez said his goal with the mobile app is to develop trust between law enforcement and the most vulnerable victims who can suffer from long-term physical and psychological consequences of abuse.
“We want to make sure that our victims and our community know that law enforcement takes these types of things very seriously, and we will be very aggressive to make sure that we investigate each and every allegation,” he said.
