Kevin Riordan: In South Jersey crosswalk drama, tears lead to fears

A tearful girl who ran away from a crossing guard outside the Helen L. Beeler Elementary School on Friday morning turned up safe after seven Evesham Township police cars were deployed to the school.

Police said the crossing guard asked what was troubling the girl but received no answer before the child disappeared from view. The woman then called 911.

The girl, 7, was accounted for within 90 minutes of the 8:35 a.m. emergency call. But the seven-vehicle response and intensive search of the neighborhood sparked "a high volume" of calls from residents and parents worried about what was going on at Beeler.

By Wednesday afternoon a summary of the incident, posted on the department's Facebook page, had attracted 125 "likes" and 33 comments.

Those posts were mostly positive, too, although several wondered whether authorities had overreacted.

The girl lives near Beeler but attends another school in the township. It turns out she was upset only because she had missed her bus.

I asked Lt. William Miller, the Evesham police public information officer, about the response.

"Any time you have a child who is reported to be in distress, of course you'd be concerned [whether] she's a victim of something [or] is ... in danger," Miller said.

"The crossing guard saw her and went over to see if she was OK," Miller added. "The girl ran away ... down a side street and out of the crossing guard's view. Then [the guard] called police."

I called school Superintendent John Scavelli Jr. and was asked to submit my questions in writing. His e-mail response was brief, and read in part:

"The police investigated and the child was positively identified and accounted for ... within a short amount of time. The school staff and police department worked cooperatively to find and identify the student."

Having gone to school back when the biggest worry, outside of a Soviet nuclear attack, was a pop quiz, I wonder if a mass mobilization of police and educational resources was necessary.

Unfortunately, public safety concerns today are such that a 7-year-old Maryland boy can get suspended from school for two days after biting a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun.

Amid the praise for the Evesham police and the school district on Facebook, a handful of comments suggested that they hit the panic button.

"Cops would be at my kid's school every day when I drop him off and he's crying because he doesn't want to go!," one woman posted.

I agree. But within the last few months, schoolchildren have been murdered in Camden, Clayton, and so unforgettably, in Newtown, Ct.

And let's remember Gregory Katsnelson, 11, the Marlton Middle School seventh grader who was riding his bike in Evesham's Kings Grant section when he was stabbed to death on Oct. 17, 2002.

A call about a child crying "could be nothing," Miller noted. "But it could be something. And if the police just brushed it off, that would be a real problem."

As one comment on the police Facebook page noted, "all ended well, thank God."

I'm also gladdened by how things turned out. But I'm saddened that what once would have been regarded as a minor occurrence - a crying child - now requires a law-enforcement response.

Better safe? Of course. But sorry, too, that a little girl's perfectly ordinary tears can provoke such extraordinary concern.