Procedure Keeps Criminals Out of School Buses : Security: A new screening process has already identified and disqualified nearly 150 convicted sex offenders and violent felons from gaining jobs as drivers.

Nearly 150 convicted sex offenders, child molesters and violent criminals have been disqualified from working as school bus drivers by a new screening procedure that went into effect June 1, state officials said Monday.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) said the new procedure was meant to prevent a replay of a Los Angeles case in which a man with five drunk-driving convictions was allowed to operate a school bus. He later pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol when he arrived to pick up a busload of Encino schoolchildren in January.

Prospective school bus drivers had been subjected to security checks in the past, but were given six-month temporary permits that allowed them to undergo training and, in some cases, begin transporting children before the checks were completed, Katz said.

But under the new procedure, a fingerprint check must be completed by the Department of Motor Vehicles before the job applicants begin training, Katz said.

Officials from the California Highway Patrol and Katz, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, released statistics on the new screening procedure during a news conference at Betty Plasencia Elementary School west of downtown Los Angeles.

Out of approximately 4,000 applicants screened since June, 181 have had criminal records, CHP Sgt. Tim Clark said. Of those, 145 applicants have been disqualified and 36 cases are still being reviewed, he said.

As children played in the background, Katz reviewed the criminal backgrounds of three men who tried, unsuccessfully, to become school bus drivers. “These three applicants here are every parent’s worst nightmare,” he said.

One applicant, from Southern California, had been convicted of indecent exposure and lewd and disorderly conduct. Another, from Northern California, was twice convicted of rape and of disorderly conduct and child desertion.

The third applicant, also from Northern California, had convictions for indecent exposure, burglary, furnishing liquor to a minor, three counts of auto theft, and lewd and disorderly conduct. Officials declined to give any more information on the background of the three.

“You’ve got to wonder why, of all the jobs in the world, he’d want to be a school bus driver,” Katz said.

The screening procedure is designed to weed out criminals with violent histories but would not eliminate applicants convicted of minor offenses, such as misdemeanor trespassing, Clark said.

The 145 rejected job applicants were convicted of sex offenses and violent crimes, said Lt. Harv Robinson from CHP headquarters in Sacramento. The number does not include others who were rejected for drunk-driving violations, which also are flagged in the screening process. Officials said they have not yet tabulated the number of applicants rejected for drunk driving.

Robinson said the new procedure would have prevented Harold Keith Lone, the bus driver involved in the January incident, from getting behind the wheel.

Lone used an alias when he applied for work at Laidlaw Transit in July, 1989. The background check on him had not been completed when he was arrested, according to Laidlaw officials.

Background checks took three to four months to complete in the past but now are finished in two to three weeks, Clark said. Katz said the process was streamlined to appease critics in the school bus industry who feared that long processing delays would lead to driver shortages. “The industry squawked a bit” when the new procedure was announced, Katz said.

In related news Monday, Katz symbolically presented Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Bill Anton with the keys to a methanol-powered school bus, the first of 50 such buses to be distributed to 10 school systems under a new state program.

Methanol burns cleaner than diesel fuel and officials with the bus manufacturer, Crown Coach of Chino, said it was the first methanol-powered school bus in the country.

Along with 103 conventional diesel buses, the 50 buses using methanol come with extra safety features, such as emergency exits in the roof. The 153 buses are included in the first phase of a $60-million program that will provide 450 buses to school districts with aging bus fleets that do not meet 1977 federal safety standards, Katz said.