A driving instructor on Long Island was removed from his job following accusations he showed several teenagers pornography while teaching them the rules of the road. <\/p>\n
Police in Suffolk County said 16-year-old boys participating in driver’s education were shown pornography after a lesson. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe driving instructor, after a driving lesson, went to a parking lot and showed these three kids a very inappropriate video of two adults engage in a sexual act,\u201d said Suffolk Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina.\u00a0 \u201cOur understanding is that it was offered as some kind of reward for their driving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police arrested 75-year-old Mitchell Lerner, of Melville, on three counts of child endangerment.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
According to the owner of the Defensive Driving School in Central Islip, Lerner has worked there for four years and is one of the most popular and well-liked instructors whose students have the highest passing rates in the school.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur main goal is to teach kids how to survive behind the wheel of a car,\u201d owner Barry Becker said Monday. \u201cBut what he\u2019s accused of, it is not tolerated here and as soon as this was corroborated by another student, he was out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The incident occurred on December 22 of last year, but Becker says he was not made aware until January 6 when the grandmother of one of the teens contacted him.\u00a0Three days later, he said, police contacted him about the situation. <\/p>\n
No one came to the door at Lerner\u2019s Melville home on Monday, but his driver\u2019s ed car was still parked in the driveway.\u00a0Becker said he is supposed to return that car any day now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a disturbing crime for any parent to hear about,\u201d said Commissioner Catalina. \u201cPersonally, this is where my daughter took her driving lessons.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
While the commissioner’s daughter did not have Lerner as an instructor, this school does teach thousands of students on Long Island.<\/p>\n
Becker estimates Lerner spends at least 9 hours a week driving with students either in a group or solo lesson.\u00a0 At this point, police are only aware of this one incident but they are urging other students who may have experienced the same to come forward.<\/p>\n
Becker hopes parents continue to have confidence in his school and the other instructors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0hope they understand that their kids are in our hands and we make every effort to make sure that they feel comfortable and feel safe and we are making sure every car has a camera in it now,” he said. <\/p>\n
Lerner is due to appear in First District Court in Central Islip at a later date. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A driving instructor on Long Island was removed from his job following accusations he showed several teenagers pornography…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":513048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,6084,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-513047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-long-island","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkcity","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115887707497991676","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}