A man was arrested in the second OCTA bus child molestation case in recent weeks. In this case, the OCTA’s bus security system was responsible for identifying the defendant, who is a registered sex offender.

Each of OCTA’s 300 busses carry a $10,000, 7 camera video system which was funded by a Department of Homeland Security grant. “It was a direct result of this security system which led to his arrest,” said Joel Zlotnik, Manager, Media Relations, Orange County Transportation Authority. “The data is stored on a hard drive on the bus and transmitted back to the base each day. The coach operators have the ability, if there’s an incident, to flag it by pushing a button.”

Zlotnik continued “The incident occurred last Sunday and after we got a report of the incident, we went back and viewed the recording of the event. The video was released yesterday afternoon by the Sheriff’s Department.”

As it turns out, the offender had already been arrested, but the authorities did not know he was connected with the assault on the bus.

“Parole was monitoring his GPS and they noticed that he was not in the area that he was supposed to be. So they arrested him for failure to report as a sex offender,” said Jim Amormino, Press Information Officer for the Sheriff’s Department. “They didn’t realize that he was the guy on the bus because the news broadcast had not hit yet. So they arrested him and drove him straight back to prison.”

Later, the arresting parole officer saw the news broadcast and realized it was the same person they had just arrested. The defendant is James Norkin, age 48, no known address. Amormino told www.OC180NEWS.com the defendant admitted to being on the bus. “He doesn’t really have to admit the assault, we have it on tape—we have the whole thing, the whole act was caught on video.”

Even though this is the second such incident in recent weeks (see related article below), the rate of serious crimes on OCTA busses is very low. OCTA said in a statement “OCTA buses travel nearly 19 million miles a year and in 2009 recorded 57 million boardings. Last year, there were 11 serious crimes reported – that’s one crime per 5.2 million boardings.”

By way of comparison, Zlotnik said countywide Part 1 (serious) crimes occur at a rate of 2,500 crimes per 1 million residents. “An OCTA bus is one of the safest places in the County to be,” he said.

“While it is an unfortunate inevitability in a county of 3 million people that crime may occur on a bus, we hope this sends a clear message that it will not be tolerated and suspects will be caught,” said OCTA CEO Will Kempton. “The strength of our team and the ability of our surveillance technology have proven again to be a successful combination.”