By Sheryl Kahn
NewsChannel 3

You take your children to cool off and have fun. But police going to a public pool or water park can sometimes put them directly in the line of sight of sexual predators. It happened just last week at Knott's Soak City in Palm Springs. But there are things you can do to keep your children safe.

The 4th of July weekend was packed with families at Soak City. And a man allegedly used the crowd as cover while he touched and rubbed up against a 13-year-old girl.

Police arrested the man, but this has happened over and over at pools and water parks across the country. Sometimes the child doesn't even understand he or she's been molested.

"He can come up and rub his private parts upon the victim so quickly that the victim doesn't even realize that he or she was touched," said Detective Roberto Lomeli with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

At Pawley pool in Indio, lifeguards and other staff members are trained to see the red flags.

We notice adults that come in alone, staying underwater for an abnormal amount of time, with goggles and we nickname them "goggle persons" or "goggle me," and if it goes on for more than five or ten minutes, we approach them and tell them what we'll do if they don't stop, which is call the police and they usually leave on their own," said Sarah Juarez at Pawley Pool.

Detective Lomeli says parents should be watching for those signs, too. He says he keeps his eye on his kids at all times when they're swimming in public.

"I'm not taking a nap or doing my own thing. I'm being a parent and watching them while they're in there. Sure there's hundreds of kids in there, but if I can keep an eye on them, so can any other parent."

And you should never let your kids go to the bathroom alone. Make sure they know that if something does happen, they should tell a trusted adult right away.