Deputies Seek to Involve Needy Kids in Sports

To smooth the sometimes-strained relations between deputies and Camarillo’s Latino community, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department has launched a drive to enroll needy children in after-school sports.

Deputies stationed in Camarillo have arranged with the city’s youth soccer league to reduce its fees to allow more than 100 children from low-income families to play soccer this fall.

Even at a discount, fees for the children will total $2,000.

But the Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputies Assn., along with some Camarillo civic groups, has agreed to help raise money to cover all of the costs.

And deputies plan to solicit similar support to sign the children up for baseball and other sports after the fall soccer season.

Ray Garcia, program administrator for the Sheriff’s Department’s Minority Relations Committee, said the deputies’ work to involve children in sports is helping deputies forge stronger links with the city’s Latino community.

Over the past two years, Camarillo parents have filed several complaints charging deputies with harassing or using unnecessary physical force when stopping Latino youths. A Sheriff’s Department spokesman said authorities have completed their review of all the complaints but he declined to discuss the results of the investigations.

In addition to improving the department’s image, deputies said they have another reason for promoting organized sports: It keeps young people off the streets.

“It’s going to keep them busy so they don’t get themselves into trouble,” said Deputy Luis DeAnda from the Sheriff’s Camarillo station. DeAnda works closely with the city’s Latino community.

DeAnda recently persuaded five Latino youths from the city to join a basketball team composed mainly of sheriff’s deputies.

Garcia said many Latino young people don’t join sports teams for the same reason they don’t sign up for Boy Scouts or other organized activities: They don’t realize the full range of opportunities open to them.

When deputies first approached a Latino parents’ group in Camarillo five months ago with the offer to raise money for children’s soccer fees, deputies and some parents estimated that only a few dozen young people would be interested.

But the parents soon came back to the deputies with a list of 103 children eager to join the Camarillo soccer league, which already has about 2,000 local boys and girls on its teams.

“Everybody’s so excited,” said Martha Figueroa, one of the parents helping deputies set up the sports program.

Normally, the nonprofit soccer league, a division of the American Youth Soccer Organization, charges $55 per child per season, with discounts to families who have more than one child in the sport.

But league organizers have agreed to charge only $20 for each of the 103 children, reducing the overall cost from $4,200 to $2,000.

And the league’s board will work with civic groups, deputies and the Camarillo parents to raise the $2,000, said Ray McLaughlin, commissioner of the Camarillo soccer league.

“We’re committed to making this thing happen,” he said.

Although the fees cover soccer uniforms, they do not include the cost of the cleated shoes required for the sport, which can cost as much as $90 a pair.

Deputies said some families with more than one child are worried they will not be able to afford the shoes.

To solve that dilemma, McLaughlin said league organizers and deputies hope to set up a drop-off center where parents from across the county could bring soccer shoes that their children have outgrown.

Froylan Rodriguez, 22, one of the men on the basketball team organized by DeAnda, said deputies’ efforts to enroll children in organized sports may help change some young people’s attitudes toward law enforcement officials.

And the children who join the soccer league will benefit from the attention they will get from coaches and other adults involved with the sport, Rodriguez said.

“Young kids growing up now are really cocky,” said Rodriguez, who works as a forklift operator for a Camarillo beer distributor. “You can’t have a rational conversation with them. The police, to them, are enemies.”

But, he said, “what these kids need is attention. They need someone who’ll care for them apart from their parents.”