What, and When, Should a Coach Know if a Player Is in Trouble? : College football: At the start of the season, USC had four players with outstanding warrants, search of criminal records shows. Coaches there and at other schools say numbers reflect society.

Jonathan Beauregard, a starting offensive lineman for the Cal State Northridge football team, went about his business in the normal student-athlete manner. He went to school, went to practice and played in the Matadors’ first four games.

Beauregard’s coaches didn’t know he had been arrested on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, a charge later upgraded to attempted murder. He had been booked in connection with the shooting of his former girlfriend and her male acquaintance.

Suddenly, Northridge Coach Bob Burt found himself in a position that more and more coaches--regardless of the size or status of the program--find themselves. He was unaware of something he wished he had known.

Considering the perception that more and more college athletes are getting into more and more trouble, Burt’s situation underscored a somewhat new issue: How much should coaches know? Does their responsibility end when a player steps off the field?

Beauregard’s situation is not unique.

In the wake of several incidents, The Times conducted a computer search of Los Angeles County criminal records, looking at all USC and UCLA football players who were on each team’s opening-day roster. The search showed that USC started the season with four players who were wanted by the police. No players from UCLA had outstanding warrants for their arrest.

The search also showed that three of the four USC players are still wanted and considered fugitives from the law. An attorney representing one of the players said that he had the warrant for his client recalled and quashed on Friday. In addition, five other USC players had been arrested sometime since their 18th birthdays. In four of the latter cases, the charges were dismissed. The fifth player spent a year in jail.

UCLA had one player who had been arrested for a traffic offense but was not jailed and is on probation.

The search of criminal records does not include any charges made before any of the players were 18, since juvenile records are not public. All the charges cited here are misdemeanors. Police generally do not have the manpower to enforce misdemeanor warrants. Most people brought to jail on these warrants are discovered through routine traffic stops.

Keyshawn Johnson, USC’s star wide receiver, was in the group that at the start of the season was wanted by police. But his situation has since been resolved.

There was a warrant for Johnson’s arrest in connection with the theft of a portable telephone and pager from an electronics store in 1991. After being asked about the misdemeanor warrant by a Times reporter, Johnson turned himself in, and the charges were recently dropped when prosecutors could not locate the victim of the theft. Johnson, 22, has maintained that his was a case of mistaken identity. USC coaches and officials said they were unaware of the warrant.

“From the get-go, he has always denied he did this,” said Michael C. Carney, an attorney who represents Johnson and other USC players. “He had no use for the phone and it wouldn’t have been him.”

USC coaches and officials also said they were unaware of other outstanding warrants involving their players until asked about them by The Times. The players and their situations:

--Jesse Davis, 24, is a cornerback who has played in three games and made five tackles. He pleaded no contest in June to carrying a concealed weapon in his car and driving with a suspended license. He was sentenced to four days in jail, two years’ probation and ordered to perform 10 days of labor on a Caltrans clean-up team.

He failed to appear in court Sept. 14 to provide proof he had completed his Caltrans work. As a result, his probation was revoked and a $10,000 bench warrant was issued for his arrest.

A week before his arrest on the concealed-weapon charge, Davis was arrested for battery and hit-and-run with injury. He pleaded not guilty to those charges, and the case is scheduled for a pretrial hearing in November.

“He has pleaded not guilty and we are proceeding accordingly,” Carney, also Davis’ attorney, said.

Davis said he believed all charges against him had been resolved and referred further questions to his attorney. Carney said Thursday he was unaware of the concealed-weapon charge against Davis but on Friday said he was taking the case. He said that he had the warrant on Davis recalled on Friday.

--Mario Bradley, 22, is a cornerback who has played in five games and has made 15 tackles. He pleaded no contest to inflicting corporal injury on his spouse in July. Bradley was put on three years’ probation, ordered to perform 300 hours of community service and to pay $100 to the YWCA Battered Women’s Shelter. Bradley, like Davis, failed to appear in court in May to show proof he had paid the $100 fine. His probation was revoked and a $12,500 warrant exists for his arrest.

Bradley was also arrested in 1992 for trying to evade a police officer, reckless driving, falsely representing himself to a police officer and resisting arrest. He pleaded guilty to all four counts in May and was sentenced to three years’ probation and 42 days in jail. According to court records, Bradley was to have been allowed to serve his jail sentence in 14-day intervals.

Bradley, when asked Wednesday, said he believed his attorney, Fred Anderson of Santa Ana, had failed to appear in court because of personal reasons. Anderson, citing attorney-client privilege, would not answer questions Thursday.

Bradley also said that his jail sentence for resisting arrest had been suspended, but court records show that he is still scheduled to serve all 42 days of the sentence. Again, Anderson had no comment.

--Quincy Harrison, 21, is a sophomore cornerback who has played in five games and has 12 tackles and one interception for a touchdown. He was cited in June for driving without a license and for having his car windows tinted. He failed to appear in court in July and a $500 arrest warrant was issued.

Harrison, when asked Wednesday, said: “I just haven’t had the time to take care of it (the tinted windows citation) yet. I’m going to now.”

Although there were no UCLA players on this year’s opening-day roster with outstanding arrest warrants, the Bruins are no strangers to difficult situations. Earlier this month, former safety Tommy Bennett was sentenced for grand theft and for filing a false financial statement. Bennett would have been completing his junior year this season but was suspended from the team in March.

Last year, Bruins Jamir Miller and Bruce Walker pleaded no contest to receiving stolen goods. Authorities agreed to drop the charges if both players were not arrested for two years. Both were initially suspended from the team, but Miller was allowed to play last season because it was determined he had less involvement. Three months before that, both had been arrested in separate incidents for carrying concealed weapons. Miller was fined $950 and Walker $675 for the weapons violation. Both were given two years probation. Miller is currently playing in the NFL with the Phoenix Cardinals and Walker was cut in the preseason by the Philadelphia Eagles.

“Unfortunately we (coaches) all have had some of our kids get into trouble,” UCLA Coach Terry Donahue said. “It’s reflective of the troubled society we all live in.”

Coach John Robinson would not discuss the specific charges against his players, but said that USC does take a hard look into the backgrounds of its recruits.

“Because of NCAA rules, we don’t get a good chance to get to know a kid,” he said. “The NCAA allows us to see athletes three times off campus, and once on campus. That’s not a lot of time to evaluate his personality.”

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Some coaches have suggested that if athletic departments are serious about weeding out the number of athletes with criminal backgrounds, they will recruit fewer junior college players. Beauregard and three of the four USC players that had warrants against them were junior college transfers.

One former college assistant who asked not to be identified said that 80% of junior college players were not accepted by universities immediately after high school because they were either poor students or had legal problems.

“Our administration considered junior college players risky (academically) and a back-door option,” said Larry Smith, former USC and current Missouri coach.

In May, The Times prematurely reported that six of the 10 junior college transfers headed for USC had yet to complete their academic work. When the season opened, all had qualified.

Still, it raises the valid question of risk. Robinson disagrees that there is a problem.

“I refuse to accept the premise that junior college players pose more of a risk as a group,” Robinson said. “I don’t agree that players from junior colleges are any more of a risk. You take risks with everyone.

“We want to give second chances back to some of the kids who have made mistakes but have shown the commitment and will to change and deserve a second chance. If a junior college player is eligible to transfer out, that means he has completed 48 units’ worth of work and graduated with a degree, and that says something about his character.

“The cynical person says that we take some of these risks because they’re great athletes and because we want to win. Yes, we want to win, but that’s only one part of why we do it.

“You consider where this school is located . . . in a disadvantaged area, and as part of the community we owe it to the kid that hasn’t been given a lot of breaks, and allow him to put those past mistakes behind him.

“I do want to win, but all coaches want to say when we see our players after they’ve graduated or gone on in their lives, ‘Hey, my God, I helped do some of that. I made a difference.’ ”

USC defensive end Marcus Bonds may be one of those who has been given a second chance.

Bonds, 25, was arrested in 1990 for carrying a concealed weapon and trying to take a firearm and explosive into a minimum-security prison. He pleaded guilty to the concealed-weapon charge and was sentenced to one year in county jail and three years’ probation.

According to court records, Bonds served his one-year sentence, then enrolled at West L.A. Community College, where he joined the football team. He was named All-Western State Conference as a sophomore. In four games for the Trojans this season, Bonds has 12 tackles and two sacks, and has stayed out of trouble with police since serving his jail sentence.

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Richard Lapchick, director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport and Society, believes that because athletes are often the most recognizable representative of a university, athletic departments should be as concerned with a recruit’s personal history as they are with his talent.

“This is the new standard for coaches,” Lapchick said. “It’s part of the changing rules, that coaches, for their own protection, know who they are bringing in. It’s bad for the program if players keep going down in the police blotter.”

However, Northridge football Coach Bob Burt found it offensive that any coach--or newspaper-- would check athletes’ records.

“We don’t run records checks and we probably never will,” Burt said. “Do we have that right? We don’t run the records of the student body at large, why would we run athletes? For some reason, the public has gotten the idea that athletes must be perfect. Athletes aren’t angels. Athletes are just people.”

Longtime Penn State Coach Joe Paterno says his program does check for criminal records. “I’m not going to tell you how we do it, but I can assure you we get it done,” he said.

Donahue says that UCLA doesn’t check records on prospective players but that the “realities” may force schools to take more precautions.

“Schools do have a responsibility to check their kids,” Donahue said. “We don’t run checks on all the kids. We never thought we had to. I guess the way things are in the world today, maybe we should.”

Robinson agrees.

“I’m becoming aware that you just have to look further back in people’s careers in order to get a better understanding of their character,” he said.