Fingerprints May Be Used for Screening of Coaches

West Covina is poised to apparently become the first city in California to require fingerprinting of every volunteer coach--from Little League to peewee football teams to soccer--as a way to screen out convicted sex offenders.

City Council members this month gave tentative backing to a proposal for the mandatory fingerprinting of 2,300 coaches and other volunteers, such as referees and parents, who work with the teams in 14 leagues. The effort is estimated to cost $30,000 to $108,000. Prints would be forwarded to state officials for criminal background checks.

The move comes amid a growing realization among parents and public officials nationwide that youth sports organizations are particularly vulnerable to child molesters, who use coaching to prey on unsuspecting children and trusting parents.

Officials in Middleburg Heights, Ohio; Jacksonville, Fla; and Howell Township, N.J., have already mandated criminal background checks for volunteer coaches. A New York lawmaker introduced a bill in January that would do the same throughout that state.

“There is a growing awareness of this as a problem in youth sports, and checks need to be made on coaches,” said Michelle Klein, executive director of the National Youth Sports Safety Foundation. “There are still a lot of incidents going unreported.”

More than two dozen volunteer and paid coaches in Southern California have been arrested on suspicion of, or convicted of, sexually abusing minors in the last two years, according to news reports. Since January alone, those accused of indecency with minors have included a Los Alamitos basketball coach, a Manhattan Beach tennis coach, a Torrance volleyball coach and a Harbor City cheerleading coach.

Some offenders are popular figures who produce highly successful teams. For instance, Clyde Ezra Turner, 44, coached the John Muir High School track team in Pasadena to five state championships before he was convicted of molesting a male athlete and sentenced in August to a three-year prison term.

“These aren’t some ugly guy in a trench coat hanging out at your kids’ playground,” said Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Christine Weiss, who has obtained the convictions of two coaches in recent years. “They are smooth characters. They seduce their young prey and mesmerize the parents.

“They want to be with kids, not adults, and they’re drawn to Little Leagues and soccer,” she said.

Weiss said that, after family members, the people whom parents trust most with their children usually are coaches, who tend to be emotionally and physically closer to youngsters than even their teachers.

As a result, youth sports leagues are beginning to take a closer look at the adults on the sidelines.

Most notable is the Torrance-based American Youth Soccer Organization, which, with 625,000 members, is one of the largest youth sports leagues in the country.

Although it hasn’t instituted fingerprinting, the group launched a program this year called “Safe Haven” that requires volunteers and coaches to fill out applications that ask for disclosure of criminal convictions, as well as a listing of personal and professional references.

In addition, the league sends them to seminars that include discussion of sexual abuse, said Elisa Hall, the organization’s national coordinator of certification and advocacy.

Local officials in the soccer group say the program has already proved to be a deterrent.

“We have had a few people refuse to fill out the form and go on their way,” said Colin Hill, commissioner for the organization’s Region 13 in Pasadena.

California law requires that all public school coaches be fingerprinted, but the West Covina plan would be the first to make the procedure mandatory for nonprofit leagues within its borders, said a state Department of Justice spokesman. A League of California Cities official said he knows of no other local government in the state requiring such scrutiny.

Although state law allows sports organizations to submit prints to the department on their own, few do. Of the 1.3 million fingerprint searches state officials conduct each year, only an estimated few thousand are for sports leagues.

Even then, state officials say, they are limited in what they can tell the volunteer groups.

“It’s not a complete criminal history check,” said Mike Van Winkle, spokesman for the state Department of Justice. “It provides information for conviction on crimes involving sex, drugs and violence.”

West Covina Police Chief Frank Wills said the city’s proposed ordinance would follow those guidelines, although it might pose problems.

“What if [the coach is] an embezzler or a burglar? Should we tell the league if it’s their treasurer? There are considerable liability issues,” he said. “But we must protect children.”

West Covina’s proposal, which began to develop in November, follows an embarrassing incident last year in which city officials unwittingly allowed a convicted child molester to coach 5- to 12-year-olds in the West Covina Youth Pony Baseball league.

League officials had forwarded a fingerprint request on volunteer coach Andre E. Marsh, 41, but never heard back. In May, Marsh was arrested on suspicion of an unrelated crime, which led to the discovery that he had been convicted in 1988 of child molestation, prosecutors said.

“He coached my sons. He seemed like a nice man, very personable,” said Linda Sarver, a former Covina mayor. Marsh no longer coaches in the league.

A subsequent investigation found that, instead of being forwarded to the state Department of Justice, Marsh’s prints had remained on the desk of a parks and recreation employee, ignored. The employee was placed on leave last year and subsequently left the city payroll, said Tom Hatch, community services director.

To avoid such problems in the future, Hatch said the city is considering using a scanning machine to transfer fingerprints directly to a computer for comparison with the state database.

Hatch, a coach himself, said the city also plans to provide leaflets listing safety tips for parents and guidelines for coaches.

City Council members have requested a legal review of the proposed fingerprinting ordinance and scheduled more discussions before a final decision next month. But a majority has signaled its strong support for the measure. In one version, coaches who clear the fingerprint tests would be given city identification cards or “smart” cards embedded with computer chips.

“If it stops one child from being abused, it will be worthwhile,” said Mayor Pro Tem Richard Melendezcq, a veteran Los Angeles police officer. “We need to do everything we can to protect our children. . . . A sex offender can change a name or Social Security number but not their fingerprints.”