Insurer Warns West Covina on Screening Coaches

The insurer for dozens of Southern California cities has warned West Covina officials that their proposal to fingerprint every volunteer sports league coach exposes the municipality to multimillion-dollar liability, and that no other city in the country has gone so far to screen out convicted sex offenders.

The Independent Cities Risk Management Authority--which was established by 29 cities, including West Covina--says the San Gabriel Valley suburb’s plan for fingerprinting 2,300 coaches and other youth league volunteers is plagued with problems.

Sooner or later, mistakes will be made and a victimized child or a coach wrongly rejected will sue, the group has warned.

“In my professional opinion . . . the city of West Covina is unnecessarily assuming responsibilities and liabilities for which there could be severe (both economic and political) consequences,” John M. Nielsen, the authority’s general manager, said in a written opinion provided to the City Council Tuesday.

Despite the warning, council members in the city of 101,000, located a dozen miles east of Los Angeles, are pushing forward with the groundbreaking measure. With a majority already indicating support, they voted late Tuesday to take up the issue at a special June 6 hearing, which is expected to draw youth sports volunteers, state lawmakers and other municipal officials who may copy the plan.

“Sometimes you get arrows in the back when you are leading a new wave,” said Councilman Michael Touhey, a proponent.

West Covina’s proposal comes amid a growing belief among parents and public officials nationwide that youth sports organizations are particularly vulnerable to child molesters, who use positions in leagues to prey on unsuspecting children and trusting parents.

More than two dozen volunteer and paid coaches in Southern California have been arrested on suspicion or convicted of sexually abusing minors in the last two years, according to news reports.

“The primary concern of this issue should be the children, not profit-and-loss and legal liability,” said John Scheuplein, a West Covina resident. “We do not want our children in jeopardy for one moment longer.”

While city officials in a smattering of cities across the country require background checks on volunteer coaches, none mandates fingerprinting.

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.

West Covina is proposing to use a scanning machine to transfer volunteers’ fingerprints to a computer for comparison with a state Department of Justice database. The West Covina police would make note of any positive correlations and further investigate a volunteer in question. Two city leagues, the West Covina Youth Soccer and Bruins football leagues, now fingerprint volunteers on their own.

But insurance representatives have weighed in against making that practice mandatory throughout the city. Nielsen said that while sports leagues are legally liable for coaches’ actions, West Covina’s proposal would shift the liability to the city.

“Basically they are out on a limb where no one has gone before,” Neilsen said in an interview.

He predicted that lawsuits would be filed because mistakes are inevitable. He said the suits could come from abuse victims, if known sex offenders slipped through the screening, or from adults who felt slandered if they were wrongly identified as being risks.

Such slips could cost West Covina millions, with the city required to pay the first $250,000 of every claim paid out. That amount is the deductible the city must pay on claims before coverage kicks in from the authority, he said.

“How many of those can you afford? Perhaps even more significantly, how much of a political hit can City Council members take in the event that the system fails for one reason or another?” he asked the council in his written opinion, dated May 9.

He said that cities from El Segundo to Brea are watching West Covina and could use its scheme as a blueprint--and that means even more caution needs to be taken. At the very least, he said, West Covina must hire a third-party contractor to administer and handle the fingerprinting.

West Covina officials know the pitfalls of mishandling prints. In an incident last year, they discovered that a mix-up over fingerprints had allowed one registered sex offender to serve as a Pony League baseball coach. The league had taken the coach’s fingerprints and forwarded them to the city, but a parks and recreation employee failed to submit them to the state for scrutiny.

Council members say that, despite that episode, they aren’t throwing caution to the wind as they push forward toward requiring fingerprints for all coaches.

“I think we are breaking ground here for city government” said West Covina Mayor Steve Herfert. “I want to make sure we do it right.”