All over Florida, tens of thousands of happy kids are suiting up for football, kicking soccer balls or working on a fade-away jump shot under the supervision of volunteer coaches whose personal backgrounds might or might not have been routinely run through police files.
It’s a sad fact of growing up, says state Sen. Jeremy Ring, that any activities involving a lot of innocent, trusting young people will attract the wrong kind of adults. And although cities, counties and school boards run background checks and take fingerprints of employees who have contact with kids, there is no such statewide requirement for volunteer coaches.
”We’ve got a serious loophole that has to be closed, a very serious problem that the Legislature has to address,” said Ring, a Margate Democrat. ”We don’t do background checks with people who work with our children every day. It’s unconscionable.”
Ring has sponsored a bill (SB 344) requiring fingerprints of sports coaches to be checked by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Within five working days of being designated with a team, a coach would have to submit background information, and a set of prints and the ‘’sanctioning authority” of a league would promptly forward them to the FDLE.
Ring said Rep. Joe Gibbons, D-Hallandale Beach, will cosponsor the proposal for consideration in the House during the spring 2008 regular session of the Legislature. In addition to standardizing the requirement of background checks, it would require sponsoring organizations to annually certify that all of their coaches have been screened - or are in the process - and would make it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail, for a coach to falsify background information.
He sponsored the same bill this year but it died in committees without a hearing.
”There’s no fiscal impact on the state,” said Ring. ”It’s just good fiscal policy to protect our children.”
As a circle of teen-aged players in helmets and shoulder pads exercised at a southside park, coach Darryl Newman said fingerprinting is a good idea. As a private investigator and process server, the 10-year coach said he knows how important it is to parents.
“The more ways you can direct who’s dealing with these kids, the better,” said Newman. “If you don’t do a background check, and you don’t know something about someone with a record of violence, it could be bad for the kids.”
But like others in the field, he said city and county recreation departments should cover the cost.
Ring said Irv Kiffin, the recreation director in Lauderhill, gave him the idea. Kiffin said it made sense that, if teachers and day-care workers and others working with children are screened, cities and counties ought to thoroughly check their volunteer athletic coaches.
”Some do, some don’t,” he said.
While anyone with Internet access can check a name through the state’s sexual-predator database, Kiffin said there are many other types of offenders that cities and counties won’t want hanging around their playing fields. People with drug records, convictions for domestic violence or negotiated-down pleas to many misdemeanor offenses should also sound an alarm, he said.
No one at any level of government wants to compromise child safety. But at a time when local governments are being pressured to cut property taxes, when many city and county services are feeling the financial pinch, some local sports and recreation officials are concerned about who will pay for fingerprinting.
Ring’s bill makes it each volunteer coach’s responsibility. But local sports authorities and team sponsors might have to subsidize the cost, or pay it entirely, since coaches are already giving their time and talent for many free hours every week.
Sharon Berrian of the Florida League of Cities said it might cause already-strapped cities to cut back on sports and recreation offerings.
”We appreciate the good intentions, but it is an unfunded mandate,” she said. ”This is something we will take a look at and analyze, but somebody’s got to pay for it.”
Cragin Mosteller, a spokeswoman for the Florida Association of Counties, said, ”We appreciate Sen. Ring’s efforts and look forward to working with him. At this point, the association is analyzing the bill to fully understand its fiscal and practical impacts.”
The FDLE estimates that it would run about 2,500 more fingerprint checks each year, at a cost of $15.25 per volunteer. But that’s on top of other screening costs, like verifying Social Security numbers, tracking past addresses and other data. FDLE said it has run 24,386 computer record background checks on volunteers in the last six months.
Tallahassee Parks and Recreation Director David Chapman said some volunteers will probably be willing to pay the cost, as Ring’s bill provides, or local governments might pick up all or part of it. Either way, he said, his agency is going ahead with it.
”We’re in the process of doing it right now,” said Chapman. ”It’s something we’ve been working on for quite some time and we’ll implement this whether the Legislature mandates it or not.”
Chapman and Pat Plocek, recreation director for Leon County, said they have not had any problems with sexual predators or other criminals trying to associate with their youth programs. But Plocek said that in checking names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other data, the county’s risk-management office usually rejects two or three volunteers each year - without giving him reasons.
”We do screening not only for coaches but for anyone working in the concession stands and other areas where they’ll have contact with the kids,” said Plocek. He estimated that adding fingerprinting to the background checks would quadruple the cost, to about $80 per person.
”It probably reduces the number of people willing to volunteer,” said Plocek. Besides the cost, he said, ”I’m not sure all the volunteers want their fingerprints on file,” for perfectly innocent reasons of privacy.
Karen Harrell, risk manager for the county, said costs will vary depending on how far-ranging a background search is required.
”Fingerprints are the be-all and end-all of identification,” she said.
