Life

I Volunteered to Coach My Child, Not Be Fingerprinted

Still, I was ready to go. Until I found the new rules don't do much at all to truly protect kids from predators.

By Nick Smith, 23 Feb 2011, TheTyee.ca

Fingerprint

Requirement seems more about optics, given lack of follow-through.

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Just after the Christmas holidays, I found myself at the local RCMP detachment getting fingerprinted.

My only crime was that I allowed myself to get roped into coaching a pack of kids when I signed my eight-year-old up for cross-country ski lessons. Reporting to the RCMP station for a criminal record check required of volunteer coaches, I was told that my gender and birth date matched that of a sex offender -- or I should say, one of 14,000 sex offenders -- who may or may not have changed his name.  I would have to come back the next day for fingerprinting, according to a ruling that came down last summer.

I figured that if they were going to treat me like a criminal, they better have a good reason, so I showed up ready to cross-examine the constable on duty before I started pressing my personal identifiers into any inkpad. As the officer guided me to a bare windowless room in the back of the station, I began by asking him what will happen with my prints once they are done with them.

He was neither rude nor polite, but was clearly not in the mood for conversation. I soon realized that this was just about fingerprinting me and that I wasn't getting any questions answered. Despite the fact that I had done nothing wrong, accusation hung heavy in the air.

I now wish that I had started asking questions before I showed up at the station. If I had spent some time digging for answers earlier rather than later, I would have found out that the whole process is not based on any person or incident but merely seeks to close a legal loophole, and that at present, it is unenforced.

It is also putting a huge strain on local RCMP who suddenly find themselves saddled with fingerprinting thousands of innocent people like myself while being given no extra time for doing so. Lastly, since it takes up to four months, most coaching seasons are over before the results come in.

Protecting 'our most vulnerable'?

When I started asking some hard questions, none of the RCMP with whom I spoke could give me a good reason for why they were doing this. The most information I got was from a friendly receptionist who offered to make me a copy of a handout which explains that, "This is a more rigorous process intended to protect our most vulnerable citizens from anyone with a history of sexual offences who has changed their name." She unpinned a news article, from a corkboard and offered to copy that also.

Initially, I had assumed that the RCMP must have done some sort of risk analysis based on the number of pardoned sexual offenders who had changed their names. From this, they could give me a rough idea of the chances that a predator could sign up to volunteer with children in our community.

I asked Sgt. Stuart Falebrinza, who handles media requests at the Sechelt RCMP detachment, what this new ruling is based on. Was it a series of cases, an individual or some kind of criminal pattern that has now been recognized? He apologized for not being able to answer this question, but offered to respond by email within a week. His researched response was that he has "no idea if this is based on a particular incident."

I also asked him who was responsible for enforcing this new policy. "This really has nothing to do with the RCMP. We don't enforce this," was his reply.

No one else is enforcing it either. One RCMP detachment employee confessed that most of the coaches out there are not bothering to get any criminal record check at all. It does not take a genius to figure out that a policy that is unenforced is essentially useless.

Calling Ottawa

According to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the collection of personal information by government organizations can only be justified when there is "a pressing societal concern" that poses a "substantial, imminent problem." Here, I take "substantial" to mean "having substance." It requires some facts rather than a theory around potentiality.

I decided that this was worth phoning the head office of the RCMP in Ottawa to get the story straight from the horse's mouth. When I spoke with Constable Lucy Shorey, she assured me that I would find the answers to all of my questions on the RCMP website set up for just this purpose.

I told her that I had read all of the material on the site, yet I could find no information about the size of the risk involved here. What she said was, "That is not an RCMP question. That is not our job." I thought that it seemed like the very essence of any RCMP member's job to assess the nature and size of any threat that they are responding to, but she did not seem to think so.

I also asked her why I wasn't given the option of producing a birth certificate that would prove I hadn’t changed my name.

"Documents can be falsified," she replied. So I have been fingerprinted because there could be pardoned sexual offenders who might have changed their names and who could possibly forge birth certificates to conceal their new identities so that they can coach children. Yet, I have not been given one shred of evidence that this is happening or has ever happened.

'What do you get for what you give up?'

Micheal Von, of the BC Civil Liberties Association, is a woman with a keen intellect who is passionate about such privacy issues.

During a lengthy phone conversation she told me about first getting wind of this story last summer. Her first impression was that "the reporter must have gotten the story wrong." Her disbelief stemmed from the fact that it is "unprecedented in Canada," where your legal identification no longer identifies you.

We discuss the supposed threat that is being addressed here and whether children are actually being protected by this ruling. "The problem with risk analysis," she explains, "is that there is always a risk." She asks, "What do you get for what you give up?"

Von makes the point that "the volunteer sector is having a hard time as it is. One of the ways we protect children is by having responsible overseers. If that number atrophies, then we have created a real risk."

We both agree that kids are safest where there are many people looking out. "When you introduce automatic suspicion," she points out, "you fragment that community."

She goes on: "This is not a proportionate response to a threat. It doesn't add up."

One of Von's concerns is the "movement towards more population-based biometrics."

She tells me that I should be concerned about my fingerprints being digitized. She doubts that some investigator in Ottawa will be looking at them with a magnifying glass. "I would be concerned about what happens to this information." She explains that "the RCMP are reluctant to delete records." The standard practice, she tells me, "is to put in a notation" about how the data was collected.

When I first asked Lucy Shorey about how my fingerprints were sent to Ottawa, she assured me that they were sent by mail and that they would be looked at through an old-fashioned magnifying glass. Afterward, they would be destroyed. However, she followed up with an email in which she corrected herself. It turns out that "paper-based applications. . . are scanned and converted to electronic documents."

I will believe the RCMP for now that it does not matter how my prints were transferred, as they will destroy them "either way." However, I am still not satisfied. If there is no culprit and no victim to point fingers at, why are they going to all of this trouble?

Von's one word answer, "optics," explains a lot.

"There is the rhetoric, 'there is nothing we don't do.'" It clearly puts the police on the side of the parents and children, rather than the side in which they could be seen as defending the offenders, she explains.

What I’ll tell my children

I have two young boys who both have Facebook accounts. I do my best to teach them about guarding their personal information.

"Don't give out your personal information just because someone asks for it," I tell them. They have both seen videos warning them about posting pictures online that could resurface at an inopportune time. I have done my best to teach them that digital records are a bit like rumours in that you cannot know how far they have spread and you can never call them back.

So, I will come down squarely on the side of my children by telling them that I have let them down by doing something I have told them not to do. I will warn them about people who treat you like a criminal in the name of keeping you safe.

I would rather teach them to guard their freedom than to freely give it up in the name of closing some loophole. [Tyee]

Nick Smith is a veteran public school teacher who lives on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia. You can read his series Tyee reader-funded series "Teaching that Inspires" here.

17 Comments:

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  • zalm

    1 year ago

    I doubt it's the RCMP

    It's the insurers. Care homes, churches, baseball leagues - all these have insurance and it's the insurers that are requiring policies regarding abuse and its discovery, along with criminal record checks. It appears that insurers know less about the law than some ordinary citizens do. And for the RCMP - well it's a gift. So much information! What will we do with it all??!!

  • marlonbrando

    1 year ago

    For life

    Once they have your prints on file, they will never destroy them.

    And, when I coached soccer many years ago as a teen, I was never asked for finger prints. It was a different time, so why would I?

    So now, teens who want to volunteer will be asked for this type of information? That should do a lot to promote community spirit.

  • unrealisticexpe...

    1 year ago

    Big deal! you obviously never worked with kids before

    This happens to everyone who has to work with kids. Its not a big deal and they DO destroy them afterward - unless the laws have recently changed. Personally I have had this done when i worked at the PNE over a summer. I think more worrying is the following statement:

    "I have two young boys who both have Facebook accounts."

    You let your young kids on facebook and you are worried about fingerprints?!?! Facebook is a goldmine/cesspool of personal information that is far more damaging, especially to a child, then their father being fingerprinted!

    When I was a kid, we had the common sense to NEVER use our real names on a network. That is the entire point of nicknames, handles and avatars. Sure they can post online pictures of themselves with their name, DOB school and god knows what else, but OH NO! Don't let their dads fingerprints be compared to a database and then destroyed! Who cares if he shares a name with a known sex offender!

  • warbler

    1 year ago

    Yes, but...

    are they also fingerprinting Catholics entering the priesthood? Especially those who aim to train and oversee alter boys?

  • jwstewart

    1 year ago

    I'm surprised

    that the author didn't already have the security check to maintain his position as a teacher.

  • nightbloom

    1 year ago

    Warbler - the answer is yes.

    Warbler - the answer is yes. Seminaries have instituted criminal background checks (including fingerprinting and polygraph tests) that specifically look for potential sex abusers. Btw, statistically a member of the Roman Catholic clergy is not more likely to be an abuser than members of other religious denominations, and less likely than some secular professions. The problem originated from lack of accountability, enabling abusers to re-offend dozens of times over the span of decades, creating hundreds of victims. The numbers are compounded by the relative size of the religious denomination you specify. The resulting avalanche of abuse cases therefore created the perception that a clerical collar is synonymous with sex abuser. In reality, abuse by Roman Catholic clergy accounts for a relatively small fraction of total sex abuse cases involving minors. Extremely egregious nevertheless, of course, but it demonstrates that this is a pervasive problem that can't be pinned on any single religious minority or profession.

  • mgailthiessen

    1 year ago

    Volunteers

    OMG, all this to volunteer to coach ANY kids sports, either gender, even if you have eleven kids of your own at home!

  • poolongtea

    1 year ago

    Routine Procedure

    Just to make you feel better, there is no maximum amount of time for personal information retention BUT there is a minimum retention time. Therefore, your fingerprint will be retained for a MINIMUM of 2 years as prescribed under the Privacy Regulations:
    http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/SOR-83-508/page-2.html#anchorbo-ga:s_4

    Disposal policy is based on the government institution and is not prescribed in statue. Generally disposal is between 3-5 years. Contact the government institution's privacy head, in this case RCMP, for their policy on disposition of personal records.

    http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/P-21/FullText.html
    Disposal of personal information

    (3) A government institution shall dispose of personal information under the control of the institution in accordance with the regulations and in accordance with any directives or guidelines issued by the designated minister in relation to the disposal of that information.

    Plus, criminal records check with fingerprint verification is a routine practice, such as with name change and immigration. And as stated in the RCMP website:

    "The fingerprints are not added to the RCMP National Repository of Criminal Records and are not searched for future purposes."

    http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cr-cj/fing-empr2-eng.htm

  • Jeannie

    1 year ago

    kids who volunteer

    Teens who want to volunteer to get work experience often have to obtain a clear criminal record check before they start if they are to work with vulnerable populatons. My son has his lifeguarding/swim teaching credentials and was hoping to volunteer in the winter so that he was set to apply for paying jobs in the spring. The wait was four months. What a great way to encourage teens to volunteer! The good news is because he has an unusual middle name he did not have to go to the second stage finger printing.

  • jack the bear

    1 year ago

    Warbler has a point...

    especially since the 'alter' boys go through so many ch ch ch changes.

  • Driftwood

    1 year ago

    In the name of freedom!

    First, apologize for going off topic here.
    Yeah well, the tyee is always bangin' on about unsubstantiated horse shit, but if we really came down to it, we can see that the democratic (all of us) people in the east are trying to get free of exactly the kind of government which is corralling us into a dismal future.
    There are two simple steps to democracy:
    One: disenfranchise the 'leaky government' which holds you enthrall to outdated and harmful ideas like:'You are not fit to govern or think for yourself!'
    Two: Grasp the reins of power and govern for yourself; because there is no government in history which has governed in the interests of the people they serve.
    You want decent government? Do it yourself - have a vote on every issue which affects you. Otherwise, you will remain a monument to your own stupidity; while your 'reprentatives' kindly screw things up for their own interests. Human nature.
    Personally I have never felt that some sociopath in BC or Ottawa had more sense of what was going on in my community than I have.
    Want examples? China: They control their economy, they control their banks, and pretty soon we will all be passing the begging bowl to China to 'improve our economy'; sure they have problems with Tibet, but by and large they have created a new reality, a new paradigm: This country is for Chinese, and everybody else will come second.
    How long will it be before we recognize the new reality? How long will it be before we say, "Enough! The people who live in BC should control their own future and their own resources!
    Anything else is giving in to the statue (something which represents itself as the ideals of common man) which presents itself as the status quo. How much richer we (and everyone else in the world) would be if we had control of our own resources and lives.
    Those people in Tunisia and Egypt and Libya are not asking for just bread. They are asking for freedom.
    We can't offer them 'Democracy' - we don't have it.
    Want another example? The plans for an oil pipeline through BC which will benefit a very few for the purpose of profit, but which will sooner or later lay to rest the dreams of the Natives and everyone else who believes in a sustainable eco structure. Read any corporate plan: They forget to mention the cost to the people who live there. Sure, the profits from a corporate adventure are huge in just about anything you can name; but what will happen to the rest of us when the money goes dead? Poverty and disillionment.
    Of course thetyee will never publish articles along these lines; which makes me wonder whose side they are really on.
    Have a good time 'rakin' it in on your current job: It will last until globalism. Then you will be just another Mexican in the way of 'Progress'. My guess for BC is another five years. Ireland, Greece, Spain, do you think we are different? I personally don't give a damn for bankers or globalism. If you want it done right, do it yourself. Bankers are our enemies.

  • Fish-counter

    1 year ago

    Tricky subject....

    As part of my profession, I often work with high school students on environmental restoration projects. Over the last 12-13 years, I have worked with over 600 of them. Over that time, there has been a dramatic shift in the gender composition of students who volunteer to work with me. It used to be about 50:50 when I started and now it is 90:10 with a overwhelming majority of girls.

    In order to do this work, I need a criminal records check from the RCMP. It cost $15 last year, but it was worth absolutely nothing. They just check that there are no outstanding warrants or convictions across Canada, and that would just mean the person in question was never caught. Yet the school district requires this check be done. This is just one small example of the security checks on coaches, and I am sure the sports requirements are even more invasive and expensive.

    The work I do carries a small risk. Students could, theoretically hurt themselves on the job. This small risk has out an effective end to all similar projects because no organisation is willing to accept any liability. Just talk to your local Field Naturalist group and they will talk for hours about the insurance liability of taking members on nature walks. All they do is to walk throught the woods, but they are more concerned with risk than a sky-diving club.

    Canada is a country that was explored by giants, but is now run by moral midgets. We have become obsessed with risk and we are total and absolute moral cowards. As a result, we are robbing our youth of essential work experience that they need to make career decisions.

    In the case of sports coaching, some people actually think that ridiculous security checks will reduce the risk of child abuse. They willingly surrender their privacy to the RCMP, an organisation that currently employs officers who have killed innocent people. Kwesi Millington, Monty Robinson and many others, should not be on the force. All of which proves to my satisfaction that you cannot put your faith in institutions nor the police.

    Kids need to know about predators (which sometimes includes the RCMP themselves), and parents should warn them. We need to drop the denial which is so deeply engrained in our culture. No amount of fingerprinting will replace common sense. In fact, even databases such as those kept by the RCMP, are subject to abuse too.

    If the RCMP dealt with their own problems for once, that would do more to restore my faith in them far more than any superficial security check.

  • Fish-counter

    1 year ago

    P.S.

    I feel very strongly about the criminal actions of the RCMP. It is time the Tyee did an article on it to guage public opinion. Public confidence in our law-enforcers is at an all-time low. The RCMP need to do soomething about it, besides sweeping it under the rug. Don't under-estimate the wrath of an angry public.

  • JR

    1 year ago

    No trust

    My personal experience from 1988 taught me to trust no member of a police organization. I rented a home from a member of a police force. A week later he came by and informed me I had an outstanding warrant for a traffic ticket I had gotten many years previously. While it was nice to clear it up without a problem at headquarters it was a bit disconcerting to know this person could run my name with no crime occurring and for his own personal gain. This was a complete abuse of power. From that moment on I trust no cops with any information. They say one thing but do another and this has been borne out by recent cases where they perjure themselves but get nothing in the way of consequences. Trust is earned and not commanded. I have taught my 2 boys to be very careful what information they volunteer to any police and if they feel uncomfortable about the questions to call me and I will be there to ask my own questions.

  • veritas

    1 year ago

    Fingerprinting when working with kids re I Volunteered to Coach

    The fingerprinting was brought about after many years of finding that many pedofiles/deviates try to get into positions of trust. I have heard of child care workers, teachers, priests, volunteer parents, eg. the cub leader that likes to take kids on overnight camping trips, military cadets, soccer, hockey, etc., the list goes on - became an ideal ground to attract these jerks. I have worked on hockey boards, for soccer, on a dance school board and many other volunteer situations. I have no problem at all when I have to go for a criminal record check including fingerprints - I feel it is a way to try to reduce the chance of having the vulnerable exploited or hurt. I don't take it personally. It isn't used for any other reason. I am happy if I can give some other parents a little more secure comfort. If you have nothing to hide, who cares. (Also needed to do it for when I worked as a Special Ed. Teaching Assistant, as well as when I worked for a Residential Treatment Centre for kids). It is just a shame, though, we can only screen out the guys that have a relevant worrisome criminal record - abusers after the fact. And there actually are some parents out there that are pedophiles/deviants as well, sad to say.

  • the_future

    1 year ago

    additional information...

    To give you some more detail on why the RCMP have done this, only two provinces at present require fingerprints to be submitted to the RCMP upon name change - BC and Alberta.

    Assuming an individual can move freely between provinces, anyone can be convicted of an offense, change their name, and bypass a Criminal Record Check.

    There should be legislation similar to BC and Alberta Nationwide.

    #2 - RCMP could perform their search on more than just Given Name 1, Surname, DOB and Gender. They should add Place of Birth, Height, Eye Colour, Given Name 2, or any tattoos or markings which are also tracked by CPIC, where the records reside.

    The fingerprinting you endured, the RCMP assures are destroyed, but you are right, converting the paper copy of prints to a digital copy is the most time consuming part of their screening process - according to them.

    The situation is a mess and organizations and citizens are crying foul. Changes need to be made!

    For what it's worth, there are third parties who can partake in the ordering process. Some cities like Halifax are starting to make use of online ordering and results delivery to expedite the process where possible. Hopefully Vancouver follows suit!

  • KayTee

    1 year ago

    Birth certificate

    "I also asked her why I wasn't given the option of producing a birth certificate that would prove I hadn’t changed my name."

    That wouldn't work. When you submit your name change application you surrender your birth cert. along with it and are issued a new one with your new name and no indication that it has been changed.

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