For the last several months, Sacramento Bee reporters have been examining a question that should concern all county residents: How many employees of Child Protective Services have criminal records?

As it turns out, one of every 14 CPS employees has a criminal record in Sacramento County alone. Undoubtedly, the number would be higher if records outside the county were checked.

Some of these convictions occurred many years ago or involved relatively minor offenses. But others involve serious matters. The Bee's Marjie Lundstrom and Sam Stanton found a registered sex offender working as a receptionist at CPS offices. They found CPS employees convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, heroin possession, embezzlement and spousal abuse. They found three social workers with multiple DUI convictions; two had been arrested three times.

Given that CPS workers routinely make decisions that affect the lives of children and families, you'd assume that CPS administrators would have wanted, from the get-go, to learn all they could about their employees. You'd think they'd have wanted to know sooner rather than later if their background checks had failed, or if a long-standing employee had been recently convicted of a crime.

Yet that is not what occurred. Partway through the investigation, CPS officials retreated. CPS Director Laura Coulthard and her boss, Lynn Frank, director of the Department of Health and Human Services, declined to be interviewed. Instead, they sent memos discouraging workers from talking to reporters and offered counseling to those who were the focus of The Bee's "intrusive" questions.

This is a sign of an agency in denial. While the vast majority of CPS workers perform their tough jobs admirably and have a clean record, The Bee's research has found far too many with troubling histories. By urging their employees to stay mum instead of examining the agency's screening practices, CPS managers seem more interested in damage control than in public safety.

Two big questions hang over CPS' practices. The first involves pre-employment screening and the county's background check policy, which was last revised in 1988.

The second involves the county's attempts to be notified by outside authorities when a CPS employee, after being hired, runs afoul of the law.

A CPS spokesman told The Bee that the county receives subsequent arrest notifications. But if that is the case, why is Cynthia Lee Quinn still a CPS social worker?

An El Dorado County judge convicted Quinn of violating a restraining order after she allegedly harassed neighbors with laser pointers, obscene phone calls, videotaping and nails in their driveways.

After one family moved to Sacramento County to escape the harassment, they soon received a suspicious visit from Sacramento County CPS workers investigating a report of a child beating.

You can have a reasoned debate about whether people convicted years ago of minor offenses should be barred from CPS employment. We believe CPS managers should have some leeway, based on the nature of a person's past offense and subsequent actions.

The trouble is, CPS hasn't begun to keep up with recent arrests of its employees. They are not doing the minimum to keep the wrong people from ending up in crucial jobs. And that just adds to the questions about this troubled agency. When will the county's supervisors demand answers?

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