Spokane-area legislators give the red card to angry spectators with bill that would make threatening a referee a felony

OLYMPIA – When he was in eighth grade, Bob West’s teacher handed him a whistle.

In the shriek of the small metal tool, West felt power. He officiated his first event, a junior high volleyball game, that ignited a passion for refereeing.

“I liked that feeling, the respect that people had,” West said. “Being in control, you know, as a young kid – that was pretty new.”

In the next 35 years, he’d go on to officiate national championships in America, Turkey and Korea while deployed in the military. Throughout Spokane Valley, where West raised his family, he was a notorious referee and umpire. Players can still recall his signature “Sturr-ike!” and animated motions he used to call outs, his daughter Brandi Peetz said.

While officiating a wrestling match in Colville in the winter of 1996, a 190-pound student wrestler headbutted West during a heated exchange. West fell to the mat and stopped breathing, eyes rolling to the back of his head. For five minutes, he lay as a starfish on his back, unconscious. He broke a rib in the exchange.

“When I found out the next day, I thought he died,” said Peetz, who was in fourth grade at the time.

West’s officiating career ended after that day. Following the assault, he underwent four neck surgeries, physical therapy and still suffers from memory loss – though he remembers vividly the pain and rage on the sunset of his career.

He has been working to raise awareness for referee safety and petitioning to pass legislation he hopes will protect sports officials from similar assaults. That day may come this session, with the Legislature on Thursday considering a bill to increase the penalty for intimidating or threatening violence to a sports officiant.

“(Referees) are watching to make sure people are following the rules, so they’re in a very vulnerable position,” said bill sponsor Rep. Suzanne Schmidt, R-Spokane Valley. “We just see more and more that people are attacking sports officials. We hear it on the news, we see it on social media; it’s just becoming more and more prominent.”

The bill would make threatening violence or intimidation against school employees, volunteers or students officiating sporting events a class C felony, punishable by up to five years in jail or a $10,000 fine. Currently, this interference is classified as a gross misdemeanor, with associated penalties of a year in jail or a $5,000 fine.

Students who use force or violence against officiators would be removed from school and barred from the activity for a year. Non-student assailants would not be allowed in the school or location where the interference took place for a year.

Supporters said the increased penalties would discourage threatening behavior from students and parents at sporting events.

The Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce supports the bill, said Lukas Garcia, director of government affairs with the chamber.

Sports tourism drives the city’s economy, Garcia said, and with a shortage of qualified officiants, some seasons have had to be cut short or canceled. Should the bill make referees feel safer on the mat and sidelines, supporters hope it will reverse the referee shortage.

“Due to this feeling of being unsafe, it can jeopardize the entire benefits that team sports present to not only our youth, but also our community,” Garcia said.

Al Merkel, Spokane Valley City Councilman, spoke in support of the bill on behalf of himself, not the city.

“As a father, I can understand the enthusiasm for supporting one’s child,” Merkel said. “But when that enthusiasm escalates to violence, we set a really bad example for the other students and the other parents in those areas.”

West said that while it was a student who assaulted him, “wackadoodle” parents are the most common offenders who threaten referees: spewing vulgarities, spitting and at one point following his car home after a game.

“Especially in youth sports, it’s that parents in particular: ‘How dare you make a call against my kid and jeopardize his scholarship?’ ” West said.

In a 2023 survey by the National Association of Sports Officials representing over 35,000 respondents, nearly 40% said parents cause the most problems with sportsmanship, followed by coaches and fans at around 25% each. Just less than half said they felt unsafe because of spectator, player, coach or administrator behavior. More than 88% said they had not been physically assaulted in a game.

Officiancy runs in the family; Peetz, also a former Spokane Valley City Councilwoman, worked as a referee for volleyball games as a teenager. She recalls getting accosted by a drunk player at an adult game.

“I thought she was going to beat me up,” Peetz said. “It was scary.”

David Trieweiler from the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers spoke in opposition to the bill, arguing that increasing penalties doesn’t deter heat-of-the moment actions like intimidating a referee, especially in kids.

“There will always be fighting by adolescent boys in high school games,” Trieweiler said. “The difference is we used to punish them outside the criminal justice system and let them grow out of it. Now we labeled them for life as criminals and felons, and it does not stop teenage boys from getting in fights.”

Schmidt said in an interview Thursday she was expecting an amendment to the bill that would clarify the increased penalty would only apply to those 18 and older. As it’s written now, underage students would be subject to the penalties; that’s not the intent, Schmidt said.

When an intentional assault results in severe bodily harm, it’s already a felony, Trieweiler said, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine, applicable in many of the severe situations described at the hearing.

“We don’t need to pass another law, which we continue to do every session to create a new crime when we already have crimes on the books to address these situations,” Trieweiler said.

Schmidt is also considering adding that signage advertising heightened consequences should be installed at schools to deter would-be assailants.

The bill has bipartisan sponsorship. Democratic Reps. Marcus Riccelli and Timm Ormsby, both from Spokane, and Rep. Leonard Christian, R-Spokane Valley, join Schmidt in support of the bill.

Addressing unsportsmanlike conduct is coming from both the Legislature and internally, with the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association and the Washington Officials Association piloting referee body cameras, worn on a lanyard around their neck, to be activated in case a spectator threatens or intimidates them.

Around 100 basketball referees began wearing the cameras in early January. Some are in Seattle, though Spokane Public Schools Superintendent Adam Swinyard said he saw a referee at a school event wearing one recently.

The organizations established guidelines for use. Officiants would activate the cameras in three situations: an unsportsmanlike technical foul, an event that creates a dangerous environment for the official and harassment that results in a stop or delay in play.

Footage is encrypted, with only one official from each organization having access to video.

West is optimistic the bill’s bipartisan sponsorship and the reaction from the committee will move it closer to passage.

“We’re going to fiddle with the bill a little bit,” said committee chair Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, adding that it was possible they would consider the bill later, potentially voting to move it out of committee.

Though Legislation would feel like a victory, West wants more than anything an apology from the wrestler who forced him to hang up his whistle.

“He never said sorry,” Peetz said.