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Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office Returns to Earlier Hiring Practices

Okay, maybe there is something wrong with this picture.  But according the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department relaxed its hiring practices and started hiring Sheriff’s with drug and alcohol and financial problems, and criminal records.   This was during a push to bolster its ranks, during a ramping up phase.   During that period the LA County Sheriff’s Department nearly doubled its ranks.

Apparently, in 2006, the LA County Sheriff”s Office relaxed  its recruiting policies and started hiring people it had previously disqualified, under the old standards.    So then we had the new,  relaxed standards.  Perhaps it is in keeping with the theory that good help is  hard to find.  Or perhaps it is in keeping in the theory that everyone deserves a second chance.   Perhaps, it is more accurate to say that in the rush to hire people the Department overlooked the most common standards for hiring law enforcement personnel.

I’m sure more than a few souls in the City of the Angels found it odd that the County thought it wise to take drug and alcohol abusers and convicted criminals and give them weapons.   After all, it worked in the Old West when outlaws decided to hang up their evil ways and became lawmen.   And LA is nothing if not the Old West.  In a modern City.   In one of the most influential cities in the world.   Okay.

Even LA County Sheriff, Lee Baca, acknowledged there was “human error” in the hiring practices.     I guess it is one way of putting it when at least one hire had gang affiliations.   there are also claims that the Department was too overloaded and understaffed to follow up on information delivered through background checks.

The Sheriff’s Department under pressure from the Count Supervisors has decided to rescind this hiring practice and return to the previous standards.   A good idea, and common sense.  considering the liability factors and the potential for major calamity.    Perhaps now the preemployment screening policy will be somewhat more strident.    Otherwise, we may end up with corrupt Deputy Sheriffs with gang affiliations and allegiance to cartels and other members of organized crime.   And then we would have the same conditions we criticize so boldly in Mexico.  Now if the crime labs could only find all the evidence that has been corrupted or misplaced, we would really be on a roll.

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.

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