Description
Discussion Questions: Describe in detail the restrictions and protections as they relate to background screening of applicants, posed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Gramm Leach Bliley Act, and HIPAA.
Unformatted Attachment Preview
1
Practical Implications of
Pre-Employment Investigations
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To develop a historical understanding of the issues that both positively and negatively
impact the pre-employment investigation process for public safety organizations
• To develop an appreciation for the importance of the pre-employment investigation
process in a public safety organization
• To develop an understanding of the predominant factors affecting applicant attrition
rates as well as the predictive factors of the pre-employment investigation process
• To develop an understanding of the transitive nature of recruitment, selection, and
training in the organization’s future success and how they impact succession planning processes
KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS
•
•
•
•
•
Objectives of a pre-employment investigation for public safety personnel
Applicant attrition rates
Recruiting process needs
Social and organizational issues of the public safety personnel selection processes
Risk management
Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
Throughout the history of American law enforcement, there has been a requirement to
screen applicants for the characteristics and behaviors of service, dedication, and integrity.
Born from heated discussions of the causes of police corruption that have continued since
the early nineteenth century, the need for law enforcement personnel who are devoid of corrupt behaviors is self-evident.1 There is unilateral agreement that the screening processes
of law enforcement applicants must include disqualifying parameters that include those
who have arrest records and poor employment histories.2 While the issue of police corruption and abuse of power had been an ongoing discussion as evidenced by the Wickersham
Report and the Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement since the early twentieth
century, little was accomplished until the mid-twentieth century at the dawn of the civil
rights movement.3 The most sweeping changes began to occur as a result of the findings
of the report of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of
Justice (1967) that among other recommendations advised law enforcement to make significant changes to their selection processes.4 This is a direct result of the Omnibus Crime
Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and the precursor of the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration (LEAA) all put in motion the methods to improve police effectiveness in
controlling crime and improving community relations.5
Colaprete, Frank A.. Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook
Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=919035.
Created from apus on 2024-03-14 18:01:52.
1
Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
2
Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals
Fast forward a few decades, and in the post-9/11 era, society has been forced into a
newly heightened and galvanized awareness that also constructively mandates mainstream
American businesses to require criminal records checks on prospective employees.6 The
background investigation, and more appropriately titled character investigation, is the predominant method used to ascertain if these positive traits exist in the applicant’s character.7
Sadly, that has not been the result in many, many instances. For law enforcement, the background or pre-employment investigation is the most critical step in assessing the prospective applicant’s fit for entry into what still is the most honorable of positions one can serve
in, a police officer charged with the responsibility of protecting the free society we have all
come to enjoy. There is an expectation, and rightly so, that those who are brought into the
ranks will enforce as well as comply with the laws they are sworn to uphold.8 The social
contract between the police and the public has never changed, and it is within the purview
of the background investigator’s responsibilities to see that the terms of that contract are
strictly enforced.
Simply stated, the most profound impact a law enforcement manager can have on an
agency is the hiring of an effective officer to add to the ranks.9 The success of a police
officer is primarily based on their ability to effectively manage human relations issues, thus
calling for police officers to be human relations specialists.10 This makes the responsibility
to hire the best qualified applicants of the utmost importance to law enforcement administrators as well as those who have political control over their respective agencies. That
responsibility requires an unwavering commitment to the legal, procedural, and ethical
issues that transcend the hiring of the nation’s centurions. In contrast, bad politics leads to
irreparable damage to a law enforcement agency’s ability to recruit, retain, and motivate the
rank and file in proper fashion.11
To provide some perspective to the issue, in 2004 there were more than 800,000 full-time
sworn law enforcement officers working in the United States, the bulk of which, approximately 450,000, were employed in local police departments.12 With respect to attrition
rates, between 2002 and 2003, 34,474 officers were processed by local police departments:
28,791 at the entry level and 5,323 as lateral transfers.13 Over the last 20 years, a mass
exodus has been observed in law enforcement officers migrating through lateral transfers,
from large agencies to smaller ones.14 Reversing the trends of the previous era when smaller
agency officers sought to gain the ability to be involved in more police work and promotional opportunities that larger agencies had come to be known for. However, since most
police departments in the country employ 10 officers or less, the task of quickly replacing
lost human resources becomes that much more critical even as the shift in employment
demographics has tended to favor these smaller agencies.
While the overwhelming majority of law enforcement applicants are hired and have
successful and lengthy service-based careers, the inevitable cracks always seem to be wide
enough for a few of the unfit or corrupt to slip through. The effects of such errors polarize the ranks and create high levels of distrust and sometimes hostility from the public we
are responsible to protect. The pressures created by short staffing, political influence, and
the like can severely compromise the selection process of an organization. The return of
political influence to the police realm can be accredited to the period of civil unrest during
the 1960s that led to primary control of police agencies being placed under local political
structures.15 Moves to centralize the political organization and structure of municipalities have yet to eliminate corruption in state and local governments wherein corruption is
starkly characterized as an infestation.16 Political pressures often unduly and negatively
Colaprete, Frank A.. Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook
Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=919035.
Created from apus on 2024-03-14 18:01:52.
Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Practical Implications of Pre-Employment Investigations
3
impact the operational effectiveness of a law enforcement organization.17 Political pressures are also more intense in the elected ranks of law enforcement such as in the case of
sheriff’s departments.18 The most disturbing factor is that the issues of the abuse of political power by those elected officials have been the subject of controversy for nearly two
centuries. The only proven answer is to have formal legal controls in place to maintain the
necessary and proper administration of any law enforcement process.19 This includes the
pre-employment screening process.
Political trends are cyclical with respect to affirmative action initiatives in the United
States.20 Political influences due to attempts to meet affirmative action goals have led to
several devastating scandals in law enforcement organizations throughout the country.21
These deficits in the hiring process lead to public outcries, external body oversight, and further constriction of the police chief’s ability to hire and manage their own staff. Politics will
also enter the process when elected officials will consider themselves somehow qualified
to question the veracity of the hiring practices and systems of the organization.22 The irony
of it all exists in the theory that bureaucratic corruption can also be interpreted as a direct
reflection of society’s morality.23 Elected officials must be educated about the requirements
for becoming a police officer in order to abate these types of issues.24 Any type of reform
must first emerge from changing the undue influence the political structure has over the
police function in a free society.25 A means v. ends analysis must not be maligned to justify
these types of actions.26 Political influence is truly the single most damaging bane of the
law enforcement officer hiring process. Regardless of these pressures, law enforcement
administrators must demonstrate a level of civic integrity that is beyond reproach.27
Accountability is also felt at the highest levels of the organization when these hiring
problems are uncovered.28 Not only are police managers being held accountable, but also
those key figures who work in the supportive human resource functions.29 Worse yet, these
likely episodic lapses may be perceived, whether real or imagined, as indicating patterns
of flaws and abuses in the hiring process rather than as isolated incidents.30 Managers will
also privately extol situational justification for these ethical lapses.31 However, in the light
of the public eye, they will deny such allegations in an attempt to insulate themselves from
the decision that has gone wrong.
Compounded by nepotism and cronyism, which are somehow still tolerated by law
enforcement and municipal administrators, but never by the American public, the problem
grows ever worse with a real-time media that froth at the mouth for its next virtual meal.
This plays out daily in the press reminiscent of a Greek tragedy where the histrionics of
the media members act in the finest traditions of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides,
using the virtual theater to bask in the paradoxical joy of watching others suffer. Yellow
journalism is alive and well in the Internet and cable television conduits that are directly
wired to all of our homes.
Research has consistently demonstrated that the press has a penchant for reporting decadent news events in lieu of other less controversial news events.32 And if law enforcement
and municipal administrators are still holding on to the belief that this information will
not be found by the media, they are dangerously deluding themselves.33 From seeing the
Pentagon Papers to the publishing of some 400,000 secret war documents on the Internet
should put a damper on any hope of anything being secret anymore in this age of lightning
fast information dissemination.34 For example, one media investigation uncovered that a
county child protective services agency had employed 68 CPS workers with criminal
histories that ranged from drug possession, illegal weapon possession, domestic violence,
Colaprete, Frank A.. Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook
Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=919035.
Created from apus on 2024-03-14 18:01:52.
4
Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals
Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
prostitution, and repeatedly drunk driving charges.35 Another media report revealed the
hiring and promotion of a law enforcement officer who was terminated from his previous
police employment. Despite the written objections of the background investigation unit
command, the allusion was the hiring was done because of a relationship the applicant
had with the chief executive and his administration.36
A spate of legacy officers who were arrested for serious crimes in the Buffalo and
Niagara region of New York State led to the media’s questioning of screening and hiring
practices with the connotation of nepotism being the driver of the hiring rather than the
qualifications and backgrounds of the applicants.37 In yet another case dubbed the largest
police corruption scandal ever uncovered and prosecuted in the state of New Jersey, officers were involved in bribery and extortion, admitting to beginning their criminal careers
the moment they were sworn in.38 The results of poor hiring practices have forced many
law enforcement agencies to reevaluate their personnel selection and employment practices
and standards.39 How much change has been implemented is apparently a question for
another day.
While we can lay blame on the waning quality of candidate pools and a host of other
issues that would on the surface seem out of our control,40 the reality is that many agency
administrators bring these problems on themselves. And for a discipline that prides itself
on doing what is right, how do we consistently make such monumental mistakes as these?
For this statements’ seeming hyperbole, there is no exaggeration in the examples that will
be presented throughout this text. One clearly poignant example emerges from the analysis
of the pre-employment investigations of the officers involved in the Los Angeles Police
Department Rampart Division scandal. The investigation revealed that four of the involved
officers had highly questionable issues in their backgrounds indicating that they should
have never been hired as police officers in the first place.41 Had they not been hired, at
least the conduct attributed to their criminal actions under the color of law could have been
avoided.
Corruption in local government that transcends law enforcement is seen as the most
damaging influence to our strongly rooted American values.42 My charge is to use this text
to move forward and create lasting organizational change that enhances your screening and
selection processes. The use of these materials can help you avoid the situations that have
plagued many agencies that have had a naïve or, worse yet, fully cognizant and palpable
role in their faulty or illegal hiring processes.
OBJECTIVES OF THE PRE-EMPLOYMENT INVESTIGATION
Background investigations, like any organizational initiative, need a vision, mission, goals,
and objectives to ensure the process is aligned with the overall organizational mission. The
background investigation process contributes to providing the human resource needs that
will help fulfill the macro-level mission of the organization. At the micro-level, the preemployment investigation focuses on the individual applicant. Background or personnel
investigations are designed to determine as best as possible, the applicant’s character, background, and suitability for positions in the law enforcement field.43 For example, good judgment under tense situations is a critical behavior that is required of law enforcement officers
in order to avoid improper and, at times, criminal behavior in their day-to-day actions.44 The
background investigation should include tests and measures of good judgment in previous
roles as a demonstration of the applicant’s ability to make the right decisions in a variety of
Colaprete, Frank A.. Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook
Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=919035.
Created from apus on 2024-03-14 18:01:52.
Practical Implications of Pre-Employment Investigations
5
Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
situations. These objectives are also specific. For example, the objectives of the background
investigation include such areas as the presence of a criminal record and undesirable as
well as desirable behavior patterns of the applicant.45 Also at the macro-level, the objectives include securing the future of the organization by selecting employees to fill key and
vital roles, for example, “The investigations play an important role selecting employees for
positions of high trust. The focus is on the trustworthiness and integrity of the applicants,
as evidenced by their behavior and relationships with others over a long period of time.”46
The objectives of the process must be developed with the long-term human resource needs
of the organization in mind, communicated to those responsible for filling these goals, supported through the issuance of policy, and guided by the leaders at the highest levels of the
organization to achieve fruition.
In addition, the objectives of the pre-employment investigation are to determine the fitness of the applicant for the role of a law enforcement officer. As part of the investigation,
several information targets should be examined. The following list represents those relevant targets of the process:
1. Biographical data
2. Employment history and discipline
3. Relocation attitude and commitment
4. Shift attitude, availability, and commitment
5. Retention and permanency
6. Financial responsibility
7. Integrity
8. Drug behaviors
9. Alcohol behaviors
10. Criminal activities
11. Military history and discipline
12. Driving history
13. Reliability
14. Service attitude and response
15. Certification/education history
16. Perjury/falsification of official reports/records
17. Bribes and gratuities
18. Excessive force/violence
19. Child abuse47
WHY DO WE DO A BACKGROUND INVESTIGATION?
The question may seem rhetorical, but some discussion is required to gain a perspective
on the contemporary issues facing organizations that deal with this question at varying
levels. The most rudimentary answer is to maintain a set of high professional standards that
are required to meet the demands of these types of positions that require trust and integrity
in the public safety officer field.48 The ideological answer is to prevent the criminals and
treasonists who have disgraced the names of local, state, and federal agencies from entering the ranks.49 In other venues, the mere asking of some simple historical questions could
have led to the discovery of some of the greatest impostors and charlatans ever to walk the
face of the earth and quite possibly have prevented the defiling of the sacred soil of Ground
Colaprete, Frank A.. Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook
Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=919035.
Created from apus on 2024-03-14 18:01:52.
Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
6
Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals
Zero.50 From no investigation to a complete investigation, and intervening levels on the continuum that strive to give the appearance of complete investigations, the variation is wide
in the conduct of pre-employment investigations. Even when the process has been followed
to the letter, some applicants will escape discovery by the background investigator, and the
entire unit will be afforded symbolic rather than founded blame for matters which may be
well beyond their control.51
Not solely the bane of law enforcement organizations, the fire service has not gone
untouched as the need for background investigations has taken on a heightened awareness
in the wake of incidents of firefighters across the country being arrested for numerous
types of crimes, ironically among them the crime of arson.52 The Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) can also attest to the issues of hiring glitches in bringing on unqualified applicants to protect our nation’s airways in a post-9/11 world absent adequate hiring
checks. Federal statistics from an audit revealed that in their rush to fill positions created
by the 9/11 attack, TSA had hired 85 screeners who had felony convictions and another
503 who had failed to disclose an arrest or conviction.53 Background inquiries that are substandard or inadequate are one thing. Agencies have also been called to question for hiring
without any background check at all. In one such case, information later came to light of
an applicant’s potential misconduct in their previous law enforcement command position
that included dishonesty, providing false information, insubordination, and improperly following department procedures. In this specific case, the city administrators were presented
with a 1000-page investigative document detailing the allegations of misconduct from the
previous agency that was not sought prehire since no investigation was even conducted.54
Another incident of failure to properly screen led to one of the most high-profile cases in
the country when a questionable appointment to the position of police executive led to
a senior governmental cabinet nomination that ultimately resulted in embarrassment and
scandal for all involved.55 An analogous case involved the failure to check the background
of a security officer who had a criminal record. Subsequent to his employment, he sexually
assaulted a female tenant of the apartments he was assigned to protect, and the court found
a proximate cause between the security company’s failure to conduct a proper background
investigation and the victim’s subsequent assault.56
The good news is that recent estimates are that over 90% of all employers conduct background checks on prospective applicants.57 Also on the positive side, from the agency level,
aggressive hiring and training practices heighten the likelihood of capturing qualified candidates that in turn bring needed levels of trust and competence to the organization.58 From
the level of the applicant, a background investigation can reveal qualities such as honesty,
ability to make good judgments, and suitability to fill the role of a police officer.59 An intangible, yet esoteric value can be had through the rigor and thoroughness of the screening
process which impresses upon the applicant that final acceptance into the organization is
the highest honor that can be bestowed.60
On the negative side of the equation, pre-employment investigations often do not rise to
high priority levels in many enforcement organizations. In point of fact, inadequate screening which includes incomplete background investigations has led to egregious acts such
as drug-related police corruption.61 The City of Philadelphia was the subject of a study
on their pre-employment hiring processes. The study revealed that in a 6-month period,
picked at random, 17 of the department’s officers were arrested and charged with crimes
that included homicide, rapes of underage girls, off-duty assault, and theft.62
Colaprete, Frank A.. Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook
Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=919035.
Created from apus on 2024-03-14 18:01:52.
7
Practical Implications of Pre-Employment Investigations
A recent report concerning the pre-employment screening of air marshals revealed that
since the 9/11 hiring drive, dozens of federal air marshals have been charged with committing crimes while hundreds more have been accused of varying levels of misconduct.
Some of the crimes have involved drug smuggling, child sexual abuse and pornography,
and murder for hire.63 Government agencies that have very strict entry level requirements
are also very vulnerable to mistakes being made in the screening process. For example, a
foreign national took advantage of those glitches in the screening process by fraudulently
gaining U.S. citizenship. As a naturalized citizen, she was subsequently hired for sensitive
positions in the FBI and CIA. Able to defeat the rigorous screening processes, she gained
access to vital government secrets and confidential information as a result of being hired.
U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy asserted that, “This case highlights the importance of
conducting stringent and thorough background investigations.”64
Terrorist organizations plan years in advance to use operatives planted in key sectors to
do their bidding. The breakdowns at the local and state levels have also been observed in
the federal hiring process; however, the risks are much higher as we progress through the
hierarchy of the law enforcement field. While the argument can be made that these are,
for all intents and purposes, isolated occurrences, a disturbing trend has emerged in the
levels of investigation committed to the pre-employment screening process for law enforcement officers. According to a study by the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice
Statistics, research has revealed the following percentages of police departments in the
United States use the various stages and components in their pre-employment screening
processes. Table 1.1 is a comparison of the differences in percentages from the year 2000
to 2003.
Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
TABLE 1.1
Longitudinal Analysis of Differences in Pre-Employment Screening
Steps by Percentage of Departments
Pre-Employment Screening Stage
200065
200366
Percent
Change + or (−)
Criminal record
Background investigation
Driving record
Personal interview
Medical
Psychological evaluation
Drug test
Credit history check
Physical agility
Written aptitude
Polygraph
Personal inventory
Voice stress analyzer (VSA)
Volunteer/community service check
Second language ability test
98
97
97
96
94
91
89
78
77
76
61
53
10
7
4
99
98
96
98
85
67
73
55
50
43
25
26
4
8
1
1
1
(1)
2
(10)
(26)
(18)
(30)
(35)
(43)
(59)
(49)
(60)
14
(75)
Colaprete, Frank A.. Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook
Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=919035.
Created from apus on 2024-03-14 18:01:52.
Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
8
Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals
In review, while departments have shown a slight increase in the numbers of criminal
record checks and background investigations as a whole (an approximate 1% increase),
there have been drastic decreases in other more crucial components. For the use of truth
detection devices, there was a drop of 60% and 59% for the use of the voice stress analyzer (VSA) and polygraph, respectively. Several other key components have also been
cut back substantially. Specifically, written aptitude tests which assess cognitive ability, a
significant and proven predictor of success, fell by 43%. Other stages that have been historically and empirically proven to predict success in police officer candidates that have fallen
off substantially are ranked in order such as physical agility exams (35%), credit history
checks (30%), psychological evaluations (26%), drug testing (18%), and medical examinations (10%). In context, 75% do not use polygraph, 57% do not use written aptitude tests,
and a full one-third does not use psychological evaluations! What possible explanation can
be offered for such a deviance in operational policy on a national level? Especially when
we cannot view the national media on a daily basis without being subjected to at least two
or three incidents of officers across the country who have been implicated in some wrongdoing. Spates of increased hiring have been eclipsed by mass terminations wherein the
so-called isolated incidents will be prophesized as being related to systemic issues in the
hiring processes of the organization.67 In contrast, private sector screening processes have
steadily gained momentum due to threats of terrorism, employer liability, and workplace
violence which are all ominous issues facing the selection of new employees.68 How does
this disconnect make any sense to public safety administrators?
One explanation may rest in the argument that despite the elaborate and thorough selection processes used to hire employees, those same methods really may not produce the
desired results of identifying the best employees for the position.69 For example, what testing process or background screening could have predicted an incident where two seasoned
corrections officers would be involved in an on-duty fight over a bag of potato chips?70 Can
such arguments truly justify the scaling back of the only methods to establish the fitness of
an applicant for the position of police officer? The pyramid of public safety, liability, and
organizational integrity must be the driving force to maintain the highest levels of applicant screening for our organizations to continue to be successful in servicing the American
public.
For public safety, the LAPD Rampart scandal71 and the tragic case of Abner Louima72
are but a few examples of the need to effectively and consistently screen-out unfit and
criminal officers who will present a danger to the public they are sworn to protect. Many
of the behaviors that have been found to precipitate misconduct and corruption in serving
police officers, such as drug use and sales, sexual impropriety that escalates to criminal
culpability, and aberrant/violent behavior, are all subjects of intense exploration during
the pre-employment screening process. In relation to the background investigation, Early
Warning Systems (EWS) (also referred to as Early Intervention Systems) have been implemented in law enforcement agencies in order to identify and determine patterns of complaints of performance, criminal behavior, poor judgment, and the like. These systems
are intended to identify aberrant behavior in a serving police officers’ career early on so
that some type of intervention can be used to correct those behaviors before they become
chronic and acute.73 In a perfect world, these systems would be superfluous. In reality,
they are necessary as a system of checks and balances to maintain the integrity of the
entire system of monitoring officer behavior. In a continuous improvement environment,
the EWS would be a feedback loop to the pre-employment process, funneling information
Colaprete, Frank A.. Pre-Employment Background Investigations for Public Safety Professionals, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook
Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=919035.
Created from apus on 2024-03-14 18:01:52.
Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Practical Implications of Pre-Employment Investigations
9
on identified aberrant behavior patterns so that these characteristics could be more closely
scrutinized in the background investigation of the applicants. For example, an agency that
struggles with complaints of excessive force can build into the process closer scrutiny of
applicants who may demonstrate those patterns of behavior that are possibly manifested in
other forms like aggression, inappropriate control of emotions, temperament, and physical demonstration such as fighting. While this seems to be an overly simplistic concept,
when do we ever do this in law enforcement? Often, we function in the business-as-usual
mindset and do not endeavor to make these connections that will serve to better enhance
our selection processes.
Civil and criminal liability is the next level in the hierarchy. For example, the City of
Chicago endured a very painful investigation of homicide detectives who were accused
of torturing homicide suspects to gain confessions.74 Other major jurisdictions such as
Miami; Washington, DC; the New York State Police; and Los Angeles County have all
endured very public and very damaging scandals related to police corruption.75 The New
Orleans Police Department was also embroiled in a scandal that was related to their inadequate and negligent hiring standards. As a result, numerous officers were arrested for
crimes including rape, homicide, and drug trafficking.76 The Dallas Police Department,
under new leadership, terminated over 30 officers for misconduct in a 2 year period.77
Specifically linked to flaws in the selection process, the Miami River Cops scandal of the
1980s was directly related to relaxed screening mechanisms for police applicants under
consent decrees and affirmative action policies.78 The Philadelphia Police Department
scandal was actually precipitated by a forced diversity mandate through a consent decree
wherein officers were hired wh
