could be worse

You could live in Los Angeles

It’s pretty much a given that in any large organization there may be at least one bad apple, but when it comes to selection of sworn police officers, supervisors and jailers etc, then we should expect high standards by default.

However, regarding the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — “Despite background investigations that revealed wrongdoing, incompetence, or poor performance, the department still hired dozens of problem applicants in 2010, internal records show.” Perhaps we could wonder whether such lax procedures have occurred in other Sheriff’s departments?

This is a long article including many graphics and so we are sending you to the source page. It demonstrates an alarming degree of personnel selection carelessness as well as downright dangerous choices – such as –
“Of the nearly 400 officers and supervisors from the Office of Public Safety who applied to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department in 2010, about 280 were hired. Of those:”

188 were rejected for jobs at law enforcement agencies before being hired by the Sheriff’s Department.
97 showed evidence of dishonesty.
92 were disciplined previously by other police agencies for significant misconduct on duty.
29 were fired or pressured to resign from a previous law enforcement job.
15 were flagged by background investigators for trying to manipulate the results of a polygraph exam.

The article goes into considerable depth on the numbers –>