Letters: About those sheriff hires
Re “Misconduct didn’t stop sheriff hires,†Dec. 1
What surprised me more than the article itself regarding the hiring of so many bad apples by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was that no one in the department was apparently able to predict that this would happen.
If you draw from a pool of candidates across the country, it’s likely that several thousand will be good prospects. When you narrow the pool to officers from a “little-known L.A. County police force†that patrols parks and buildings, how many bright, qualified candidates did the department think it could hire?
Agencies should hire the best candidates, not try to help someone out. The crime here was giving these officers guns and letting them loose on the streets.
Philip Guiral
Laguna Hills
Kudos to The Times for another good journalistic investigation. However, I think the reaction to this story has been over the top.
Shooting at your spouse with your county-issued weapon might be reason for dismissal, but should the other misdeeds be enough to disqualify someone? The FBI hires applicants who have admitted to experimenting with drugs at some time in their lives. To think that every sheriff’s deputy should never have been charged with drunk driving is like expecting your wife to have never been in a relationship before she married you.
I lost my good job about two years ago. It’s been 20 years since I’ve had to go out and apply for jobs, and I am appalled at how the process is now. Fingerprinting, drug-testing and bizarre questionnaires make one wonder how ex-felons can get a job at the local car wash.
Cops are human; they’re not perfect.
John Gleason
Camarillo
Well, this explains a lot.
When you recruit knuckleheads, you get people like Sheriff Lee Baca and spokesman Steve Whitmore constantly on the defense and, in some cases, willing to defend the ones who should not have been hired in the first place.
Perhaps this also explain why there are so many lawsuits against the Sheriff’s Department for excessive force.
That a 28-year-old who admitted he was in love with a 14-year-old girl was hired says a lot about the department.
Charles P. Martin
Los Angeles
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