Background Investigations in Indiana have failed the students

By Andy Gammill
Indianapolis Star

The 7-year-old tried to keep her teacher's hands off her.

She faked stomachaches, hoping to stay home from school.

When that failed, a prosecutor later said, the girl wore dresses so the teacher couldn't slip his hand down the back of her pants.

It was a battle she might have been spared in another state: Four years earlier, two different girls in different classes accused the same teacher, Jeffrey Baber, of the same thing. Nothing happened after police discounted those claims.

In Georgia, the accusations would have been enough to spark a review by state investigators.

In Ohio, the allegations would have been put on record for parents to check.

In Utah and other states, the complaints likely would have cost him his educator's license.

In Indiana, he kept teaching.

The case highlights flaws in the state's approach to protecting schoolchildren. The Indiana Department of Education's efforts are largely limited to conducting criminal background checks within Indiana and checking newspaper clippings for educators who have been arrested. That information helps the state revoke 10 to 20 licenses a year.

Other states go much further to find and remove teachers who could put children at risk.

Most do more extensive nationwide criminal checks. Some require police and district officials to notify state authorities when a teacher has been investigated, arrested or accused of misconduct.

Indiana relies mainly on local school systems to root out dangerous teachers, a method that doesn't always work. Districts sometimes bury records of embarrassing or thorny cases in their files, hiding information from the public and other schools looking to hire a teacher.

Indiana's problems are no surprise to legislators, superintendents, school boards or members of the state's Board of Education. They've known for years that schools may unknowingly hire teachers who pose a threat to students.

"It scares the hell out of me," said Todd Huston, Fishers, a member of the State Board of Education. "The problem now is that we don't really have sustained policies. It's on a district-by-district basis."

Attempts to strengthen the safeguards have stalled.

What's left is so ineffective that no one can say how many of the state's 62,000 licensed teachers have criminal records, or whether predators are making the rounds of Indiana schools.

An Indianapolis Star review of Marion County police reports found dozens of current teachers with arrests for crimes including battery on a police officer, domestic battery, repeated traffic violations, soliciting a prostitute and drunken driving -- some as many as two or three times. Although they may be alarming to parents, some of these offenses might not be grounds for revocation of a teaching license.

The Star's investigation also found four cases where state laws didn't keep teachers out of classrooms even after more serious problems arose.

The result? Children taught by a teacher arrested on a charge of cocaine dealing. A teacher who brought marijuana to school. One with a long history of intimidating students.

And Baber.

After a jury convicted him of molesting the 7-year-old in 2005, he pleaded guilty to molesting another girl.

And another one. He had been molesting Beech Grove schoolchildren for at least four years.

The district's insurers paid out $740,000 to three victims.

Baber finally lost his license to teach.

Background checks

Limited Indiana search lets Florida drug dealer in school

Michael Warner's references described him as an energetic, charming role model, and officials at Irvington Community School were excited to hire him.

The new science teacher passed a criminal history check by the charter school, and the state had stopped running checks on him because he held a lifetime teaching license.

Even if the Department of Education had screened him again, the checks run by the school and the state review only Indiana court records and would have missed his arrest in Florida on a charge of dealing cocaine.

Florida officials said Warner pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine with intent to sell and was sentenced to 90 days in jail and three years of probation.

More than 40 states require comprehensive background checks that turn up arrests across the country before teachers can be licensed to teach. Indiana does check a national database of teachers who have lost their licenses, but beyond that, state law requires a "limited criminal history" check that reviews Indiana court records.

With the limited statewide name-based check, old arrests without a disposition won't turn up, and some counties had spotty records on entering data into the system.

After a private investigator tipped off Irvington Community School in 2006, Warner resigned and the state took away his license.

"We've deepened our interview and reference checks," said Timothy Ehrgott, the school's president. "We learned our lesson."

Outside Indiana, that task often is handled by state officials rather than local schools. Utah and Maine require their state police agencies to keep names of educators in an electronic system that alerts officials when a teacher is arrested.

A coalition of state governments that maintains a national database of teacher misconduct also recommends more stringent checks.

The National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification urges states to use state and FBI checks for all new teachers, and every five years for all educators, director Roy Einreinhofer said.

Indiana does neither.

A few school districts feel so strongly that Indiana's system is too weak that they pay for national searches on their own.

"We don't think it goes deep enough into data," said John Ellis, director of the state superintendents' association. "The thing that frustrates school officials is there's too many holes in the system."

No one tells the state

School drug arrest details not shared, so teacher kept license

When police arrived at School 83 in Indianapolis one evening in May 2005, according to their report, a teacher told them he was high on marijuana.

They asked him whether he had drugs on him, the report said, and he said they were in his car. Officers searched the car, found marijuana and arrested the teacher, Eric J. Potthast, on charges of possession of marijuana and paraphernalia.

Potthast took a deal from the court, agreeing to pay a fee, admit his guilt and attend behavior-modification classes. After he did so, the charges were dropped.

Indiana, unlike other states, does not require schools and police to report most teacher misconduct to state officials.

So Indianapolis Public Schools did not. Potthast resigned a few months later.

Potthast disclosed the misdemeanor on his next application for a teaching license. But what he didn't say and what state officials don't appear to have known was that the incident happened at a school, an offense that cost at least one other Indiana teacher his license.

So Potthast's license was renewed, despite the drugs he brought to school. That left it up to a school district to decide whether to put him in a classroom.

He was rehired the next year by IPS, which struggles to find teachers and substitutes to fill classrooms when teachers quit. He was fired last month for failing to keep his teaching license up to date.

"Was it wise to hire him?" IPS spokeswoman Kim L. Hooper said. "On behalf of the district, I would say no. But I know we also struggle to find subs in this district."

Prosecutors and superintendents must tell the state about misbehaving teachers only if they are convicted of a short list of felonies: kidnapping, dealing drugs or sex crimes against children.

Even those cases can stay off the state's radar if there's no conviction or the teacher pleads guilty to lesser charges. If a teacher is arrested on a charge of murder, raping an adult, assault, possessing child pornography or most other crimes, no one is required to tell state education officials.

"Ideally we would want to be notified anytime anybody holding a teacher license gets arrested," said Kevin McDowell, general counsel for the Indiana Department of Education. "Some states do that."

Indiana teachers who are arrested for many crimes must report a conviction to their school district, but the districts have no obligation to tell anyone else.

In other states, teachers are required to report their own arrests to the state, and police must tell education officials when a teacher commits a crime. Some hire teams of investigators that do nothing but look into teacher misconduct.

The Indiana Department of Education relies on calls from parents reading newspaper articles and a service that reviews newspapers for arrests of teachers.

If there's no article, the state never knows.

Quiet resignations

School let teacher with past of intimidation quit, get another job

Lawrence Central High School history teacher Charles E. Stallworth's dispute with one boy turned ugly three years ago at a Northside movie theater where the boy worked.

The theater manager called police after the teen said his teacher had come in, threatened him and then made a phone call.

Worried for the boy's safety, the manager hid the boy in an office. On video, they watched as Stallworth met two men who arrived at the theater and handed them money, according to a probable cause affidavit. Those men asked other employees where they could find the boy and then staked out the employee entrance, the affidavit said.

When police arrived, they ordered the two men to leave and questioned Stallworth about the incident. Despite the video evidence, he said he made no phone calls at the theater and talked to no one while he was there, the court records said.

Stallworth pleaded guilty to lying to police about the incident, but a felony intimidation charge was dropped. He quietly retired.

It wasn't the first time he had been accused of intimidating students. He was suspended for two days in 2001 after the district substantiated a girl's claim that he hit her on the back so hard he left a red mark.

"Your behavior on November 3, 2000, is not acceptable and you are hereby reprimanded for your action," an administrator wrote to him. "In addition, this incident seems to be one in a long line of other incidents of an intimidating nature towards students."

In a statement this past week, Lawrence Township Schools said Stallworth had planned to fight efforts to fire him and that an agreement letting him retire got him out of the classroom and prevented him from suing the district or the student.

Stallworth moved to Alaska and got a teaching job in Anchorage.

Like the other teachers highlighted here, Stallworth could not be reached or did not return messages left at phone numbers listed in court documents or public directories.

State officials said Lawrence Township Schools officials recommended against revoking Stallworth's license because the misdemeanor was "unrelated" to his teaching responsibilities. That and his retirement allowed him to keep his license.

That doesn't seem right to Marcia Riley, whose son Stallworth threatened. She wishes the district had fired him and the state taken away his teaching license. The whole situation was "swept under the rug," she said.

Riley, whose son is now a Marine serving in Iraq, said the incident at the movie theater shattered her trust in teachers.

"They're supposed to protect your children," she said. "In fact, he was putting my child in harm's way intentionally."

When school districts let teachers resign, it prevents the public from seeing records of their misconduct, which must be released if they are fired. And it becomes easier to get another teaching job if the teacher doesn't have to disclose a dismissal.

Such outcomes happen in cases more serious than Stallworth's, too. Bob James, an Indianapolis attorney, said he has handled three or four cases where school districts paid settlements to children victimized by teachers but no charges were filed, no licensing action was taken and teachers quietly quit.

He could not reveal names of teachers or districts, he said, because the settlement agreements included confidentiality clauses.

That kind of secrecy is why districts shouldn't have the last word in deciding to let teachers resign when they face termination, said Edward Eiler, a state Board of Education member and superintendent of Lafayette Schools. Eiler suggests that Indiana districts be required to report such cases for further investigation, as required in other states.

Even the risk of costly legal bills or unseemly public disputes should not prevent districts from firing teachers whose conduct merits dismissal, said Martha McCarthy, an Indiana University professor who specializes in education law.

"A lot of school leaders will take the path of least resistance," she said, "and the path of least resistance is to counsel the employee to resign."

Prospects for changes

Many support stronger system, but past reform tries didn't work

Bills have been introduced in the state legislature the past several years to make changes to the teacher licensing system, but none has been successful.

Those bills, which proposed requiring FBI background checks or ordering courts to tell state education officials about criminal teachers, appear to have become ensnared in other issues or bogged down.

The state's top educator thinks Indiana does a good job overall protecting children, but she said she'd like to see changes to the law to allow her department to issue formal public reprimands and to require courts or police to report when teachers break any law.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Suellen Reed said the state opted not to do FBI checks years ago because of the expense and difficulty of getting usable fingerprints they require.

"The overall system is protecting our children," she said. "The people that get in trouble haven't been in trouble before usually when we find them. It screens out the obvious people. That's what we want."

The state's teachers union backs strengthening background checks, adding more crimes to the list of those reported to the state and requiring school districts to fire teachers who have hurt children. The organizations representing superintendents and school boards largely agree.

"The system could be improved if the initial background check included the national databases and sex offender registries," said Dan Clark, deputy director of the Indiana State Teachers Association.

But even the groups that support strengthening Indiana's ability to screen out problem teachers want to include limits to protect teachers' rights or want to preserve local school boards' abilities to make their own decisions.

Richard Wood, the Democratic candidate for state superintendent of public instruction and a former superintendent, argues that it's largely an issue for local school boards.

"You just have to deal with those situations on a case-by-case basis," he said. "I'm not advocating any change. I would not initiate anything to make the process more lenient or anything to make it more stringent. The law we have in place is working at present."

State Rep. Robert Behning, R-Indianapolis, disagrees. His constituents, he said, would blame him just as much as the School Board if a felon ended up in a classroom.

Behning, the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee, said he was interested in proposing a bill this legislative session that would require FBI background checks for educators.

"The state definitely should have a role in it," he said. "I'm not an advocate of big government, but I believe it is the responsibility of this state. . . . I do believe that we've tried to do what was right, but I don't believe we've gone far enough."


Posted by Pebi Services President Tyra Hearns

Police say background investigation was complete on arrested California 911 operator

Lissa Marie Domanic, 42, of Yorba Linda, seen in booking photo after her arrest, is a civilian employee of the Orange County Sheriff's Department who has been indicted on two felony charges. She has been placed on administrative leave pending a disciplinary review.

By Stuart Pfeifer
Los Angeles Times

A civilian employee of the Orange County Sheriff's Department who allegedly has ties to a white supremacist gang has been indicted on charges of soliciting someone to commit a violent crime and providing confidential police records to unauthorized people, officials said Thursday.

Lissa Marie Domanic, 42, was working as an office specialist and 911 dispatcher when she allegedly asked someone to assault an Orange County jail inmate, said sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino.


She also allegedly used department computers to access confidential records that she forwarded to unauthorized people, Amormino said.

A grand jury indicted Domanic on the felony charges earlier this week, and she is awaiting arraignment in Orange County Superior Court.

Domanic, who has worked for the Sheriff's Department for about 19 months, has been placed on administrative leave pending a disciplinary review, Amormino said.


"We do a thorough background investigation, and nothing came up in her background," he said. "Sometimes people are able to conceal things they are involved in."

Sheriff's investigators began looking at Domanic in May after receiving a tip about her from another law enforcement agency, Amormino said.

Among the things she is accused of doing is asking one inmate to assault another inmate and using department records to identify the housing location of the intended victim, Amormino said. The assault did not occur, he said.

When sheriff's investigators arrested Domanic at her Yorba Linda home earlier this week, she allegedly was under the influence of a controlled substance and in possession of methamphetamine, Amormino said.


Posted by Pebi Services President Tyra Hearns

Background investigations of applicants cause Portland police jobs to remain vacant

By Mariah Summers
The Portland Tribune

Want to be a cop in Portland? What you’ll need is patience.

Just ask 23-year-old Jessica Brainard, who applied to be a Portland cop in July 2007 and took her test in October. She was not hired until earlier this month.

Compared with nine other police departments researched by the Portland Tribune, including West Coast cities and similar-size agencies elsewhere, the Portland Police Bureau’s hiring process ranks third to last in speed.

What requires eight to 10 months in Portland takes only three to six months in Seattle and just three to five weeks in Beaverton, according to interviews by the Tribune. Only Cincinnati and Sacramento, Calif., are slower.

Portland’s slow process is under increased scrutiny these days. City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who has been conducting a study of the police bureau at the request of Mayor-elect Sam Adams, says the delay is the reason the bureau has been unable to fill a high number of officer vacancies. He blames the unfilled vacancies for excessive overtime costs, slower response times and demoralized, stressed-out cops.

“Once we do decide we like someone it takes an unusually long bureaucratic process to hire them,” he said. “We need to hire them right away. A young person needs to pay the rent: We have to hire them.”

Assistant Police Chief Brian Martinek admitted that the delay has been a problem and said, “We’re taking a lot of steps to change it.” But he noted that agencies nationwide are scrambling to find cops.

“We’ve been working on this since Day One when I got here,” said Martinek, who has overseen the bureau’s personnel office for the past two years. He added that the bureau needs time to properly screen candidates, saying, “None of us wants to lower quality.”

The bureau is trying to fill 38 officer vacancies. In addition, the City Council has earmarked funding for 27 additional officers to help reduce the bureau’s spending on overtime.

However, the bureau has been struggling to keep its staffing shortage from getting worse. That’s because officers who came on board during a hiring “bubble” in the 1980s have begun retiring. According to the bureau, it loses an average of 45 officers a year to retirement.

Martinek says the bureau has been rapidly adapting to a changing world. He said that the background investigation policies he inherited upon joining the bureau in 2006 were written at a time when the bureau was seeing thousands of applicants show up for each test. Now the number is in the lower hundreds.

“The entire hiring process, including the background investigation, was designed to eliminate,” Martinek said. “Now we are facing a different challenge.”

For applicants, a written test is just the first in a series of exams that includes an oral interview, physical ability test, psychological exam and a background investigation.
In 2007, Martinek commissioned a report from Charlie Makinney, a longtime bureau manager. It faulted Portland’s background investigation process, saying it is “seriously outdated and actually encourages subjectivity.”

Makinney called the hiring process “time-consuming, resource-intensive, overly subjective, unnecessarily reliant on individual investigators’ judgment and interpretation of facts.”

Since the report came out, Martinek said a number of changes have been made to speed up the process, increase the number of candidates and make the background investigation easier to pass. For instance:

• The bureau now administers its written exam three to four times each year instead of twice.

• Candidates now provide eight references instead of the previous 12

• The bureau is looking less critically at illegal drug use in an applicant’s distant past.


Despite the lowered background investigation standards, “This will still be a process ensuring quality management of applicants,” Martinek said.

But Leonard says the process remains too long and the background investigations too stringent.

He told the Portland Tribune about a recent police candidate who was turned down by the bureau and was later hired by the U.S. Secret Service.

“We need people with good judgment and life experiences, and we’re letting people go who are getting hired elsewhere,” Leonard said. “Once we get people in the front door we’re saying we don’t want them.”

The bureau’s hiring statistics show that only 30 percent of candidates pass the background investigation. The entire process is so selective that of the 889 applicants who took written tests in February, the bureau ended up hiring only 39 entry-level officers.

And even with the recent changes, background investigations still are averaging four to six months to complete. That’s longer than the entire hiring process in several comparable cities.

Martinek attributes this mostly to the fact that Oregon law bans the use of polygraph tests on applicants. An effort to change that last year was blocked by police officer unions working with the American Civil Liberties Union, citing the devices’ unreliability.

Of the seven cities in other states contacted by the Portland Tribune, all employ polygraphs to speed up background investigations.“It’s most important,” said Tom Waller, a Cincinnati sergeant who does background investigations. “Without the polygraph you have no way to check people as to whether they’re telling you the truth.”

‘Waiting is never fun’
But being unable to use polygraphs may not fully explain the difference between Portland and other cities’ hiring times. Other large agencies have gone further than Portland to attract candidates and process them quickly.

Seattle, for example, tests candidates at least once a month.

Meanwhile, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in North Carolina employs a retired police captain to administer its written test at 65 military bases across the country each year, said recruiting Sgt. Mark Davis.

Davis said candidates are not willing to wait around like they used to. He thinks cutting the hiring time is crucial for modern police departments. His department completes the hiring process in just three to four months.

“If you don’t act quickly, good candidates will go elsewhere,” he said.

In Portland, the police bureau has offered positions to some candidates only to find they’ve already taken jobs elsewhere. However, officials said that does not happen as frequently as it did in the past.

Martinek said Portland has other hiring obstacles besides not using a polygraph test. Other states’ civil service laws allow a more streamlined process; also, he says the city’s human resources bureau has set restrictions that affect the bureau’s ability to hire as aggressively as it would like.

Still, he hopes to cut the hiring time to six months, and remains optimistic about staffing levels at the bureau.

“I want to make it clear we are a big agency, and this is a big challenge,” he said. “I don’t think we’re doing things as well as we can. But we’re trying very hard to do better.”

Brainard, the new Portland hire, is attending the police academy in Salem. A Portland native, she had been looking for local police jobs, and considered working for Gresham and Beaverton.

She decided early in the process that she was willing to wait for a response from the Portland bureau. But she still found the delay discouraging.

“It was really tough at times,” she said. “Waiting is never fun.”

Posted by Pebi Services President Tyra Hearns

Background Investigation of Missouri police applicant uncovers child pornography

Leonard J. Cook, Jr. pleaded guilty to on federal charges of possession of child pornography, United States Attorney Catherine L. Hanaway, Phelps County Prosecuting Attorney Courtney George and Rolla Police Chief Mark Kearse has said.

“People who collect child pornography create a demand for these images,” said Hanaway. “This office, with the help of Prosecuting Attorney George and Chief Kearse, will continue to find and prosecute people who victimize children.”

Chief Kearse stated that this investigation began when Cook applied for a police officers position with his department and during the background investigation the RPD discovered the possible child pornography issues.

“We then asked for assistance with the MSHP and (all the other agencies that got involved). I’m very happy with all the cooperation between the agencies that were involved to get to a guilty plea,” Kearse said.


“It would have been very unfortunate to law enforcement if he would have made it through the process and became an officer. Also a special thanks to U. S. Attorney Hanaway for following up and prosecuting this case,” he said.

“This kind of behavior is not tolerated in our community and it absolutely will not be tolerated by law enforcement officers sworn to serve and protect our citizens,” George said.

On Sept. 24, 2007, Cook allowed law enforcement officers to seize his home laptop computer and hard drive. A forensic examination found child pornography stored within the computer hard drive, including within the Dell laptop computer. Some of these images depicted minors under the age of 12 engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and some involved material that portrayed sadistic or masochistic conduct or other depictions of violence.


Cook, 31, of Rolla, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to one felony count of possession of child pornography. He appeared Thursday before United States District Judge Carol E. Jackson. Cook now faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and/or fines up to $250,000, when he is sentenced on Aug. 29.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood.

In February, 2006, the Department of Justice launched Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as identify and rescue victims.

For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov/.

Posted by Pebi Services President Tyra Hearns

Troubled police officers discovered as police departments merge

During an interview to become an Austin Park Police officer, Ralph Garcia talked about being fired from the Bastrop Police Department for viewing adult Web sites on a city computer, including possible child pornography sites, according to records in his personnel file.

Park Police officials looked into the matter, which had resulted in an investigation by the Texas attorney general's office but no criminal charges against Garcia. Then they hired him.

A few years later, Park Police officials hired Roger Aguilar, who had quit the Austin Police Department while under investigation for using his Taser stun gun on a handcuffed suspect.

And they hired Armando Valverde, whose personnel file at the Lockhart Police Department had several disciplinary actions, including one for accidentally shooting through the floor of police headquarters.

An Austin American-Statesman review of the 27 Park Police officers who joined the department during the past five years shows that the city has hired officers with problematic backgrounds and that a check of those backgrounds was sometimes inadequate. Tyra Hearns the president of background investigation firm Pebi Services finds these lapses in background investigations frightfully appalling. "The public trust is the core to all law enforcement endeavors and this creates a very untrustable situation." says Hearns

New supervisors overseeing Park Police officers acknowledge the lapses, but they said they have worked in recent months to create a more rigorous hiring process that includes comprehensive background investigations.

How Park Police officers have performed since going to work for the city and their records from other agencies are expected to face scrutiny in coming months as officials begin consolidating city marshals and park and airport police officers with the Austin Police Department.

The American-Statesman's review, which included hundreds of pages of personnel files from previous employers and background information collected by Park Police officials before offering jobs, found that:

The city has hired officers who have been arrested in connection with assault, theft and failure to pay speeding tickets. Much of that information was discovered as part of background investigations, but the city hired them anyway, sometimes after background investigators discouraged it.

Until late 2005, officials had no standard for doing background investigations for prospective park officers. Bruce Mills, the director of the Public Safety and Emergency Management agency, took over the Park Police that year from the Parks and Recreation Department. He said the agency previously had assigned the task to other officers, most of whom had no training or experience doing such checks. An experienced background investigator who works for the agency now performs the reviews.

The Parks and Recreation Department until 2005 had a 10-year pattern of hiring officers as temporary employees and not providing them insurance or other benefits, in an effort to cut costs. Sgt. Michael Hart, president of the union that represents Park Police officers, said the policy probably affected the pool of prospective officers.

Ten officers have an arrest history or some type of disciplinary action against them.

City officials have said they will negotiate with the Austin Police Association this year to determine what criteria park officers must meet before becoming Austin police officers. Some Park Police officers could lose their jobs.

"We are going to do some hard looking, and there is a lot of explaining they are going to have to do," said association President George Vanderhule,who will be negotiating for the union. "We want to make sure we get people who will meet our standards."

Two years ago, city officials combined city marshals and airport and park officers to create the Public Safety and Emergency Management agency and appointed new leadership to supervise it.

Since then, Mills and other officials said they have developed a selection process similar to the Austin Police Department's. They ask applicants to respond in writing to questions, including whether they have ever been arrested or convicted, whether they have ever been cited for certain driving offenses and whether they have resigned or been terminated from a job.

Under those guidelines, officials acknowledge that some of the current officers would not be hired.

However, since the new standards were put in place, the city has hired officers with questionable work histories, including Valverde.

Officials defend their decisions in those cases, saying that they considered candidates' entire work history, including commendations and positive performance reviews.

"The downside to someone who has 10 to 12 years of experience is that they are going to have histories," Mills said. "It's a judgment call. The best you can do is take the collective information and base your decision on their track record."

Cost-saving might have been factor

In Texas, officers can jump from one agency to the next, carrying baggage that can include anything from excessive tardiness to negligent car crashes, without generally drawing interest from the state agency that licenses them.

Only if officers are arrested or indicted are they required to notify the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education.

The agency and state law, in an effort to stop officers accused of misconduct from easily getting other jobs, require all departments supervising peace officers to submit documentation when officers leave explaining the reason for their departure, including whether they quit while under investigation.

But commission officials keep no record of excessive disciplinary histories, said Executive Director Tim Braaten. That means it's up to local agencies to research prospective officers.

Other factors, in addition to inconsistent background checks, could have led to the hiring of officers with questionable histories, Mills said.

As a cost-saving measure, he said, Park Police sought to hire people from other police departments, which probably limited the applicant pool. Other city law enforcement agencies, including Austin police and airport police, tended to recruit people with experience in civilian jobs and then pay for them to attend an academy.

Warren Struss, who started work as Parks and Recreation Department director in 2004 and retired in 2007, could not be reached for comment. Darryl Lewis, who was Park Police chief from 2002 to 2006, did not return calls seeking comment.

Assistant City Manager Mike McDonald, who supervised the Parks and Recreation Department from February 2002 to July 2006, said high-ranking city officials would not have been involved in how background searches were conducted. Those decisions were left to the department director and human resources officials.

Mills said he thought it was likely that when he took over the agency, some officers had extensive discipline histories at previous departments.

He said he and other officials began looking through the documents after receiving the Statesman's requests last year.

What they found in some instances "has caused concern," Mills said, and perhaps pointed up a need for additional supervision of those officers.

No more pornography found

Among the 27 officers hired in the past five years, Garcia was among those whose history troubled officials the most.

This month, after the Statesman requested his background file, Mills and other officials questioned Garcia about the investigation by the attorney general's office and his subsequent firing. Mills said they also checked his computer use but found nothing suspicious.

According to a report from the attorney general's office, Bastrop Police Chief David Board called the office in October 2002 seeking help looking into whether Garcia had accessed child pornography on the city computer.

Investigators used a computer program to view images on the computer and found more than 1,300 possible pornographic images, 277 of which could have been child pornography, according to the report. At the time, they could not tell whether the images had been downloaded onto the computer.

Several days later, investigators wrote in a report that they had found no "actionable child pornography images" on the hard drive.

They referred the case to the Bastrop County district attorney's office and closed their investigation.

Garcia declined to be interviewed recently. He has had no disciplinary actions against him since becoming a Park Police officer in April 2004.

At the time, he asked Bastrop city officials in writing to give him his job back.

"I'm sorry all this happened," he said. "I am glad that I was caught early before it got out of hand. I can tell you it won't happen again."

Two years later, in Aguilar's case, he told Park Police officials that he had correctly used his Taser on a suspect who was "high on drugs." He said he handcuffed the man, but the man continued to resist after he got him to his patrol car. Aguilar said he used his Taser again, in violation of department policy.

He said he decided to resign instead of appealing a possible firing.

Michael Hart, the Park Police union president who performed the background investigation, wrote that Aguilar "falls into the disqualifiers portion of the Park Police eligibility requirements" but recommended that he get a waiver from former Chief Darryl Lewis to proceed to an oral exam.

Aguilar, who declined to comment, was the subject of an internal affairs investigation after becoming a Park Police officer for a use of his Taser. However, officials said he was justified in the July incident because the suspect was resisting arrest.

According to documents from the Luling Police Department, Valverde was fired in 1998 after he had a witness sign a blank statement that the officer later filled out. Valverde also signed the document as a witness to the statement.

An interim city manager rescinded the firing, saying the punishment was "much too severe" and Valverde's error was a "major administrative mistake" but not a crime.

Valverde quit the next year to join the Lockhart Police Department.

His personnel file from Lockhart included disciplinary actions such as a 2006 reprimand for twice leaving evidence unsecured — one from a case involving a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

In 2004, he was reprimanded for not taking corrective steps concerning an officer who repeatedly left her duty belt at home and had to return to get it.

An August 2001 disciplinary memo about the incident in which he shot a hole in the floor of police headquarters said Valverde was running late to work and was trying to see if his gun was loaded. His supervisor found that the discharge was avoidable and that he didn't adequately check the gun to see if it was loaded before firing it.

Valverde declined to comment. He has not been the subject of any discipline or internal investigations since joining the Park Police.

Negotiations to start soon

City and Austin police union officials said they plan to begin discussing at the bargaining table in coming months which Park Police officers should — and shouldn't — join the Austin Police Department.

Negotiations for a new employment contract are set to begin later this year. The current contract will expire in September.

McDonald, who will lead the city's negotiating team, said he will soon begin meeting with human resources officials to get input on possible hiring standards for Park Police officers.

Each will probably face an extensive background check, he said.

Vanderhule, president of the police union, said he would probably support rules prohibiting officers from joining the department if they have been fired from the Austin Police Department or if they resigned while under investigation.

He said he also would support a rule that would not allow an officer with a history of lying to be hired.

"We want to bring people who are going to be good Austin police officers," he said. "That's the bottom line."

Police Officer involved in tragic shooting passes background investigation

An officer who left the Portland Police Bureau months after fatally shooting an unarmed motorist has been hired by the Beaverton department.

Jason Sery, 32, was sworn in at Monday night's City Council meeting.

Sery shot James Jahar Perez three times during a traffic stop in 2004 when he saw Perez pull a clenched fist from his right pocket, thinking he was pulling out a gun. A second officer, Sean Macomber, then fired his Taser gun at Perez.

Sery was cleared of any wrongdoing, but the shooting sparked a public outcry and led Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk to hold a public inquest.
Sery resigned a few months later, saying he had decided to become a teacher. He has taught 11th graders at Southwest Christian School, which is affiliated with Southwest Bible Church, a nondenominational church in Beaverton. He's also worked in the college ministry and other ministries, said Scott Gilchrist, senior pastor.

"He's passionate about his love for Christ and his love for people," Gilchrist said. "I can't speak highly enough about him."

Sery declined comment when approached by a reporter from The Oregonian newspaper at Monday's council meeting. He referred questions the police chief.

"We completed an extensive background investigation before Officer Sery was hired," Chief David Bishop said in a statement. "Based on the background investigation, we determined Officer Sery had been cleared three times of any wrongdoing. His background investigation was probably one of the best of the best. Tyra Hearns the President of Pebi Services a background investigation firm stated " unfortunately lethal force can be a componet of law enforcement, and it is tragic for all involved, but if the officer did not violate any federal, state, or departmental rules then he or she is able to continue with their existing agency or with another."

Elden Rosenthal, the lawyer who representing the family of Perez in a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Portland, said he was surprised Sery has returned to police work.

The lawsuit is on hold while the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals considers whether the Police Bureau's use of force policy is constitutional.

Background Investigation never done on arrested 911 Operator

MOULTRIE — The recent arrest of an emergency 911 operator revealed that a background investigation was never completed prior to her employment. The sensitivity of her job description mandates that a pre employment background investigation be conducted prior to hiring. The agency may be in violation of federal laws if they knowingly omitted a background investigation of all their employees.Colquitt County E-911 Director Teresa Warburg described Amanda Nicole Brooks as an “excellent dispatcher,” one of her best, until about six months ago when she was thought to become involved with Jason Baird, a suspect in a recent burglary spree spanning four counties.

Brooks, 20, of 1522 Funston-Sale City Road, was charged in Colquitt County Saturday with the false report of a crime and filing a false police report. She also faces attempted burglary charges in Worth County after she admitted to being present at the burglary in which her silver Toyota Corolla was used, Colquitt County Sheriff Al Whittington said. Brooks’ live-in boyfriend Baird is on the run. He could be driving a stolen tan Chevrolet dually truck.
Baird and his brother, Stephen, allegedly led lawmen on a high-speed chase Friday through Mitchell and Dougherty counties, wrecked and fled on foot. Stephen Baird later was apprehended and jailed.

Brooks filed a report Saturday that her Corolla was stolen after she allegedly learned of the crash, Whittington said.
Warburg said she has learned that Brooks, now fired, was afraid of Baird and said that Brooks had showed up for work with some scratches, bruising and dark circles around her eyes. Brooks turned down help offered her and remained in a relationship with Baird, she said.

“She had talked with several here, and they tried to counsel her and to help her, but she didn’t heed any of their help,” she said.

Calls from her boyfriend allegedly came in to Brooks while she was on shift, Whittington and Warburg said. Baird allegedly asked her to return his call on another line within the building, an unrecorded line in a conference room, they said, and she did when she had the opportunity. It’s unclear at this point what was discussed, Whittington said.
That line has since been removed, Warburg said. Also, Warburg implemented a policy of no cell phones allowed in the secured dispatch room. Only authorized personnel are allowed access into the dispatch room.

Warburg implemented background checks on all new employees after she became director nearly two years ago. However, Brooks had already been employed as a dispatcher for a short time, so she did not have to undergo a background check.
Warburg said she wants more thorough investigation of would-be dispatchers, and the sheriff agrees.
“We need to beef up background checks. That’s what I asked Teresa and the commissioners. We’ve got to start looking more closely, because this is our lifeline, and I don’t want anybody to get hurt,” Whittington said.

“Things like this unfortunately happen from time to time,” the sheriff said. “Some of them will fall through the cracks. Regretfully, it does give the law enforcement community as a whole a black eye. What we need to do is be more careful on backgrounds as we possibly can, but when we have someone in a position such as this that violates the law, I think that certainly they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The E-911 department is under the control of the county administrator and the Board of Commissioners. Whittington serves on an advisory panel to E-911 made up of law enforcement agency and emergency services representatives.

Commissioner Billy Herndon is the only commissioner on the liaison committee to the E-911 department.
“If there’s nothing against her in the background, then what can you do?” Herndon said, noting that the county administrator is responsible for hiring and firing employees.

Background Investigation reveals sex offender

The Chatham County Sheriff's Department arrested John Kelly Lee Young, 39, on charges of violating sex offender registry laws in Georgia.
A background investigation conducted on a youth minister revealed the minister was a registered sex offender. The complete background check provided an NCIC alert which was quickly discovered in a background check.
Young moved here three years ago from Tennessee where he was a registered sex offender. He was working at St. Paul Academy for Boys and at Stout Chapel CME, where he served as a minister.

Young came to Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department headquarters to obtain a background check required by St. Paul. The background check reveled Young was a sex offender in Tennessee. Investigators with the sheriff's department's sex offender registry team found that Young had not notified Tennessee he left and had not registered in Georgia.

Young was arrested and gave permission for his home to be searched.

Tennessee is seeking warrants for Young's leaving the state without notification.

The investigation is ongoing.

Authorities say the arrest and investigation are a great example of interagency cooperation between the sheriff's department and Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department.

Deputy in crash had bad driving record

UPI (Florida)
A Florida police deputy had a bad driving record prior to being hired by the Sheriff's office. The officer, a deputy with the Broward Sheriff's Office. Although the deputy's driving record was known via his background investigation, the Broward Sheriff's Office (BSO) still hired the deputy. The Broward Sheriff's Office deputy involved in a fatal traffic accident had his license suspended several times, according to his personnel file released Wednesday.

Deputy Paul Pletcher's driver's license was suspended three times from 1992 to 1998 because of speeding and underage drinking in Pennsylvania. The suspensions occurred before he became a BSO deputy in 2004.

In 1992, when he was a teenager, his license was suspended for 90 days following two speeding tickets and an underage drinking charge.

In 1995, his license was suspended again after he received a ticket for driving 105 mph in a 55 mph zone. In 1998, after several more speeding charges, his license was suspended for driving 77 mph in a 65 mph zone.

Pletcher, 33, first applied to BSO in 2002, but was told to reapply in one year because of his driving record, according to his file. He was hired two years later.

As a deputy, Pletcher has received letters of commendation and was named Employee of the Month for the Pompano Beach district in September 2005.

Eric Jonathan French, 26, was riding his motorbike north on 30th Avenue in Pompano Beach on Monday when he crashed into the side of Pletcher's patrol car.

Pletcher was heading east on Fourth Street around 6:45 p.m. when he pulled out from a stop sign at the intersection, according to the Florida Highway Patrol, which is investigating at BSO's request.

French did not have a stop sign on 30th Avenue.

The impact knocked French off the bike. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

''It's still under investigation,'' said FHP Sgt. Mark Wysocky. ``It will be awhile before we know who was at fault here.''

French, who was not wearing a helmet, had no registration, mirrors, lights or tags on the motorbike. His driver's license had been revoked, according to FHP.

Neither Pletcher nor his passenger, Deputy Jose Rosado, 36, required medical treatment, according to FHP.

Pletcher, originally from Lancaster, Pa., joined BSO in October 2004. He graduated from Pennsylvania Manor High School and went on to study business administration at Harrisburg Area Community College.

Before joining BSO, Pletcher was a supervisor at a gasoline station owned by his family, where he supervised the night-shift employees, helped with repairs and conducted the store's monthly inventory.

He had applied to several Pennsylvania police departments, including Manheim Township, York and Lancaster, before applying to BSO.

His records also show he admitted to using marijuana twice in 1992.

In March 2006, Pletcher's lieutenant praised Pletcher's ''excellent police work'' when he helped a detective solve a burglary and recovering two stolen guns.

The detective said Pletcher showed ``professionalism and dedication to service.''

Long Odds to Join Las Vegas Force

By Kevin Johnson USA Today

LAS VEGAS — Kayvan Kazemi spent the night before his police entrance exam studying the gambling tables.
The 24-year-old Long Island, N.Y., officer candidate lost about $400 in the casinos before calling it a night. But nothing he did violated the law or disqualified him for a spot in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department academy. It was just a typical night in Vegas, where Kazemi is still in the running for a job. And Lt. Charles Hank, the department's personnel chief, says there are worse examples of pre-test preparation.

Of the finalists for the 400 available jobs this year, a staggering 70% are expected to fail the required background and polygraph examinations for attempting to conceal a range of criminal activities, from prostitution to fraud and drug use.
If the recruiting effort were a one-year campaign, the washout rate might be a lesser concern. But Vegas plans to hire at least 400 officers every year for the next five years to keep pace with the region's explosive growth. And Vegas' experience is not unlike that of a number of departments nationwide.

War siphons pool of recruits

In Phoenix, where recruiters are in their own long-term hiring campaign, more than a third of the applicants are failing polygraph examinations. In Orlando, about half are not surviving critical pre-polygraph interviews.

One of the Orlando candidates flew in for an interview earlier this year and was dismissed after listing two fraudulent college degrees that the candidate had purchased online, said Sgt. Christine Gigicos, Orlando's recruiting unit director.

"As much as we tell 'em not to lie, they come in here and lie and they think we're not going to find out. Maybe they forget: We are the police," Vegas police Sgt. Dan Zehnder said.

The last time police officials were voicing such concern about the quality of recruits was seven years ago when the federal government began phasing out the landmark police hiring program aimed at adding 100,000 to the ranks across the country.

Now, a protracted war is siphoning away scores of traditional recruits, forcing departments to cast a wider net to fill thousands of jobs. Many of the jobs have been created in response to rapid community growth and the steady retirements of hundreds of baby-boomer officers.

But many are citing the war as having exacted a particularly heavy toll in the police ranks. Last year, an analysis of Justice Department data found that the deployment of thousands of local officers to Iraq and Afghanistan as military reservists was outstripping the pace of hires.

The analysis found that 11,380 officers were called for military Reserve service in 2003, compared with 2,600 new hires. Since that report was published, Justice statistician Matthew Hickman said anecdotal evidence suggests that departments are "having a lot of trouble" with both recruitment and retention.

Jeremy Wilson, associate director of the Rand Center on Quality Policing, says the national law enforcement hiring market is caught in its own "perfect storm" stoked by intense competition for a shrinking universe of applicants even as departments have relaunched aggressive recruiting campaigns.

A vice squad void of vices?

Vegas police recruiters were all smiles when a record 647 officer candidates streamed into a cavernous convention center July 10 to sit for the first in a day-long battery of entrance exams.

Nearly 150 applicants had come from as far as Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Iowa and Michigan to fill the hundreds of available slots.

Sgt. Zehnder, a department training instructor, offered a sobering dose of reality. For every 100 candidates, maybe 10 will eventually make it through the training academy and then to the street.

About 23% of candidates never get past a multiple-choice basic knowledge test. Forty percent fail the physical training workout — a mix of calisthenics, agility and running drills. But no other test comes close to producing the failure rate — seven in 10 — than the department's background check and polygraph exam.

"I can't tell you how many candidates I've lost," recruiter Luke Jancsek said of those caught lying. Many, he said, try to conceal the frequency of past drug use, some of which would not necessarily disqualify them. "I want to smack 'em in the head sometimes."

At an applicant reception on the night before the July 10 test day, recruiting officers urged a gathering of about 100 candidates to come forward if they thought past conduct might bar them from law enforcement. When the meeting was over, a handful of candidates grudgingly acknowledged a range of criminal activity in private meetings with recruiters.

Lt. Hank said one acknowledged paying for sex "just a few months ago" at a bachelor party. Another candidate from the East Coast, who had flown in at his own expense, also admitted to paying a prostitute. Both were encouraged to look elsewhere for work.

Most of the private meetings, however, involved questions about prior drug use.

If there was good news in the eleventh-hour confessions, it was that they came before the start of the lengthy and costly testing and training process. Candidates begin drawing a $47,777 annual salary while they are attending the 23-week academy.

Employing tourist-trap tactics

Given the high disqualification rate and the department's enormous expansion plans, Sgt. Eric Fricker said the department must maintain the current pace of attracting about 600 applicants a month.

To keep those numbers up, the department is using the same kinds of tactics the city has used to attract 40 million tourists and 50,000 new residents each year.

In the department's recruiting trips to the Midwest, the department emphasizes the warm, dry climate and surging economy.

A big part of the department's hiring campaign is being managed by the same marketing company that developed the city's signature motto: "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." Fricker is unapologetic about using the city's natural lures and vices to keep candidates coming. "It's Vegas," he said.