Employers, more than ever before, need to protect themselves against accidents and crimes committed by their employees. With negligent hiring, lawsuits, training costs, workplace violence and theft on the rise, pre-employment screening as well as taking the correct pre-employment screening steps are no longer an option, but rather a necessity for businesses.

Rodney Monroe, Police Chief for the City of Charlotte, North Carolina admitted that “We did miss valuable information” in reference to the botched hiring of Marcus Jackson, a former police officer arrested and dismissed from his position in December after five women came forward stating he had sexually accosted them during traffic stops.

Police missed a domestic violence restraining order placed upon Jackson in 2005. The mark on the background screening would have disqualified Jackson from service and five women might have been spared a terrifying episode in their lives.
Unfortunately, human error coupled with a system that doesn’t ensure better accuracy has led to a very unfortunate state of affairs. It’s something one can look at as one of the more dire consequences of not having a dedicated employment screening process in place.

How something like this happened is a question the Charlotte community wants answered. In order for those questions to be accurately answered, the city council has voted in favor of opening Marcus Jackson’s personnel file. Jackson’s disciplinary history has been maintained as “eyes only” so far, but city leaders believe this is a matter of maintaining public trust.

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Fox said “In my opinion, this is not just a personal matter. This is a situation in which a lot of people in the community want to know how this happened.”

Public officials are hoping the contents of the file will offer some insight into Jackson’s job performance as well as how his department tracked and disciplined his performance. The file may aid in assigning blame, but it also may allow a look at potential holes in the departments hiring practices that can be plugged up so another Jackson doesn’t show up behind the wheel of a patrol car.

Council Member Patrick Gannon, however, didn’t share the same viewpoint and was worried by what he believes is “…the precedent we might set, opening this file.”
Someone should remind Mr. Gannon that a police officer sexually molesting five women sets its own disturbing precedent? Something of this nature that goes beyond the immediate circle of predator and prey, to where public trust is in question and a city government has to answer for it…well, it kind of calls for the opening of a sealed personnel file to get to the root of it all.

Regardless, the Charlotte police department is beefing up its background check process by adding more civil background checks and possibly bringing on a full time human resource professional to the recruiting division.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 5:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.