Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window - Steve Wozniak

Police Academy: Criminals On Patrol

by West Virginia Rebel

And people wonder where bad cops come from.

More than one-third of recent Atlanta Police Academy graduates have been arrested or cited for a crime, according to a review of their job applications. The arrests ranged from minor offenses such as shoplifting to violent charges including assault. More than one-third of the officers had been rejected by other law enforcement agencies, and more than half of the recruits admitted using marijuana.

“On its face, it’s troubling and disturbing,” said Vincent Fort, a state senator from Atlanta. “It would be very troubling that people might be hitting the streets to serve and protect and they have histories that have made them unqualified to serve on other departments.”

But Atlanta police say it’s not so simple. Officials have been trying without success for more than a decade to grow the department to 2,000 officers, an effort hurt by this year’s budget crisis. With competition for recruits intense among law enforcement agencies, Atlanta has had to make concessions.

“We would like, in an ideal world, to see every applicant with a clean record, but obviously that’s not reality,” said Atlanta police Lt. Elder Dancy, who runs the department’s recruitment unit. “I don’t think you’ll find any departments who hire only applicants with squeaky-clean records.”

I guess none of them wanted to get thrown out by ten…

Comments

Posted by on 10/13/08 at 07:53 AM from

"Have you ever considered a career in southern law enforcement?”

For those of us that see the police as generally little more than a collection of steroid cases, nutjobs, power-tripping thugs, and criminals, this doesn’t exactly help the opposing view…

Anyone else here score too high on the police exam to be accepted?

<< Back to main