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Disqualified for Police Employment Due to a Dismissed Charge

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  • 04-02-2015, 11:12 AM
    enlighten15
    Disqualified for Police Employment Due to a Dismissed Charge
    My question involves labor and employment law for the state of: Illinois

    I recently applied for the local police department and was disqualified because of an arrest that was thrown out in court. The police implied that I was not being cooperative and they considered my posture as threatening. I was thrown to the ground, handcuffed and fingerprinted. I am a college graduate with an otherwise exemplary work and personal history. Can this be held against me and if not how do I refute the disqualification?
  • 04-02-2015, 12:51 PM
    L-1
    Re: Disqualified for Police Employment Due to a Dismissed Charge
    Many years back I had an applicant who was a rapist. Due to technical reasons he was acquitted of rape at trial, but factually he was still a rapist. In spite of the acquittal he was disqualified on his background. While I am not comparing you to the rapist, my point is the background investigation looks to see if there is anything in your personal history that meets the criteria for disqualification. The fact that you were not convicted is irrelevant. It is your conduct itself that is examined for the purposes of disqualification. In your case I suspect your disqualification was based on a review of your arrest report combined with an interview of the officers who interacted with you at the time, any other witnesses, personal audio recordings made by the officers, patrol car video recordings, jail video recordings, etc.

    Most municipalities allow applicants to appeal disqualifications to their civil service commission. To do so you will need to retain counsel , subpoena your background investigation, any documentation used in support of your disqualification and obtain copies of the civil service criteria for disqualification so your attorney can see if they were correct in determining whether your history met the requirements for removal from the hiring process.

    A word of caution. Most agencies have a very liberal criteria for removal. For example, my agency says:

    All candidates for, appointees to, and employees in the civil service shall possess the general qualifications of integrity, honesty, sobriety, dependability, industry, thoroughness, accuracy, good judgment, initiative, resourcefulness, courtesy, ability to work cooperatively with others, willingness and ability to assume the responsibilities and to conform to the conditions of work characteristic of the employment, and a state of health, consistent with the ability to perform the assigned duties of the class. Where the position requires the driving of an automobile, the employee must have a valid state driver's license, a good driving record and is expected to drive the car safely. The foregoing general qualifications shall be deemed to be a part of the personal characteristics of the minimum qualifications of each class specification and need not be specifically set forth therein. The board may prescribe alternative or additional qualifications for individual classes and such shall be made a part of the class specifications.

    Those criteria are such that one or two blemishes in your past can make it easy to disqualify you.

    Backgrounds are pass/fail. Five goods do not make up for one bad. It doesn’t matter if you speak 10 languages, have the Medal of Honor and saved 15 orphans from a burning building – if there is one thing in your personal history that meets the criteria for disqualification then you get removed from the hiring process.
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