Amid an aggressive push to bolster its ranks with thousands of new deputies, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department loosened its hiring practices and gave jobs to recruits who in the past would have been rejected, according to a department watchdog report released Thursday.
Among those hired were applicants with criminal records, drug and alcohol problems and financial woes. One recruit, for example, had been released from another police agency after using excessive force. Another candidate had abused marijuana and steroids and been convicted of underage drinking shortly before he applied to become a deputy.
The report, written by the county's Office of Independent Review, criticized the department for its 2006 decision to abandon a strict hiring policy, in which aspiring sheriff's deputies were automatically disqualified if they failed to pass an exacting background check or any other part of the application process. In its place, the report found, the department adopted a more liberal approach that allowed applicants to be hired if officials determined they had reformed themselves or that past mistakes were insignificant.
The change came as the department was working to increase its ranks. Coming off several years of budget constraints during which the size of the department shrank significantly, sheriff's officials set out to make up for lost ground. In 2006, the department more than doubled the number of applicants it conducted background checks on and hired twice as many candidates over the year before. In the last three years, the agency has hired more than 2,700 deputies.
"They had a mission and that mission was to hire deputies," said Michael Gennaco, head of the Office of Independent Review, which oversees the department. "Unfortunately, it may have come at a price in the quality of people they hired."
Sheriff's officials, Gennaco said, failed to lay out clear guidelines on who made for an acceptable candidate under the more accommodating hiring strategy.
"They changed their philosophy, but then said nothing else about what that means . . . What does it mean to take a 'holistic' approach to hiring?" Gennaco said, using the department's description of its recruitment practices. "It means whatever you want it to mean. That is not a very principled way to do business."
