Laying down the law on gypsies, tramps, and thieves
They’re called “gypsy cops” — an unfortunate term that is at once an ethnic slur on the Romani people and a wrongful limitation of the term’s applicability only to police officers.
Nationwide, overstated concerns about personal privacy and lack of due diligence in checking references have led to people escaping checkered pasts and ending up in sensitive positions of public trust in unwitting communities, especially smaller ones like ours.
Marion County has been a victim of this alarming trend four times in recent years, hiring an ambulance director who lied about a criminal record elsewhere, a police chief who was about to be demoted for unprofessional behavior, an interim city clerk and grant administrator who was a convicted financial felon, and now a police officer facing allegations of brutality and of trying to pay current and former inmates for sex and drugs.
All four of these public serpents were dumped on us like so much trash being thrown out by other regions. Years ago, when people like Bat Masterson patrolled the streets of Abilene, it might have been acceptable to run a bad apple out of town. After all, there was a whole frontier remaining in which they could start over, just as there was a whole continent in Australia ready to accept Great Britain’s rejects.
Nowadays, the problem is that small communities like ours have become the last remaining frontiers to which other communities can cast off their undesirables.
It’s not a question of whether these people were guilty of wrongdoing for which they were accused. It’s that their warts were invisible because of antiquated laws that don’t require sharing of information and active attempts to check references.
In the business world, references are almost a thing of the past. Former employers are coached to say nothing other than the start and end date of employment. They are warned that if they comment on a former employee’s record or even why he or she left, they could be sued.
Privacy rights are important. But at a time in which most citizens ignorantly surrender virtually all of their privacy to huge tech companies by using secretly spying search engines and social media, it’s ludicrous that privacy concerns trump the public’s need to be able to select competent and trustworthy people for key roles in serving the public.
Failing to include a negative experience in the personnel records of any public employee should be a criminal offense. Failing to check the personnel records of any candidate for public employment should be a criminal offense. Both should be punished not only by fines and imprisonment but also by loss of job.
The cost to taxpayers and communities of being stuck with “gypsy cops” in key positions is simply too high.
Peabody almost lost an important revitalization grant because it trusted that the Kansas Department of Commerce had done its duty and would not have hired a convicted financial felon whom Peabody then allowed to exercise grant and city clerk duties.
Marion soon will learn the cost — both financially and in reputation — of Kansas City police withholding, and Marion employers not pressing for, full disclosure about a man hired as police chief who exposed the city to international ridicule and potentially huge legal liability.
Surely even state legislators can appreciate that the issue of “gypsy cops” is more relevant to the well-being of Kansas than whether university students and employees put their pronoun preferences in the signature blocks of emails.
Current government employees might worry about unscrupulous bosses inserting false information into personnel files to blackball people they don’t like. But as with most concerns about abusive communication, the answer isn’t banning communication but allowing even more. Untruths flourish in darkness but die in sunlight.
Laws requiring that personnel files be openly shared and consulted should include a clear provision that the employee in question must be allowed to see his or her own file and submit requests that will be included within it to correct any false impressions.
It is an insult to the huge majority of public servants who are completely trustworthy and totally devoted that checking on the background of new hires is left to concerned citizens, amateur activists, and professional news organizations. We are at best a safety net and backstop, not the first line of defense against bad hires.
If candidates for employment object, as one local official did a few years ago when told his background would be checked, the best answer is not to relent, change laws, or file suits but simply to move on to another candidate who more clearly understands that being a public servant means surrendering just a bit of privacy to protect the well-being of the entire community.
— ERIC MEYER