The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department acknowledged Tuesday that it hired about 80 officers who should have been disqualified because of problems in their backgrounds including criminal convictions and poor job performance.
Assistant Sheriff Todd Rogers said he was troubled by the hires and plans on “making some swift changes.”
“People have to trust that we’re hiring the best and brightest … because of the awesome authority and responsibility our deputies have,” he said in an interview. “Almost everything we do is predicated on public trust.”
The admission came two weeks after a Times investigation found the agency hired dozens of officers from a disbanded
county police force even though sheriff’s investigators had found significant misconduct in their backgrounds. Internal agency files showed that jobs were given to officers who accidentally fired their weapons, had sex at work, committed theft, solicited prostitutes or falsified records.
Baca is a liberal-leaning, septuagenarian dinosaur who isn’t much of a Second Amendment fan when it comes to ordinary citizens. This latest in a series of scandals is so awful that the union attorney says punitive action would be the “height of hypocrisy” because all of the misconduct was known about when the were hired.
“The department has known for years their background and that background was vetted, and the good and the bad was revealed. It went to the highest levels of the department for review,” he said.
How awful is Baca? Even though he spent several years jumping through all of the hoops necessary to please hardcore lefties, even the LA Times wants him gone now.
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