Why small departments hire 'problem' officers comes down to 3 factors

Law enforcement officers facing charges. WRAL has recently reported on several officers who are accused of breaking the law. Many of them resigned from larger departments while under investigation and were hired in smaller ones.

Why do those smaller towns often end up with some problem officers? Sources at all levels of law enforcement say smaller departments face a harder hiring scenario than their larger counterparts. More than a dozen sources weighed in and agree that whether a small department gets saddled with a problem officer comes down to three things.

These former or suspended officers have made headlines in the last year and are charged with breaking the law. Their charges differ, but they do share one thing - they worked their way from a larger city or county department down to a smaller one.

There’s Chad Penland, arrested this week and charged with a statutory sex offense with a minor. Before joining WakeMed Campus Police, Penland was an officer with the Morrisville Police Department.

Peter Blake worked at the Benson Police Department. In April, he was charged with forcible rape, kidnapping, burglary and involuntary sexual servitude. Before Benson PD, he resigned from the Raleigh Police while under investigation.

Mark Oakley, a former Warrenton police officer indicted last year for allegedly using a taser on multiple people without justification. He is also facing a federal lawsuit. Before working in Warrenton, he resigned while under investigation by the Roanoke Rapids Police.

Officers can resign while under internal investigation in North Carolina. Why they were under investigation is not public record. However, the small department that eventually hires them could find out.

In Nash County, Sheriff Keith Stone has 103 sworn officers. He says he won’t hire anyone who falls below his high standards. But not every department has that luxury. Nor, he says, do they have the leadership structure, resources or incentives to attract the same candidates.

"So they've got to pick and choose on what they're getting, and it makes it very difficult ... It all goes back to pay and benefits for them to have people to come there and stay there," he said.

Sources tell WRAL the reason small departments end up with the so-called bad apples of law enforcement comes down to three things: The hiring officer’s time and resources, their level of training in background checks, and the pressure to fill the position.

The state requires that every officer fill out a standard form if they leave the job for any reason.  On it, they have to indicate whether they left under investigation, and if they did, they have to explain why on the second page.

Jeff Welty, UNC public law professor and a member of the Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission, stresses that while the information may be available, not all hiring officers will look deeper into why a candidate fell under investigation.

"The agency either doesn't catch on to the background investigation, what the prior problems were or does catch them and is just under so much pressure to kind of complete their staffing with such a small number of interested applicants that they're willing to take a chance on an officer that a larger agency might not," Welty said.

To ensure better background checks are done, the law changed last year, requiring hiring agencies to look beyond the basic information the candidate reports about themselves.

"If they are moving from one agency to another, the hiring agency must check the personnel file at the agency where they most recently were, and they also have to check any place they've been within the past five years," said Lauren Earnhardt, Vice President of the North Carolina Sheriff's Association.

We asked if that meant it wasn't being done before.

"It was not being done consistently. The majority of agency heads were doing it, but there were a few that were not, and this was to require it for all," Earnhardt responded.

But the law does not specify what a complete personnel file should include. Welty says some hiring officers may not get information on previous investigations in a candidate’s file.

"There can be some disagreement or uncertainty about what the complete personnel file is, and whether it includes things like previous internal affairs investigations, and that's one of the areas of slippage where everybody's trying to comply with the law, but what one agency wants or thinks it might be getting may not always be exactly what the other agency thinks it's required to produce.

North Carolina also offers training for officers on how to do background checks, but Sheriff Stone knows smaller departments often can’t spare an officer for training.

"But also, let's really face it, money is a factor too. If they can't find anybody else and they're demanded to have a police officer to cover shifts, then they're probably going to go and find somebody to fit that bill," Stone said.

Even if someone has faced disciplinary action or an investigation at their previous department.

"For some way or another, the state of North Carolina is just going to have to step in and say, we're going to have to help these small places out, so that they can get qualified law enforcement officers, get them good training, and we've got to pay them enough to keep these officers here," Stone said.

Law enforcement on the state level will soon see a raise as part of the new budget. But counties and cities will have to foot the bill if they want to pay officers more. However, Stone says long-term, it’s the cost of living increases and health care after they retire that North Carolina needs to reinstate to attract good officers.