SPECIAL REPORT: WORKPLACE SECURITY

Check, Please

Who are those people working alongside you? Too often, nobody has bothered
to ask.

Last December, a 41-year-old man sought a security guard's position at
Allied Security Inc. The big contract-security company based in King of
Prussia, Pa., hires about 16,000 guards a year to protect shopping malls,
hospitals, universities, banks and other clients in 38 states.

The prospect seemed particularly promising because he had held a similar
guard job with a rival company and lived in Philadelphia for four years. He
showed up well-dressed and on time for his job interview. Most important,
he twice swore in writing -- and again face-to-face -- that he had never
been convicted of a criminal offense.

Allied Security hoped to assign the man to a local information-technology
company. But the candidate was never hired. Carco Research, Allied's
background-checking service, discovered that the man formerly lived in
Michigan, where he had been convicted of drug dealing, sentenced to prison,
then escaped, and was arrested and imprisoned again until his parole in 1996.

Yet such advance screening, which detected criminal records among about 20%
of Allied Security's guard candidates last year, "is not competitive from a
pricing standpoint," says Bill Whitmore, company president. The reason:
Pre-employment checks add costs, pushing up prices. And a lot of rivals
don't bother with pre-hiring checks. In fact, in most states, ex-felons may
legally work as private security guards for several months while government
officials examine their Spooner-Dean after cleaning carpets at the
pediatrician's home in Oakland, Calif. Mr. Woods, who had completed his
seventh sentence just two years earlier, was convicted of armed robbery and
first-degree murder in May 1999.

Daniel Dean, the victim's husband, won a $9.38 million judgment against
America's Best Carpet Care in November 2000 after a jury concluded it
negligently hired Mr. Woods by failing to adequately probe his past. (Mr.
Dean subsequently settled out of court. The cleaning service is no longer
in business.)

When you open your home to an unsupervised service provider, "you make the
assumption that you will be safe," says Mrs. Spooner. "We had a major
wake-up call. Most people are in the same shoes I was in before it happened."

Numerous states already require extensive criminal checks of home health
aides. But like contract security guards, such workers often may start work
before screening is completed.

Accuracy Is Key

On the other hand, amid heightened worries over workplace security, privacy
advocates fear overzealous employers may get sloppy in investigating job
hunters' backgrounds. "There is no such thing as an absolutely accurate
database.even from public agencies" because identity theft is so rampant,
says Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego.

Consider Namia Allen. Fresh out of law school, the San Diego resident was
offered a job in August 1999 with the district attorney's office for San
Diego County. During a pre-employment background check, officials found a
fugitive warrant from nearby Riverside County. The warrant sought her
arrest for assorted drug charges, including possession of crack cocaine for
sale.

Ms. Allen was handcuffed and arrested when she showed up at the D.A.'s
office to sign personnel papers shortly before her first day. She spent the
night in jail. "It was humiliating being arrested in front of people who
became her co-workers," recalls her attorney, Jan Edward Ronis.

Mr. Ronis blames identity theft, noting that Ms. Allen's car had been
broken into and the registration stolen. He also claims Riverside County
issued the warrant based on scanty information -- namely, a utility bill in
her name that turned up at a home occupied by other drug suspects. His
client, who declines to comment, started work after Riverside County
dropped the criminal charge.

Ms. Allen later sued Riverside County in state court for negligence in
issuing the faulty warrant. She settled for $180,000 last May, according to
Mr. Ronis. County officials didn't return calls for comment.

But Rick Everett, the San Diego County investigator who discovered the
Allen warrant, believes he did nothing wrong. "A felony warrant would stop
anybody from being hired in San Diego County," he says. The background
check "worked as it was supposed to."