TROOPER STANDARDS STILL HIGH

Plan Seeks Flexibility, Not License, Chief Says

The head of the Virginia State Police says poor internal communications led
to news reports that former drug users and drunken drivers could be
eligible to become troopers.

"It should be clear that we have no intention of hiring any individual with
a DUI conviction, a drug trafficker, [or] a heroin, cocaine or hard-drug
user," state police Superintendent W. Gerald Massengill wrote this week in
a letter to the agency's 2,600 employees.

In the letter dated Wednesday, Massengill suggested that the controversial
policy change was a big misunderstanding.

Massengill's position would seem to contradict what department officials
said last week, and appears to conflict with a memo distributed within the
department that says the agency would no longer automatically disqualify
candidates with imperfect records.

Specifically, the memo says the department would no longer automatically
disqualify prospective troopers who had used such drugs as heroin and
cocaine more than five years ago, or had a single drunken-driving
conviction at least 5 years old.

Since a story about the policy change was published last week in The
Times-Dispatch, the department has been criticized from within and from
without.

"I am absolutely disgusted with the Vir-ginia State Police's decision to
change their present policy and not immediately disqualify candidates for .
. . drug use or driving under the influence," one officer wrote the newspaper.

The officer added that if the department he works for did such a thing, "I
would have to consider seeking employment with a more credible agency."

Said another reader: "State troopers have enough problems with image, so
why lower the public's opinion of them even more?"

Since last week's story, Massengill said some troopers have been questioned
by defense attorneys in court about whether they had been convicted of
drunken driving or had used drugs before they were hired.

"Such instances are regrettable but serve to clearly demonstrate the very
reasons we cannot lower our standards," he wrote.

In explaining the policy change last week, Lt. Col. Donald R. Martin, the
department's deputy superintendent, said the department wanted to make its
selection process "more open and fair" by taking into account a candidate's
"entire employment and life history."

The new screening process, he added, would allow the department to consider
a person who might have made a single mistake early in life but has since
been an exemplary citizen.

"It's the right thing to do in some situations," Martin said.

Clearly rankled by the fallout, Massengill this week tried to clear up what
he described as a misunderstanding of the new screening process.

He blamed part of the problem on the headline of the Times-Dispatch story
but said the accompanying article was "substantially correct." He also
blamed himself for issuing a memo that assumed employees understood the
process.

"Clearly, large numbers of our people did not understand 'automatic
disqualifiers' and mistook them for hiring criteria," Massengill wrote.

Massengill insisted yesterday the department has not lowered its hiring
standards.

"The only thing automatic disqualifiers do is control your background
investigations" of trooper applicants, Massengill said. "We have relieved
some of that and given the department more discretion" in the screening
process.

But police insiders are asking why the department would lower the screening
standards if it has no intention of hiring someone who has used drugs or
had a DUI conviction?

In his letter, Massengill offered two examples of situations where the
automatic disqualifiers "were clearly unfair and not what the department
intended them to be."

One case involved a teen-ager who was handed a small bag of marijuana "from
one teen-ager to another so it could be sold for beer money. The teen was
never charged and went on to become a "highly decorated police officer for
a local Virginia agency."

"He wanted to be a trooper; however, his honesty made him a drug trafficker
and prevented us from doing a background investigation" on him, Massengill
wrote.

In the second example, a young candidate was disqualified because he took a
prescription painkiller that had been prescribed for a relative. He took
the drug to relieve some back pain. "We learned of this through his honesty
but his actions were again [an]'automatic disqualifier,'" Massengill wrote.

Massengill said he couldn't think of an instance where a person would be
hired if they had a drunken-driving conviction or had used hard drugs.

"But I do think that before I can make that decision, in some of these
cases I need a full background investigation," he said. "That's all we're
saying."