New background check process not required for city parking enforcement employees
on March 1, 2012
At the beginning of the year, the Oakland City Council started preparing to merge parking enforcement services with the Oakland Police Department to save the city money.
Under the policy at the time, each parking enforcement employee would have been subject to the lowest level of background checks that all OPD employees are subject to, which stirred controversy.
Oakland City Council member Rebecca Kaplan said it’s unfair to require an established city employee to go through background checks—which includes a fingerprint check and a check for warrants—that might jeopardize their job. “It’s not fair to move the goal post,” she said.
Kaplan insisted that City Administrator Deanna Santana review the policy and after re-evaluation, Santana confirmed that the new background check process would not be required, even if the employees are assigned to OPD.
Parking enforcement employees do not have access to the law enforcement database and the sensitive information that other OPD officers who have to pass this level of background checks have. Even though parking officials will be trained to write parking tickets and accident reports, they are only equipped with their vehicles and radios.
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Really? Citizens who join the OPD Volunteers in Policing program have to have a background check!
Maybe a background check would have revealed Edgerly’s nephew as the criminal he was found out to be. Come on Oakland, you can do better. You owe it to us.