http://www.sptimes.com/2004/12/10/North ... tic_.shtml Defense wrong tactic for Operation PAR
A Times Editorial
Published December 10, 2004
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It is difficult to imagine how Operation PAR could defend a job applicant screening process that missed a three-decades-long criminal record.
But that is how the agency responded after one of its Pinellas employees, Michael Albert, was arrested two weeks ago on charges of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman on Thanksgiving night in Hillsborough County. Since that day, Hillsborough sheriff's investigators have been contacted by two other women who say they also were violently attacked in November by Albert, and he now is in jail facing 12 felony charges.
A St. Petersburg Times records search after Albert's arrest showed that he had been on probation in Pinellas from 1994 to 1999 after being convicted in Pennsylvania on multiple sex charges including indecent assault, indecent exposure and open lewdness. Authorities said Albert would expose himself to women in office buildings and elevators.
The records search also turned up other convictions going back to the 1970s for aggravated assault, making terroristic threats, disorderly conduct and carrying a weapon.
In 2001 Albert, who lived in Clearwater after leaving Pennsylvania, was hired as a drug counselor by Operation PAR and he worked there until his recent arrest. Operation PAR spokesman Marvin Coleman said a background search before Albert was hired didn't turn up anything "that would be a disqualifier," and that the agency has no plans to change its process.
"The positions are positions of trust," Coleman said.
There is another trust issue - a more important one - involved in this case. Those who rely on Operation PAR's drug treatment programs trust that the agency isn't hiring criminals to counsel troubled clients.
Operation PAR is a nonprofit agency that provides drug assessment, intervention and treatment in Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee and Lee counties. The courts send clients to the agency, and families seek help there in dealing with a drug-addicted loved one. The agency treats both adults and juveniles and has a number of award-winning programs for women and children. The people served by Operation PAR are in desperate need of help to turn their lives around.
It is frightening that someone with a rap sheet like Albert's had access to and private contact with clients in a counseling environment.
Operation PAR must live up to the trust that the community places in it. It must close the holes in the net that allowed Michael Albert to be hired, and it should review the backgrounds of its current employees as well.
http://thestraights.com/articles/operationpar.htm
