Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Hiring Practices (UPDATED)

JCPD Station (JCHeights.com)
The Jersey City Police Department hired a man by the name of Kevin Freibott as a police officer. As an officer of the law, one is expected to obey it, as well as enforce it. Mr. Freibott failed in his duties.

He got drunk Tuesday night when he was off-duty and slammed into a car carrying a young mother and her son, sending the woman to ICU and the son into critical condition. It is bad enough when a civilian does something as stupid and selfish as driving drunk and hurt somebody else, but to have a police officer do it makes it even worse. You would wonder how someone who has the ability to do something like this even gets hired to serve and to protect the public in the first place.

However, Kevin Freibott is not one of those people. He was a police officer in Middletown Township, New Jersey until 2001, when he was fired after being involved in a minor accident and holding an invalid driver's license. Big deal, right? Well according to the New Jersey DMV, Freibott lost his license because he neglected to show up to a program for drunk drivers that was court-ordered. So this is not the first time Officer Freibott has taken his chances drinking and driving.

My question is this: if it is so hard to get a job with a criminal record, how could the Jersey City Police Department possibly hire someone who a) broke a justified law, and b) refused to follow a judge's orders that came in response to him breaking that law? Is the JCPD that desperate for officers that they will hire just anybody? I certainly hope not.

UPDATE (1/28/07): The 2 year old boy who was hit by Officer Freibott passed away last night at University Hospital. The mother's condition has improved from critical to stable at Jersey City Medical Center. It has been determined that Freibott's blood alcohol content (BAC) was three times the legal limit, which in New Jersey is 0.08%, just recently reduced from 0.10%. As if the situation could not get worse for Freibott, 1010wins.com reports that the day that the accident occurred he was scheduled to work, but called in sick. Let's hope justice is served.

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