Looking for insight...

[TLH1010]

This May I will graduate with honors and have earned a B.A. in History and a Minor in
Political Science. I will be the first person in my immediate family to have ever graduated college. I have completed four years as a Marine Infantryman and was discharged
honorably. While in, I served two combat tours and was in a leadership billet with Marines under my charge. I consider myself in good physical shape and possess a good sense of moral character. I also have no criminal background except for a couple speeding tickets. I feel like being a police officer is something I would love doing and I'm currently striving to achieve this. However, I have two problems that I feel really
hurt my chances in becoming a police officer.
1) Bad financial decisions: Back in 2010 I quit a full time job in order to finish my B.A.
faster. I figured I would take out student loans to supplement the missing income. But
with my GI Bill money and student loans I wasn't able to make the payments on my car
in time. To make a long story short, my car was repossessed. Prior to the repossession my credit score was consistently in the 720's. Now its a lowly 603. I wish I could go back and change what happened- but I cant. It's something that was very immature and I'll
have to suffer the consequences.
I've researched that having a reposession is the number two thing that makes or breaks
getting hired on- the first being criminal background.

2) Family members with criminal background: Lets just say I do not come from the best family. Both Mom and Dad were addicts- with Dad being a felon. I have two brothers
that are felons as well.

What are my chances of getting accepted into law enforcement with these two things
hindering me? Should I even bother applying to departments? I probably will anyway
considering being in law enforcement is a goal that I've set out to achieve. But I just
want to know what the professionals think...Thanks for reading.

[ET109]

Family criminal histories didn't hinder me... they were interested in what my family though of me taking a LE job, but I don't think it was considered anything more than a blip to look at during the background.

[MikeG]

This May I will graduate with honors and have earned a B.A. in History and a Minor in
Political Science. I will be the first person in my immediate family to have ever graduated college. I have completed four years as a Marine Infantryman and was discharged
honorably. While in, I served two combat tours and was in a leadership billet with Marines under my charge. I consider myself in good physical shape and possess a good sense of moral character. I also have no criminal background except for a couple speeding tickets. I feel like being a police officer is something I would love doing and I'm currently striving to achieve this.

First thanks for your service!! Go put the above in the Introduction section.

I can't give you any insight about the repo thing. I'd hazard a guess that repos after the real estate debacle of the last couple years is not as bad as it once was. I know of a few officers that lost their house this way and faced no repercussions as far as I know. From a pure credit analysis, I'd say make sure there are no collections outstanding on the account as a result of that as that may be a difference between a real estate repo and a car repo. A BI/LEO will have to come in and say whether police consider them different or significant as I am neither.

I think it's also been said here by LEOs that you can pick your friends but not your family. Someone else with BI experience could answer how to appropriately distance yourself from the criminal activity without necessarily giving up christmas and thanksgiving.

[retdetsgt]

My family is full of felons. If they are still committing crimes and you hang out with them, it could be a problem. Otherwise, don't worry about it.

It's hard to say about the repo thing. If you didn't have all the other good stuff, I'd say forget it for a few years until you got your credit back in order, but departments might overlook that if your credit dipped entirely on that incident and no other bad decisions. If I were you, I'd sure go for it.

[L-1]

If you go to http://lib.post.ca.gov/Publications/bi.pdf and start reading at Page 149 you will get an idea of what is considered when evaluating an applicant's financial history. While this is the standard for my state, the principles are fairly universal for most of law enforcement.