Opinion on my plans

[usmcbri28]

Good afternoon to all! I was wondering if I could get some honest advice from somebody with experience in the background investigations and/or a current law enforcement officer on a few background questions and my plans.

I am a 28 year old male, who is moving back to Miami,FL in 1 month. I am a former United States Marine with an Honorable discharge, no criminal record, a near 4.0 GPA at a good university, bilingual (English/Spanish), and will be sworn in as an auxiliary officer in Florida soon.

I know many people ask their opinions about their backgrounds, but I have been lurking for sometime on here and I would like to know what I should do on my current situation.

I plan on applying in 2 years, maybe 3 or 4 at the most, due to a recent bankruptcy due to a loss of employment. I had excellent credit my whole life up until one year ago. It will be discharged next month.

Also, a year ago, my license was suspended due to a few sunpass tolls in Florida not being paid.
I had the machine that you hang on your visor in your car in order to pay the toll automatically, and my wife and I would pass through the tolls almost daily not knowing that the money was not being taken out, regarding in sunpass tickets that were sent to an address on file from 3 years back. I never received the notices, but finally found out when I went to renew a license. I hired a ticket lawyer and did not receive any points for this. Other then that I have had a perfect driving record.

I know applying in a year, maybe even two might be far fetched due to the BK, but that is why I am asking the opinion of somebody with experience that could point me in the right direction on what I should do, assuming everything stays perfect on my record and my plan to re-establish my credit goes well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[DeltaV]

The bankruptcy will be an issue, however the seriousness will vary from department to department. My department will not hire someone who has had a bankruptcy in the past seven years no matter what the reason. Other departments in the area do not have such a bright line rule, however it's still a big strike against you. Either way it will effect you greatly, especially in the short term. The same goes with the suspended license. There's a reason that the Florida Statutes require you to report any change of address to DHSMV within ten days. The SunPass website even has that in big, bold letters at the top when you log in. It was an honest mistake and you took care of it, but it will forever show up on your driver's license record that you were suspended for failure to pay fines. I don't really see that as a huge issue since it was an isolated incident and can be easily explained, but some departments are stricter when it comes to driving records than others.

[mcsap]

Additional good will tend to dim the " bad " a lot quicker.

[1depd]

Legally, no employer can hold the bankruptcy against you. It is provided for in the federal law. This means an employer can not fire, refuse to hire, limit your duties or in any way take repercussions against you for filing bankruptcy. There are some exceptions to this law, but they do not apply to LE agencies. You can get more information from the lawyer who filed your case. I think it is covered in Chapter 11 USC, sec 525. What a potential employer can do is hold the reason for the bankruptcy against you. So if you were out parting all the time buying new cars every week and generally being stupid with your money they can hold that stupidity against you. With all of this said there are many steps in the process that are subjective and with today's competitive market place it will be very difficult to prove an agency discriminated against you due to your bankruptcy.

The Sun Pass issue is going to be a tough one to overcome. I worked with a young officer who had a lot of moving violations within the last 5 years. I don't recall the exact number, but it was substantial. If he would have put off applying he never would have been hired in LE, the economy started to tank a couple years after he started. It was in full fledge bad within five years of his start date. Either way, I wouldn't put off applying. I'd do it now for the jobs you are interested in.

On the bright side if you are going to be sworn in as a reserve officer, you have found an agency that is willing to overlook your past issues. Work hard at it, learn as much as you can, and don't get caught up in the agency politics. If you turn out to be a solid performer the agency might look more favorably toward your application. An agency I worked at had a reserve program, and just about all of the reserves were jocking to get a paid position. They would go so far as screwing with the full time officers' cases. Management saw this and implemented a policy that reserves could not be hired. This worked to scare away most of the reserves, the eventual end of the program, and happier officers.

[retdetsgt]

What a potential employer can do is hold the reason for the bankruptcy against you.

That's the crux of it. They will look at how much you owed before you lost your job, what effort did you make to get a job to pay your bills, etc.

My old department will tend to forgive things like unexpected medical bills, etc. that no one can predict. Sitting on your butt drawing unemployment for a year or more and falling behind on big credit card bills is going to bite you in the butt.

[usmcbri28]

Thanks for all of your replies. It was all very helpful information.