We have talked a couple of times before about the absolute need to run a background check on somebody before you hire them (or vote them in if yours is a volunteer squad). The story yesterday (HERE) about John Berken,the paid-on-call firefighter in Forest Lake, Minnesota, is a classic case of why you absolutely need to do that.
Let’s take a look at his background:
- In 1991, he was sentenced to a year in prison for threatening to bomb the Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie. He used a radio in his car and spoke with an accent, saying, “This is Achmed Ismail. I am going to blow up your airport.”
- On another occasion, he called air traffic controllers and said the pilot of his aircraft had suffered a heart attack and that he needed help landing the plane.
- In the early 1990′s he was convicted of several theft charges in three different counties.
- In 1993 he was convicted in still another county for felony check forgery.
- When he was operating his Ford automobile dealership, he would sometimes try to intimidate his competitors by posing as a police officer. Employees of area car dealerships told authorities that Berken drove a squad car to their lots, Anoka County Sheriff’s Lt. Paul Sommer said Wednesday. Berken, wearing a SWAT team uniform and carrying a nightstick, marched up and down the aisles of dealerships, Sommer said.
- Altogether he had spent a total of 20 months in prison for his offenses before he applied to become a firefighter.
This is more than just criminal behavior. Much of it can be classed as bizarre behavior and certainly indicates an unpredictable person. When he filled out his fire department application in 2005, there was a question that asked if he had ever been convicted of any felonies within the past five years and he truthfully answered “No.” All of his convictions were closer to ten years previously.
So he was hired on provisionally while they eventually ran the background check on him. When the report came back, the city administrator and the fire chief moved to dismiss him immediately. So how did this weirdo get back on the department? After he was fired Berken appealed directly to the then-mayor Terry Smith who overrode the chief’s decision and ordered Berken to be re-instated.
“I felt it was discriminating to bar employment to an individual based on the information given within the parameters of the city application,” Smith told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “John Berken was an exemplary citizen, a director on our Chamber of Commerce. “He’d been in trouble for check forgery. But if a person pays his dues and turns his life around, I don’t see a concern there.”
So there you have it. The fire chief and the city administrator doing their jobs and a politician abandoning reasoned decisions to take care of a friend. The mayor’s faulty thinking rests on the fact that he doesn’t know the difference between “paying his dues” and how it displays the man’s character. It was there all the time and this event never had to happen.
Now let’s show some character and get this equipment checked out. I’m late getting the coffee started.
