04/10/2019
Peter Brown's hiring as tax assessor trainee may or may not have been along guidelines for the city of Dover, NJ. I don't know and probably never will.
Human Resource protections for an employee vary from state to state as well some organizations have stricter policies. That said there should be some sort of disclosure that would not violate HR policies. Like requesting if an employee was not given a background check for some reason if one would have been standard procedure for a new hire.
But that seems to also be beyond Dover, NJ policy to disclose. It seems such an easy answer that would preserve some measure of accountability in hiring practices. All employees should be employed under the same process if one has to have a background check then all should have a background check. The people deserve transparency and equality in the hiring of city employees. I requested whether or not Mr. Brown was subject to the same background check as past employees of the city of Dover. And I was told that information would be unavailable, and now I completely understand that the information in the report is and should be confidential. But whether Mr. Brown was subject to special privileges would not have violated any privacy issues, Despite my best effort I could not get or find a standardized hiring practice for the city of Dover, NJ. But I believe in Mr. Brown's case there are many disturbing facts in his past that I would have felt would have discouraged his hiring as the tax assessor in training. One of which that sticks out the most of all is his termination from JP Morgan Chase for Embezzlement of a clients money totaling 9,000 dollars.
The position Mr. Brown is training to hold is a critical position that carries huge responsibility and gives that person access to some very private data. So, in my opinion, the disturbing termination in his past would have and should have shown he was not a good fit for this position. More troubling is I received a document that shows that city officials were indeed made aware of these concerns around the first week of January 2019 — but are choosing not to address this at least publicly. It is my concern that the city appears to have deviated from traditional hiring practices for this employee and has not answered why.
See Documents Below
Item's blacked out are recipients email's and facts that I could not verify as to being accurate
