The Nation - News from Nov. 21, 1988

Fifty-seven percent of the police officers at the 172 Veterans Administration hospitals had criminal records, lacked adequate experience or left previous jobs under a cloud, an internal audit has found. The VA inspector general’s office reported that most agency medical centers and clinics had not performed proper background checks on police applicants before hiring them. Ten percent of the 1,742 VA police officers had previously been arrested for such crimes as murder, rape, armed robbery, assault and embezzlement, and were convicted on related charges, the audit found. Dozens more were convicted of crimes once they began working at VA facilities.