New sheriff institutes more thorough hiring practices

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - It's been three months since Jack Campbell resigned as Sheriff of Sangamon County and Paula Crouch took over as the new sheriff. This came after controversy surrounded the department after former sheriff's deputy Sean Grayson shot and killed Sonya Massey in her home. The community questioned how Grayson was hired after a former department said he needed "high-stress decision making" classes and he was discharged from the army for serious misconduct.

Now, Crouch is making changes to the office's hiring practices to make sure each person in the Sheriff's office is qualified for the job.

The changes start with the interview process, where Crouch has expanded how many people connect with each candidate.

"With our interview process, instead of just the applicant sitting down and talking to me, I've kind of built a panel of four people," said Crouch. "So everybody on that panel has maybe a little bit different background, so that when we're evaluating the applicant and their suitability, you have varying, backgrounds that can base their answers on."

It's traditional for departments to take a deep dive into potential candidates, put Crouch wants to make sure her hiring team is thorough. While they still follow tradition practices, like checking for criminal charges and past career incidents, Crouch wants to look for patterns of issues and potential red flags.

"We're not only looking for convictions, that might be just a quick computer check," said Crouch. "We're looking for a history of calls of service to their residence. Have the police been out there five times for loud parties? Have there been disturbances at their house or fights that maybe didn't rise to the level that a police officer would actually be required to write a police report on, but yet someone called the police and the police responded."

Once these steps are completed, a merit commission gets to vote on whether or not the candidate should be considered for hire. Crouch hopes creating a system where multiple eyes are on each application and candidate will ensure nothing gets missed.

But the added issue she faces is the fact that you only know what you can find. If references or former departments won't cooperate, the information her staff can get is limited. She has over a dozen positions to fill and needs more staff to keep the office functional.

She also can't predict how someone will act once they face pressure or actually get on the job. Her goal is to be as thorough as possible, but she knows she will have to change the process.

"There are no guarantees that a person's personality, their behaviors won't change in a year," said Crouch. "... I can't say that if I hire you today, that you're awesome today, that you're going to be awesome in five years, because we can't control external factors and the experiences that go with a police officer, a correctional officer, and the things that they see throughout their career."

The Sangamon County Sheriff's Office currently has eight vacancies for patrol deputies, 15 vacancies for correctional officers, and two vacancies for the court security team.