I agree 100% with what Leonidas just said, especially the part about lowering hiring standards in a critical job such as a police officer. We've also had similar situations where people were hired against recommendations of multiple layers of people in the hiring process and the results were disasterous.
I also agree with Ziggy in that public pensions should be seperated with sworn personnel (cops and fireman) being totally seperate from civilain jobs within government. In fact thats how my department's pensions are handled. Not only are they seperate, but the civilians have totally different (and lower) pension benefits than we do. It seems that just about every complaint Ive heard in this thread about public pensions doesnt apply to my city and we are doing it right. If every government agency handled their pensions the way we do, I doubt we would even be having this discussion, which is hard for me to believe because just about everything else my city does is royally screwed up.
I also agree with Ziggy in that public pensions should be seperated with sworn personnel (cops and fireman) being totally seperate from civilain jobs within government. In fact thats how my department's pensions are handled. Not only are they seperate, but the civilians have totally different (and lower) pension benefits than we do. It seems that just about every complaint Ive heard in this thread about public pensions doesnt apply to my city and we are doing it right. If every government agency handled their pensions the way we do, I doubt we would even be having this discussion, which is hard for me to believe because just about everything else my city does is royally screwed up.