{"id":137608,"date":"2023-02-26T08:15:52","date_gmt":"2023-02-26T13:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=137608"},"modified":"2023-02-25T10:17:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-25T15:17:15","slug":"va-employees-with-criminal-history-related-to-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=137608","title":{"rendered":"VA Employees with criminal history related to drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report states that hundreds of employees, with drug related criminal histories, are still working at the VA. These histories relate to felony controlled-substance possession. These employees potentially increase the chances of drug theft being committed. In some cases, VA employees were allowed to continue with their employment after their drug related conviction was discovered.<\/p>\n

From Fox News:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

“VHA received information about this conviction via a criminal history record in August 2018 and hired the employee as a nursing assistant in September 2018,” GAO said. “As of September 2022, the employee continues to work at VHA as a nursing assistant.”<\/p>\n

In another case, the VHA was aware that a job candidate had been convicted four times of felony possession of cocaine between 1996 and 2001. The VHA received that information in May 2010 and hired that person in June 2010 as a student trainee. That staffer is still onboard as a health technician.<\/p>\n

And in a third case, GAO found that an individual employed as of last fall as a pharmacy technician despite a conviction for felony possession and sale of hydrocodone, an opioid used to treat pain. VHA learned of this conviction in 2006 and hired this staffer in 2007.<\/p>\n

GAO concluded that VHA has no control processes in place to take information about past drug convictions of prospective employees and use that information to assess whether those convictions make them ineligible to work closely with veterans. It also found that “some VHA employees did not have completed background investigations as required.”<\/p>\n

“VHA lacks assurance that employees with undisclosed criminal history or other adverse information are properly vetted and risks hiring unsuitable individuals who may pose a risk to veterans,” GAO said.<\/p>\n

VHA is also failing to comply with federal law that requires it to get a waiver from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) before hiring staff members with drug-related criminal convictions.<\/p>\n

“VHA doesn’t have a waiver policy and didn’t consistently request them, so VHA’s screening process may overlook individuals who may pose risks to veterans,” GAO said. “We recommended VHA implement a policy regarding these employment waivers to protect veterans.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fox News has the rest of the story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report states that hundreds of employees, with drug related criminal histories, … VA Employees with criminal history related to drugs<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-issues","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}