Remove Unfair Non-disclosure Agreement clauses from the Police Employment Process

Each year, thousands of applicants apply for a position in law enforcement. To apply for these positions, applicants are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement to apply and then later when they are denied employment based on unknown circumstances, they are left wondering what happened. In most cases, the applicant knows why they were denied employment but there are quite a few cases where there is an informant who has made claims regarding the applicants abilities or past conduct preventing them employment in that field.

While the state courts have made the claim that disclosure of adverse information regarding an applicant could prevent informants from coming forward with pertinent information regarding the employee, it results in a biased background investigation and a denial of employment wherever the applicant goes based on each background done following the applicant.

These non-disclosure agreements are very harmful to people who are applying for these types of jobs in a very competitive job market and to deny someone the right to know why they are not being selected is just wrong. The federal government doesn't allow this practice in their employment process so neither should the states. It is time for there to be more openness in the hiring of police officer applicants.