Ex-city worker runs anti-Semitic website (CA)

[struggle4progress]

ESCONDIDO — A 29-year-old clerical employee in the Escondido City Manager’s Office was forced out of his job this week after city officials learned he operates an anti-Semitic website and is active in a movement that blames Jews for the 9/11 terror attacks.

Poway resident John Friend was hired by Escondido about three months ago as a division coordinator, which is responsible for a variety of administrative duties in the City Manager’s Office including supervising support staff and helping develop office policies and procedures, according to the city’s website ...

Friend told a reporter he finds “inspiration and guidance from America’s Founding Fathers” as well as “white Christian patriots” such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels ...

Friend — an “at will” employee for the city — said he was called into his supervisor’s office on Wednesday and given the option of stepping down or being fired. He chose to resign ...

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/sep/10/escondido-fired-city-manager-office-anti-Semitic/

[kelliekat44]

1. What do employers use for background checks these days? nt

[tularetom]

2. That's a good question, and not just "these days" either...

As a thirty year employee in local government, I could tell you stories that would make you cringe, including the time a prospective hiree, pulled a gun on me as I left the office after interviewing him for an open position. I found out later he had been discharged from the Army for beating up a fellow enlisted man, and had been institutionalized three times for making threats and taking a dump on his boss's front porch. None of this came up in the background check done by our crack HR department. And this was in 1986 or 87.

[Behind the Aegis]

3. And he was forced out? Now that is shocking.

Good for them. But did anyone bother to ask if his hate-filled rantings were "true" and debate them or did they simply "attack the messenger?"