Bad hires, not bad goal.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Corrupt cops cause a lot of damage to their police departments, their communities and their victims. Juan Lara and Roger Magana did all that, and they caused another kind of damage as well: They cast a shadow over the Eugene Police Department's efforts to recruit members of minority groups into its ranks.

The latest review of the Lara and Magana case makes it clear that the damage resulted from flawed hiring processes, processes that should in no way discredit the goal of having a police force that resembles the community it serves.

The review, by former McMinnville Police Chief Rod Brown of Public Safety Liability Management Inc., makes it clear that there's a right way and a wrong way to achieve greater diversity in a work force. The wrong way lowers standards, handicaps anyone who might be suspected of having benefited from the lower standards, and, in the extreme, opens the door to criminals. The right way keeps standards uniformly high, and ensures that no job applicant is able to evade normal screening of background and qual- ifications.

Both Lara and Magana used their positions and authority as Eugene police officers to coerce women into sexual acts. Magana is serving a 94-year prison term for rape, kidnapping and other crimes. Lara was released after serving a much shorter term for official misconduct, public indecency and other offenses.

The two men's victims have won a total of $5 million in civil damages from the city. The real price to the victims and to the reputation of the police department is beyond reckoning, and it is still being paid.

Lara and Magana also sent widening ripples of harm in another direction. Like many public and private organizations, the city of Eugene, including its police department, has encouraged members of ethnic and racial minority groups to apply for positions in an attempt to diversify the work force. The fact that the police department's two most notorious bad apples are Hispanic hands powerful ammunition to critics of such efforts.

Brown found that both Lara and Magana indeed benefited from hiring processes that aimed to increase minority representation. Magana, in particular, got a free pass for a criminal history that would have disqualified other applicants. Red flags in Lara's past were also overlooked.

The hiring process in place at the time was defective, Brown found, partly because no one in charge of it had access to all of the pertinent information about applicants. The process has been improved in ways that would ensure that neither Lara nor Magana would be hired today.

Two phenomenally bad hires are enough to discredit the process that allowed them to occur, leading to much-needed reforms. A flawed process, however, does nothing to discredit the goal it was meant to achieve. A police force is strengthened by having officers from a variety of backgrounds - it improves the odds that the force will be able to understand and win the trust of all segments of the community. Conversely, a police force is weakened if its officers are all alike because the risk of miscommunication and distrust is increased.

Yet an effort to broaden diversity by lowering standards for some applicants is worse than no effort at all. At best, unqualified hires bring higher training costs, and may deliver poor performance throughout their careers. The worst case is exemplified by Lara and Magana.

A lasting injustice also is done to all fully qualified members of minority groups - no matter what they do, they're suspected of being unable to succeed without preferential treatment.

The proper course is to encourage applications and provide opportunities in ways that give the police force the strength that comes with diversity, while maintaining high standards for everyone. The Eugene Police Department has attempted to put such a process in place.

Its aim is to ensure good hires and avoid bad ones - whatever their background. The goal of diversity should not be added to the list of Lara and Magana's victims.