Not a very smart hire

A Palm Beach County, Florida sheriff's deputy named Oscar Maturana is in his own agency's jail with a $100,000 bail, after allegedly pulling out a pistol at a nightclub and threatening to "bust a cap" into a security guard and other customers.

Deputy Maturana seems to have a long history of minor scrapes with the law before he joined the department in 2007, including multiple traffic tickets and being fired by another company for "improper sales documentation" (code for "stealing"?) after being disciplined for "improper count of merchandise" (more theft?). Oh, and his last job before becoming a sheriff's deputy was, ironically, working as a security guard at a strip club.

A fine resume, indeed.

So how did a person with this type of work history get hired as a police officer? Affirmative action, naturally. According to the article, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw wished to increase the "diversity" of the department and have more Spanish-speaking officers, so he apparently went out and hired the first person he saw who spoke the lingo:

" [Col. Mike] Gauger said Monday he brought Maturana to the agency after they met through an acquaintance and Gauger realized Maturana spoke fluent Spanish. Sheriff Ric Bradshaw wanted to expand the agency's minority representation, he said."...

..."'We have a very large Hispanic community and always look to add those who can represent minority communities,' he added. 'Sometimes we make exceptions because they fit into categories that you are trying to make inroads with in your agency.'" (Emphasis mine)

And in the aftermath of this incident we see exactly what happens all too often after making those "exceptions". Hiring people who are obviously unsuited for a job just because they match a certain check-box on a form isn't doing the citizens of that county any favors whatsoever.

I don't care if a person is black, white, brown, green, male, female, gay, or a Scientologist, as long as they can do a job properly, especially if that job is a public safety position. Hiring a completely unqualified, low-level criminal as a law-enforcement officer simply because he speaks fluent Spanish, or agitating for employing tiny-framed women who as firefighters can't drag around victims or properly lift equipment, endangering their fellow stationmates, are only two examples of what rampant affirmative action has wrought on our society.

Selecting people for positions simply because their race or sex is underrepresented in a given field is a certain recipe for instances of disaster, and the policy unfairly excludes excellently qualified candidates who happen to not be the sex or color needed to flesh out the perceived category deficit (the goal of 20% of the entire department being female firefighters, in the above LA Weekly article).

I don't see anything "affirmative" about those types of outcomes.