Hello,
I was hoping someone could help me out here. I want to apply to Border Patrol but feel I would be denied suitability based on a professional misconduct claim from my previous employer.
A quick run down of the incident: I didn’t break the law but I did breach the code of ethics for my profession. I have been referred to the board of my profession for review but will surrender my license. My previous employer launched their internal investigation but found it inconclusive. I know the state board will find one count of misconduct and could potentially put a mark on my license, suspend it, or revoke it. However, I just want to forego all of this and simply surrender the license. I know I did wrong and just want to move forward from this.
Personal background: I have a masters degree, my current employers all know me as an outstanding and respectful individual (if they were to have found out what happened they would know it’s out of character and unexpected as did everyone else who knew me and of the incident). Aside from the incident, my close supervisors and coworkers did not expect that from me and even have said verbatim it’s out of character and not like him. I have a decent credit score, I borrowed out a mortgage for my mom and she went a little under or for two months without paying it (she didn’t realize the money wasn’t being deducted due to procedures from the mortgage company-she had insufficient funds twice and as a result removed the autopay functionality). As soon as we found out we instantly paid it. I have nothing in collections. I am paying all of loans on time. I have no criminal background nor tickets given to me in the past 7 years. I did have drug use twice (once in 2022 and other times in my youth as a middle schooler). I haven’t since.
If there’s anyone who could give me more insight on the possibility of getting a clearance with BPA on this I would appreciate it.
If your concern is the misconduct, then that’s not enough info to help much. It will probably depend on the type of misconduct (leaking proprietary info, “stealing” company resources, sexual harassment, etc). Some of those like stealing pencils, they’ll probably lecture you then clear you, others like leaking info, could disqualify you.
I will be transparent as it’s necessary to be so in this situation and I’m obviously not proud of this (I’m deeply ashamed and am lucky I still have my wife after this). I was also heavily under the influence of alcohol when this happened and have taken steps to root out alcohol and prevent myself from being placed in the same situation again (not going to bars/clubs) but the misconduct was inappropriate conduct with a student.
The student was 18 at the time and I was under the influence. I was with a few friends and the student talked to me about some familial difficulties they were facing at the time. I invited the student to go out to a club where they would permit 18 year olds. They declined. I immediately told the student the next day at school I would refrain from communicating with them again and apologized for the invitation (albeit a solely friendly invitation). They said I didn’t have to but I still did. However, this student has always had truancy issues throughout their high school career and unfortunately I was an easy scapegoat to pin the blame on three to four weeks after the incident happened. The school conducted a title 9 investigation and found it inconclusive. I was on administrative leave with pay the entire time. My superiors said they would say it was out of character if they were ever questioned by HR (I didn’t ask them for this but knew I did a lot for the school and community as I was heavily involved). In addition, the investigation was partially found inconclusive because the student made remarks such as I was respectful and never suggested anything sexual and they refused to cooperate in the investigation as they didn’t want anything to happen to me. All of this was document by the district attorney and Human Resources personnel. We did reach a settlement agreement where any inquiry of my employment would only permit them to give information about my compensation, length of employment, and positions held. Prior to this incident I taught for 4 years and never had any disciplinary issues such as this one. However, all it took was one night of too much drinking and a series of bad choices to cause me to be here.
They have the toughest poly of all. People pass 3 letter agencies, fail there. They may take strong issue with a breach of ethics as they want to exclude anyone who would collaborate with cartels, abuse migrants, etc.