More should adopt Patrol's whole 'person approach'

On Dec. 3 the Washington State Patrol announced it was taking a new direction in the way it screened applicants for employment.

In the past, applicants might have been eliminated if it were found they had received a teenage drinking violation, smoked marijuana in the past three years or accidentally got caught using prescription drugs that were prescribed for someone else. Now, in order to have a larger pool of applicants for the 223 positions projected to become open over the next four years, the State Patrol is relaxing those disqualifiers in favor of what it calls a “whole person approach.”...