Distrust of police is separate from distrust of the legal system, at least in my eyes. Your question is about two different groups - Two applicants walks in and one is exLEO and one is not. Thats different than two applicants walk in and one being a felon/one not.
For criminals, people draw all sorts of lines. Sex crimes, violent crime, robbery, crimes of any kind against children. Different people in different fields will draw different lines. A great example is people who work with money obviously get leery around people charged with theft, embezzlement, or tampering. This is why convicts working trash services is such a “popular” job for the deeper end of the crime spectrum. They dont work with people, children, or money. You can be a sex pest, violent home invader, fraudster, and none of that matters because you sling cans and don’t talk to homeowners. If you can wake up at 4am, and show up not drunk, and can move 60-120 lb trashcan, you have a job. All this to say, it would depend on what my hypothetical small business is doing, and what position applied for, where I’d draw that line with regards to monetary crimes. Violence and sex crimes are harder to justify allowing as customer facing the worse they get, but in accounting? Hardly relevant I’d think unless its egregious or consistent enough to think I’ll be replacing them in 6 months as they caught a repeat case. I worked with a man who was charged with assault over a decade prior for getting in a fight, and nothing else. No issues as a cashier - because it was a fight with a dude over something not a recurring anger issue. Case by case.
As for exLEO, as the question probably wants to ask, people in this thread would probably get leery about why they are looking for new work. Retired and Forced to Quit are very different reasons that HR won’t answer and the person is not obligated to be forthcoming about yet probably what people would want to know. Its also generally a highly prized skillset, honestly. On the professional end, you (generally) have report writing skills, documentation, and hypervigilance skills. While honesty of LEOs is probably the OPs aimed weak point, most customer facing jobs do not have the one thing LEOs perceptually abuse - authorisation to use force. Most customer facing jobs dont allow you to talk back, get in confrontations where you might be the cause, or put hands on people. For these reasons most people who distrust former police will still hire them.
Edit: I guess all this to say, it depends on the crime, and depends on how deeply you distrust former cops. I don’t even trust my regular coworkers/employees to show up on fucking time, and they arent either felons or former cops. I’d be their boss hiring them cuz I need a job done - I’m not interviewing for new BFFs and looking to get chummy about their idiosyncrasies. So for me the only important part I see is “does their history with these institutions show they are so distrustful that I will have to fire them quickly?”
Distrust of police is separate from distrust of the legal system, at least in my eyes. Your question is about two different groups - Two applicants walks in and one is exLEO and one is not. Thats different than two applicants walk in and one being a felon/one not.
For criminals, people draw all sorts of lines. Sex crimes, violent crime, robbery, crimes of any kind against children. Different people in different fields will draw different lines. A great example is people who work with money obviously get leery around people charged with theft, embezzlement, or tampering. This is why convicts working trash services is such a “popular” job for the deeper end of the crime spectrum. They dont work with people, children, or money. You can be a sex pest, violent home invader, fraudster, and none of that matters because you sling cans and don’t talk to homeowners. If you can wake up at 4am, and show up not drunk, and can move 60-120 lb trashcan, you have a job. All this to say, it would depend on what my hypothetical small business is doing, and what position applied for, where I’d draw that line with regards to monetary crimes. Violence and sex crimes are harder to justify allowing as customer facing the worse they get, but in accounting? Hardly relevant I’d think unless its egregious or consistent enough to think I’ll be replacing them in 6 months as they caught a repeat case. I worked with a man who was charged with assault over a decade prior for getting in a fight, and nothing else. No issues as a cashier - because it was a fight with a dude over something not a recurring anger issue. Case by case.
As for exLEO, as the question probably wants to ask, people in this thread would probably get leery about why they are looking for new work. Retired and Forced to Quit are very different reasons that HR won’t answer and the person is not obligated to be forthcoming about yet probably what people would want to know. Its also generally a highly prized skillset, honestly. On the professional end, you (generally) have report writing skills, documentation, and hypervigilance skills. While honesty of LEOs is probably the OPs aimed weak point, most customer facing jobs do not have the one thing LEOs perceptually abuse - authorisation to use force. Most customer facing jobs dont allow you to talk back, get in confrontations where you might be the cause, or put hands on people. For these reasons most people who distrust former police will still hire them.
Edit: I guess all this to say, it depends on the crime, and depends on how deeply you distrust former cops. I don’t even trust my regular coworkers/employees to show up on fucking time, and they arent either felons or former cops. I’d be their boss hiring them cuz I need a job done - I’m not interviewing for new BFFs and looking to get chummy about their idiosyncrasies. So for me the only important part I see is “does their history with these institutions show they are so distrustful that I will have to fire them quickly?”