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You guys are right about the legal answers on referrals.
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The lawyers don't even want you giving
good recommendations because they say if you do that, then not giving
any recommendation for someone else implies a bad remark.
Now I'm generally a "go by the book" kind of guy, but once in awhile . . ..
Before I retired from the police department, I had a captain from a small town in Rhode Island call me one day. He had an applicant for the job of police officer, the guy was a native of that area of Rhode Island, but had been a Dallas police officer. That captain said everything looked good except he couldn't understand the guy leaving Dallas to apply with them since Dallas paid considerably more. The captain had called our Personnel Division (they call'em Human Resources now) and, even though he was a captain in another police department, Dallas wouldn't tell him anything at all except the dates the guy worked in Dallas and that he was eligible for rehire.
The Rhode Island captain called me because we had been in the same class at the FBI National Academy a year or so earlier. So I called our Personnel Division and they wouldn't even let me see the former employee's personnel records, even though I had been Commander of the Personnel Division several years earlier. However, I did learn in which division the former officer worked and who his sergeant and lieutenant were. So I contacted them. I found that the young man from Rhode Island had been a fine officer, his supervisors were sorry to lose him, and would love to have him back. But his wife was also from Rhode Island, had never been far from home until they moved to Dallas, and she insisted on moving back there, so he did.
So I violated the rules (statute of limitations has expired) and told the Rhode Island captain what I'd learned. I'm sure he hired himself a fine young officer.