D.C.’s chief construction inspector didn’t tell District officials that he had served four years in federal prison on drug and weapons charges because he wasn’t asked, according to his 1999 job application.
D.C. Department of Construction and Regulation handed Juan Scott a law enforcement badge, and gave him the authority to shut down building projects and have homebuilders arrested for violating his orders.
For more than two months, Scott has been under investigation by federal and city authorities after developers and a FBI agent accused Scott of conspiracy to commit bribery.
Two weeks ago, federal prosecutors charged a former DCRA supervisor with trying to bribe Scott to lift a stop-work order and reduce a fine on a project in the 1100 block of Fifth Street in Northwest Washington. Scott has not been charged.
Two D.C. council members have called on the District to conduct criminal background checks for employees who have law enforcement powers.
“It shouldn’t mean an automatic disqualification,” said D.C. Council Member Phil Mendelson, “but the District has an interest in knowing the criminal backgrounds of employees with police powers.”
With the exception of employees who have regular direct contact with children, the city does not have any rules that would bar hiring someone with felony convictions that occurred more than 10 years ago, no matter the offense.
Scott had to go to prison for violating his probation on drug and weapons charges after he and his cousin, a D.C. police officer, were caught in their Southeast Washington home with $100,000 worth of potent cocaine and a cache of weapons that included 17 rifles, 400 rounds of ammunition and a live grenade.
After Scott was freed from federal prison in Pennsylvania in 1991, he got a job with Marsco Consulting in Forestville, Md., where for eight years he honed his skills as a homebuilder, met with architects and engineers, obtained permits and supervised subcontractors.
In 1999, when Scott filled out the application form for a construction inspector’s job with the same District government that had sent him to prison, he was asked if he had been convicted of a felony during the past 10 years. Although he had served his sentence during that period, his conviction was handed down 13 years earlier, and Scott answered, “No.”
As the question reads now, the more time a felon serves in prison, the sooner he can go to work for the District without telling about his criminal past, said a person involved in the investigation.
Mendelson said the question could be interpreted more than one way and he would like to see it defined more clearly.
DCRA officials have since taken away Scott’s law enforcement badge and his inspection authorities while the investigation is under way, a spokesman said.
