Lexington Fire Department talks about McCargo’s Criminal History

For the first time, the Lexington Fire Department spoke out about Jarad McCargo’s criminal history saying ‘its hands were tied’ when it came to the background check process.

Jarad McCargo faces charges of hit and run and DUI. Other charges are pending. But as we learned, his criminal record dates back further than this past weekend including a reported crime the fire department said it never knew about.

ABC 36 News told you Monday about a 2010 case where McCargo was charged with felony theft in Lexington. After a plea deal, court documents showed he was sentenced to six months in jail and two years unsupervised probation. The fire department said it was aware of that.

The department said it didn’t know about an outstanding DUI warrant out of Georgia from 1999 which ABC 36 News reported Tuesday. 

As part of the hiring process, McCargo went through a background check the department said each new hire goes through, including using the Administrative Office of the Courts for information from Kentucky.

"In addition to that we use some third party vendors to, we have to get the consent of the applicant, they sign a waiver, we can check with the other vendors for information. The issue here is not everyone is diligent or timely sometimes maybe about sending information to those vendors and if they don’t we don’t have any way to find it," said battalion chief Joe Best.

One criteria, according to the fire department during the hiring process is you can’t be on probation during that time. The fire department said McCargo was not on probation in 2013 when he was hired.

The department also said there is exclusionary criteria during the hiring process. ABC 36 News was asked to file an open records request for those.