It seems unusual that we've had a sudden spike in requests for employment background checks from the feds and only since the Ebola thing started has this occurred. I've been in the PD for 24 years with most of it spent in the NCIC part of the PD

Some info to be aware of - I work for local city PD in Tennesee and one of my tasks is processing postal mail
requests for reports, records, backgrounds etc. and we also check local
background for employment purposes for government agencies - federal, state
and local. Something I have noticed in the last few weeks is the sudden
increase of requests for employment background checks from the federal
office of personnel management (U.S. Government jobs) and last week I
processed three packages of background requests and noticed that a good
number of them were for lower wage jobs such as laborers and similar low
wage jobs and most of those would be like/similar to janitorial (clean up),
heavy labor such as digging either by hand or with heavy
machinery.........you see where this could go given the Ebola situation
amongst others.

While requests for employment background checks are not uncommon what is
uncommon is the sudden spike of requests coming in large quantities and
for, primarily, low wage labor/hard labor positions. Not trying to make a
mountain out of a mole hill however there is reason to think that a large
number of folks will be needed to do clean up work (possibly mass
burials/cremation at some point) and there were some requests for higher
wage jobs related to specific/specialized work such as health care,
engineering etc. but most were the low wage labor type.
Thank god for Steve fails site eh opie?
All that said to say this - it seems unusual that we've had a sudden spike
in requests for employment background checks from the feds and only since
the Ebola thing started has this occurred. I've been in the PD for over 20 years
with most of it spent in the records part of the PD and in records since
January of this year and I've not seen this level of fed employment
background requests at all until the last month or so.

Also keep in mind that Knoxville has the main campus of the University of
Tennessee, University Hospital which is, most likely, where any Ebola cases
in this area would go and we have Oak Ridge National Labs about 40 miles
northwest of the city and lots of tech companies in the area as well.

The major regional airport here is McGee-Tyson and the McGee-Tyson Airbase
is there as well - Air National Guard. So lots of things around this area
and it's no secret that lots of Russians, mid-east and Asian folks reside
here in Knoxville and the surrounding area and in the Smokey Mountain area
around/in Gatlinburg, Townsend, Cades Cove.

Thanks again for your work and for keeping us up to date on what's going on
- very few places left to find out this kind of critical information.