Los Angeles Daily News staff writer Harrison Sheppard reports on the Los Angeles City Council’s decision to award a $615,000 contract for polygraph services. This short article is cited in full here:
In an effort to speed up the police recruiting process, the City Council on Tuesday approved a $615,000 contract with a company to conduct polygraph tests on new recruits.
After the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division scandal, the city began requiring every police recruit to undergo a lie-detector test, but the LAPD does not have enough personnel to conduct the tests, leading to a backlog of 500 to 600 recruits in the application process.
The council approved a six-month contract with U.S. Investigation Services Inc.
The firm, headquartered in Vienna, Va., said it can eliminate the backlog in 60 days and then will continue working to prevent future backlogs. The company is expected to conduct about 1,400 polygraph tests at a cost of $395 each.
The city will also reimburse the contractor for up to $62,000 in travel costs.
“Ultimately, we want to hire more polygraph test-givers ourselves, but right now to catch up with the backlog, we are doing this contract with an outside firm,” said Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, chairwoman of the council’s Public Safety Committee.
For discussion of LAPD’s polygraph policy, see the AntiPolygraph.org message board’s California Polygraph Reform Initiative forum.