Philip Messing of the New York Post reports on the New York Police Department’s polygraph program:
THE ‘TRUTH SQUAD’ HURTS (CRIMINALS)
By PHILIP MESSING
June 5, 2006 — Call it the NYPD “Truth Squad.”
They’re nearly one dozen newly trained detectives skilled in administering “lie detector” exams – tests given to several hundred witnesses and criminal suspects since last fall, The Post has learned. Six of the new experts are members of the NYPD Major Case Squad who were trained last fall to become experts in smelling a lie.
NYPD Deputy Chief Jeremiah Quinlan, who heads the Special Investigations Division, said the push to train new NYPD polygraph experts began last July. So far, he said, exam results have been interesting.
“We knew one guy who failed,” Quinlan recalled with a laugh, “after he tried to disconnect the machine when the polygraph examiner momentarily left the room.”
The detective polygraphists – five men and one woman picked from 30 applicants – are assigned to satellite NYPD offices in The Bronx and Queens.
From Sept. 10 through May 28, Quinlan’s corps of polygraphists conducted 154 exams.
Meanwhile, five other detectives – four men and a woman – have performed scores of exams for the NYPD Organized Crime Control Bureau, sources said.
Polygraphs are administered to “subjects” – people who may later emerge as criminal suspects – or witnesses whose credibility remains in doubt. It can be given only to someone who volunteers to take it – and is never given to sex-crime victims, pregnant women or people with heart conditions.
Of course, the NYPD’s “truth squad” can only hurt those criminals gullible enough to believe that the polygraph can detect deception. Because polygraph “testing” has no scientific basis, is inherently biased against the truthful, and yet is readily circumvented through the use of simple countermeasures that members of the “truth squad” cannot detect, the NYPD would be wise not to rely on polygraph chart readings to guide their investigations. To its credit, the NYPD does not rely on polygraphs to screen applicants for employment.
I understand that NYPD does not administer polygraphs testing to screen applicants for employment. However could NYPD use other states polygraphs test findings or results to screen applicants for employment decisions ? What the Law on that