According to an official news release, Arizona governor Doug Ducey on 25 April 2022 signed into law H.B 2159, a bill introduced by Representative John Kavanagh that withdraws authorization for the use of polygraphs in law enforcement internal investigations. Kavanagh, a Republican representing Arizona’s 23rd district, previously worked as a police officer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs (AZCOPS) attorney Steve Serbalik recorded a video commentary on the new law, which is expected to come into effect in September 2022:
The prohibition of the use of polygraphs in law enforcement internal investigations is a sound policy that respects science and protects due process. It should be noted, however, that pre-employment polygraph screening is widely required by law enforcement agencies in Arizona. In view of polygraphy’s complete lack of scientific underpinnings, this arbitrary and capricious practice should also be outlawed (as it long has been in Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Oregon).
Well my future son in law was trying to get hired by the Phoenix police department, what a horrible hiring process. He is 26 yrs old, went to ASU 4 years military paid gif his education, had an honorable discharge. The Phoenix hiring requests ridiculous information high school transcripts, copies of a paid ticket, want to see more information about his honorable discharge. He worked for amazon about 2 years, restaurants. now FedEx. All his jobs were mostly during college, left in good standing. He passed everything except half the work polygraph,said he told the truth.So now he is suspended from any further hiring gif 6 months, hiring process fine due to this I know this young man due 4 years. He has the best work ethic, character. So it’s very distressing that the Phoenix police use this process to determine a persons true character. A machine is the reason you will get hired he passed everything else. I’m an RN in AZ
This kind of crap makes me sick. Our country is being overrun by criminals, and our so-called law enforcement leadership is playing games with our safety and the reputation of fine young people by a pseudo-science gadgets like polygraphs and voice stress analyzers -both of which have the accuracy of a coin toss.
Karen, some free advice would be to have your future son in law fight this injustice. I helped knock the NITV CVSA out of my former department by sending management videos of what a huckster Charles Humble was/is and using information from this website.
I am sure some bulletproof waivers were signed, but he could still make appeals to his state senators and representatives. I would recommend he send the Leslie Stahl 60 minutes video from 1986 which is on YouTube to his political representatives. Basically, this video showed how laughably unreliable polygraphs are.