Roselyn Romero reports for The Oaklandside that the City Council of Oakland, California, has approved contracts totaling $800,000 to two private companies for the polygraph screening of Oakland Police Department applicants. Excerpt:
Last week, the Oakland City Council approved contracts with two companies at a cost of $800,000 over six years — roughly $133,000 per year — to administer polygraph tests as part of OPD’s hiring process for police officers and dispatchers.
Sometimes called “lie detectors,” polygraph machines measure a person’s physical responses — heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, or perspiration — as they answer questions. Polygraph examiners claim a “heightened” physiological response could indicate a lie.
But lots of experts say polygraphs don’t work.
Leonard Saxe, a psychologist at Brandeis University, told The Oaklandside that there is no scientific proof that polygraphs can be used successfully to screen job applicants and detect attempts to deceive. Saxe’s research on polygraph examinations in the 1980s led the U.S. Department of Labor to enact the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, which bars most private employers from using lie detectors for the hiring process or during an employee’s tenure.
“The Oakland police are spending $800,000 on something that has been so discredited,” Saxe said. “If people wanted to defeat the polygraph, there are books on how to beat it. So in 2024, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that they’re doing this.”
OPD uses polygraph examinations to assess a job candidate’s honesty and “identify any potential risks that could harm the reputation of the department, city, and the profession as a whole,” the department’s media team wrote in an email to The Oaklandside.
In a report to the City Council, OPD Chief Floyd Mitchell described in more detail how OPD uses the tests. “Candidates are not eliminated from the background investigation process based on the indication of deception,” he wrote. “In many cases, additional background information that was not initially provided by the candidate is discovered during the polygraph examination. The process aids the background investigator in quickly identifying background information that may require follow-up.”
If it is true that the Oakland Police Department does not eliminate applicants “based on the indication of deception,” as OPD Chief Floyd Mitchell avers, then his department is one of only a few with such a policy. One wonders just how many applicants who “fail” the polygraph, but make no disqualifying admission, actually go on to be hired?
AntiPolygraph.org welcomes feedback from anyone with knowledge of the Oakland Police Department’s polygraph practices.
Read the rest of Roselyn Romero’s excellent report here.