retcopper wrote on Sep 1^st, 2005 at 7:50pm:

Sergeant; I don't have to post anything about polys because all good cops know that the poly is necessary and effective.

Pre-employment polygraph screening is hardly necessary. Police departments in states like Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Jersey do fine without it, as do all the police departments in democracies of western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

And while polygraph screening may be "effective" for eliciting admissions from applicants who don't yet realize that it's a sham (a dwindling population), it is completely invalid as a means of determining truth versus deception. Making matters worse, it's inherently biased against the truthful, yet easily defeated by liars who understand "the lie behind the lie detector."