Public Servant - You said: Chicbette -- You are correct that your story is anectdotal. However, it does not take Dr. Drew to see that it is not empirical. Not only is it a singular account, your belief in your fiance is hardly sufficient to establish ground truth. Ultimately, if there is video evidence, any true LE organization will thoroughly review it. If sufficient video exists and your fiance is being truthful, he will be exhonerated. [/quote] Although of course my theory of ground truth is colored by my trust in my fiance, I assert his innocence as ground truth based on the following: 1) The strangeness of the man that accused him. (Homeless, no money, no credit cards, no vehicle, estranged from his own family w/a history of drug/alcohol problems) 2) The fact that the accuser served 30 days in jail several years ago on the charge of displaying a weapon (which he claims were fabricated by his accusers) 3) The fact that the accuser filed a patently fraudulent lien on my fiance's commercial property in an attempt to extort nearly $9,000 from us. 4) The assertion by a business associate that when he requested the accuser to sign a lien release document, that the accuser told him that for $1700 cash he would sign it and go away. And if we did not come up with money for him, he would find a way to make things much worse for us. 5) My fiance's repeated insistence that the police should view the video tapes before sending him off for a polygraph 6) The fact that my fiance would have had to jump through a lot of very convoluted hoops to gain access to a gun of any kind (when this incident occurred, he was serving a short jail sentence on work release for completely unrelated infraction) The police, on the other hand, have based their case on the folllowing: 1) The accusation independant of any character assessment of the accuser. 2) The theory that perhaps my fiance obtained a plastic toy gun from his 11 year old son (who was staying, with all his toys, at his mother's house.) 3) The fact that my fiance admitted to being in the location the alleged crime took place 4) The fact that it was 10 days between the alleged incident and when the police got around to searching our home/vehicles for a gun, in which we would have had plenty of time to get rid of it..... 5) And perhaps most disturbingly - the marriage of a police deputy to a disgruntled former employee of my fiance. Together this couple owns and runs a competing business (with the help of funds, samples and computer software she stole from my fiance)These people are close personal friends of my fiance's probation officer. SO, in a case where there is little evidence, why not roll the dice and require the probationer to take a polygraph at his own expense? This way, they don't have to spend more police time and money on investigation, or truly evaluating the circumstances of the case. And it's also nice to give the Examiner, a retired county sherriff who is an old friend of the PO, a little boost to his income, since he's only been doing this for less than a year. The PO tried to get this guy $200 in "expense money" (from my fiance) to come to our small, lovely mountain resort town for the night to administer the test the following morning, and my fiance said he preferred to get up early and drive the 2.5 hours to this guy's place of business - This probably made the examiner mad to begin with - his free little mini-trip to go visit old friends got squashed. A weak and irrelevant control question is created, either intentionally or due to lack of experience, and SURPRISE! my guy fails the test. This then gives the "system" the opportunity to rip his life apart. I call this an ABUSE, and the very fact that this can happen, makes me ashamed of a justice system I used to be so proud of. There is almost NOTHING to prevent this from happening. I bet there are dozens, if not hundreds of LE departments across our country filled with uneducated yokels making barely more than minimum wage (as ours is), who would of course prefer to rely on a polygraph rather than get their butts off the stools in the donut shop to perform a truly vigorous investigation. It's easy to believe the polygraph infallible when 1) one's physiology education doesn't extend beyond 7th grade health science, 2) one's understanding of psychology is based on TV talk shows, and 3) one's superior officers indicate a folkloric-like belief in the polygraph that has been passed down from generation to generation. Sure, a polygraph is supposed to be only one facet of an investigation when all other avenues have perhaps been exhausted. And the examiner is supposed to follow rigorous procedures. HOWEVER, the fact of the matter is that both of the above are unenforceable, under the current system. I fully support the idea that law enforcement needs to be a bit more suspicious of people on probation. IF, in the above case, an independant review panel (eg the state corrections board) had to give approval to require a polygraph from a probationer, based on all other investigative channels being exhausted. AND IF, polygraph examiners had to have an undergraduate degree in psychology, plus a 2 year educational program, plus at least one year of apprenticeship prior to becoming licensed, we might have something more than a voodoo science being manipulated for personal gain. In order to make similar money to polygraph examiners, I had to obtain a 4 yr degree in a related discipline, an MBA, and perform several years of "apprenticeship" before I could take a series of rigorous exams to obtain my licenses. Polygraph examiners have a far greater impact on the lives of the people they examine than I do on the lives of my clients. I don't think this is too much to ask, do you?
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