nonombre wrote on Feb 3
rd, 2006 at 2:00am:
Sergeant,
I believe you and I may have discussed this before. But as an officer who has done thousands of background investigations on prospective police applicants, I can tell you this. After running down EVERY possible lead on an "outstanding" applicant, I have been shocked more than once when after watching him/her walk from the examination room, the polygraph examiner handed me a signed confession for everything from massive drug use to rape (and Yes, we did subsequently refer some of these cases to investigations).
Nonombre,
I guess it is a matter of opinion. I believe we are losing more good applicants through the polygraph process than we are weeding out bad applicants.
Your experience of running down every possible lead on outstanding applicants and having them confess to serious crimes has happened, in your own words, “more than once.” If you can quantify that more precisely it would be helpful. However, to me that phrase implies that, although such a thing has happened, and has happened more than a single time, it has not happened on a regular basis, nor has it happened often enough on a sporadic basis to justify a description of anything other than “more than once.”
You wrote that you have done thousands of background investigations, yet the number of times an apparently “outstanding” applicant has unexpectedly confessed to serious crimes because of the polygraph is probably less than ten or you would have likely phrased it differently.
I have no idea how many BI’s you have conducted, but since you characterize it as “thousands” it would be safe to assume you have done at least two thousand. In that span you have encountered, say, ten applicants who passed the BI but unexpectedly confessed to serious crimes when they took the polygraph.
Using those numbers (which I realize involve assumptions on my part) means that utilizing the polygraph weeds out .05% of applicants who otherwise would have moved on in the application process if only the background investigation was used. One-half of one percent. That’s it.
As you may recall, I failed my first three polygraphs and was removed from the application process at each of those agencies. The fact that I told the complete truth during each polygraph, did not withhold any information, and had never even heard of countermeasures apparently did not matter – I failed anyway and was not hired, even though I was an outstanding candidate. In my fourth polygraph I answered the questions the same way I had on my first three and inexplicably passed.
Using my own experiences as a guide, the polygraph disqualifies outstanding applicants, who have already passed the background investigation, at a rate of 75%. I realize my experiences may not be typical, but the massive disparity in numbers is striking.
If agencies relied solely on a thorough background investigation, and eschewed the polygraph completely, it might very well result in a fraction of unsuitable applicants “sneaking” through without their illegal activities coming to light. According to my admittedly rough estimates, it could result in, say, five bad applicants out of every thousand. While no one wants any dishonest or lawbreaking police officers at all, I think we can all agree that no matter what the application process consists of there will, sadly, always be a small percentage of “bad” cops.
I believe that tiny percentage would be more than made up for by the large numbers of outstanding candidates who successfully pass the background investigation and are not mindlessly removed from the process because of the polygraph exam.