The Corpus Christi
Caller Times reports today (
http://www.caller.com/2001/july/19/today/localnew/5683.html) that the Nueces County Clerk is "asking" employees to submit to polygraph "testing" in connection with missing funds. The entire article is reproduced below:
Quote:
Thursday, July 19, 2001
County clerk's office employees asked to take polygraph tests
From staff reports
Employees at the Nueces County Clerk's office are being asked to submit to polygraph exams as investigators continue to probe the disappearance of $4,700, said County Clerk Ernest Briones.
The money, collected from court fees and fines, was found to be missing last month when office staff reconciled bank statements.
Sheriff Larry Olivarez said the investigation has been difficult because the money was missing for several days before his department was notified. "It's a difficult case because of the circumstances leading up to the disappearance of the money," he said.
The office has 25 employees but only employees in the collections and treasury sections of the office were asked to take the polygraph tests, Briones said.
"They do have a choice," Briones said. "I think the law is such that they can refuse to take it."
As noted on the AntiPolygraph.org
Polygraph News page,
Nueces County Clerk Ernest M. Briones is giving employees a devil's choice between agreeing to have their honesty assessed based on a pseudoscientific trial by ordeal or refusing and appearing to have something to hide. You can help set him straight on polygraph testing by sending a note through his office's web-based feedback form:
or by e-mail to
countyclerk@nueces.esc2.net or by phone at (361) 888-0580 or by fax at (361) 888-0329.
I used the web form above to send the following note:
Quote: Dear Mr. Briones,
I am a co-founder of AntiPolygraph.org, a website dedicated to exposing polygraph waste, fraud, and abuse.
I read in the Caller Times that you are asking employees in your office to submit to polygraph testing in connection with $4,700 in missing funds.
You need to know that the validity of polygraph testing is unsupported by peer-reviewed scientific research. Polygraphy is fundamentally dependent on trickery -- not science, and while it has an inherent bias against truthful persons, it can be (and has been) easily beaten by deceptive persons through the use of simple countermeasures that polygraphers (despite their unsupported claims to the contrary) cannot detect.
These countermeasures are described in detail in AntiPolygraph.org's free on-line book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, which may be downloaded as a PDF file or browsed in HTML format at:
http://antipolygraph.org/pubs.shtml Perhaps your perpetrator (if indeed the money has been stolen) has read it. You should, too.
It would be prudent for you to abandon your ill-advised plan to resort to polygraphing your employees. At a minimum, you should draw no adverse inference against, and in no way retaliate against, those who prudently refuse to submit to this pseudoscientific nonsense to which you have unwisely decided to subject them.
Sincerely,
George W. Maschke
AntiPolygraph.org
PS: A copy of this message will be posted to the AntiPolygraph.org message board at:
http://antipolygraph.org/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.pl?board=Action I encourage others to send Mr. Briones a note. It is to be hoped that he will take heed and abandon his plans for a polygraph dragnet. But if he goes through with it, he won't be able to later claim that he was never warned.
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Send a Note to the Nueces County, Texas Clerk (Read 7794 times)
