WA Bill Mandates Polygraph for Police Applicants

[George W. Maschke]

A bill making its way through the Washington state legislature would require all applicants for peace officer positions in the state to "to take and
successfully pass a psychological examination and a polygraph test or similar assessment procedure." In addition, applicants could be required to pay up to $400 for the polygraph examination!

The text and legislative history of House Bill 2422, which was recently approved by the Judiciary Committee, are available here:

http://www.leg.wa.gov/wsladm/billinfo1/dspBillSummary.cfm?billnumber=2322

If you live in Washington state, you can contact your representative to oppose this legislation. You can find contact information for your legislator using the following form:

http://www.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/Default.aspx

[willy]

Where do you get $400 to do a pre-employment polygraph

Sign me up I want to become a polygraph examiner ??

[Billy J. Johnson]

This is great news.  I have contacted my representatives and have encuraged them to vote for this new bill.  Polygraph works and does a great job getting rid of those that would harm us.  If they can not pass a polygraph examination they should not be in law enforcement.

[gate1999keeper]

 

Should we require all polititians and attorneys and judges to take this exam as well and pay us $400 every time they are caught in a fib or indiscretion?

In effect, a polygraph exam could be certifying liars as being truthful liars.  Card Blanche.  

OH MY GOD.  What next?

Since the general public is now aware that polygraph tests are manipulation tools to screen out undesirables.........
this makes me think it should be used only on dead people..........
not public officers charged with serving and protecting John Q. Public.

I think giving each applicant a labotomy would be a better idea.

LET US PRAY.

[George W. Maschke]

If the job of those who enforce the law is so important as to require pre-employment polygraph screening, then surely the same should be demanded of the legislators who make the law. But there is a double standard. Polygraphs are for the ruled, not the rulers.

Fortunately, the Washington bill seems to have made no progress in the state senate.

[willy]

 
George,

It took a while but this bill passed..

It is my opinion that there are times when a poly is a good thing. When one is applying for a job in LE, departments are looking for people that can be trusted. If one has to lie about their past then maybe they are looking for a job in the wrong field. We all make mistakes but we need to admit to those mistakes and be honest about what we have done wrong. I worked for a department where you were forgiven for wrong doing as long as you were honest. One would not get away scott free but honesty was rewarded simply by the fact that you were allowed to keep your job. A polygraph is not perfect but it a tool that can help in evaluating if one is truthful. Should it be the only tool used..probably not..a good background investigation in very important and all the information should be evaluated fairly. Do people get burned because investigations are not done the way they should be..probably yes. Is there another tool that can be used..something like brainscanning or the vocal testing..yes ..but are they proven and as cost effective as polygraphs..no, not at this time..would departments use them if they were..of course..this world is not perfect and right now a polygraph is a tool that can be used to try and help weed out applicants that are not suitable for LE jobs..it is not for a LE departments benefit because in this day and age every department is short of good people..do bad people get hired by faking their way through..I am sure they do..and who suffers..Joe public because we have the wrong people in positions of authority and the wrong people carying guns..What I would like to see you do is support good people who may have failed a poly because they were not given a way to explain or understand what caused them to fail not trying to help the wrong caliber person finding a way to get through the screening process.
There are a lot of good examiners out there ..ones who are willing to help people understand their test and help them figure out why they may had had negative responses..but at the same time there are those who are out to make a quick $ and do not care why their test subject had the responses they did. Those are things that need to be worked on in the polygraph field.

I am sorry for what happened to you..I can understand why you feel the way you do about polygraph's, I probably would feel the same if I was in your shoes, but finding or telling people how to "beat the sytem" is, in my opinion  (oop's there I go again with my opinions)..not a way to fix the situation.

I look forward to your response..

[George W. Maschke]

Willy,

For reasons I have explained at length elsewhere, I believe it is both morally wrong and bad public policy for government agencies to make hiring decisions on the basis of such quackery as polygraphy.

AntiPolygraph.org will continue to shine a spotlight on this pseudoscientific fraud, including information on how to pass or beat the polygraph.

[Sergeant1107]

I am sorry for what happened to you..I can understand why you feel the way you do about polygraph's, I probably would feel the same if I was in your shoes, but finding or telling people how to "beat the sytem" is, in my opinion  (oop's there I go again with my opinions)..not a way to fix the situation.

I look forward to your response..

I would have to suggest, as I have before, that any "test" which can be "beaten" after visiting a web site which contains instructions on how to alter your breathing patter is not a "test" upon which any person, business, or law enforcement agency should put any faith in.

If "Anti-Inotixilyzer.com" was a site on the web, and it told people who had been arrested for drunk driving to do math equations in their head or step on a tack concealed in their shoe while they blew into the machine, such a site wouldn't bother me at all.  If doing either of those things caused a drunk person to blow a .00 on the machine it would make me doubt the validity of the test; it certainly wouldn't make me upset with the person who told them to do it.