NovDec Associate Magazine.2018.

Police departments around the nation serve communities by relying on vital civilian staff. Recently, many police de- partments have experienced distressing events that are centered around one or more of the department civilian person- nel. These debacles expose the vulner- ability that departments face in regards to corrupt civilian employees. Although many things are done to address the issue after the fact, pre-employment polygraph standards have largely re- mained unchanged. At present, many departments are not bound by policy or procedure to polygraph their civilian employees before hiring them. F ailure to require all employees to submit to a pre-employ- ment polygraph might leave the door open to the possibil- ity of employing individuals that are susceptible to corruption or misconduct. The research concludes that adding a polygraph examination as another successive hurdle to the application pro- cess for all police department applicants will help improve the quality of individuals being hired. As agencies moves forward with this policy and procedure, the department and community members alike will benefit from a more qualified employee. CURRENT ISSUES Recently, many departments have experienced distressing events that center on misconduct committed by one of the de- partment’s civilian personnel. These debacles expose the vul- nerability departments have in regards to corrupt civilian em- ployees. Although many things are done to address these issues after the fact, pre-employment polygraph standards have largely remained unchanged. If a policy of polygraphing civilians before they are hired is in place, it may make it more difficult for corrupt candidates to be hired. At present, many departments are not bound by policy or procedure to polygraph civilian employees. It should be under- stood that a new policy of polygraphing non-sworn employees will not stop every unethical or immoral person from entering the ranks of the civilian staff at police departments. Failure to require all employees to submit to a pre-employment polygraph leaves the door open to the possibility of hiring a corrupt employee that is susceptible to misconduct or even criminal acts.

BACKGROUND Debates have followed the use of polygraph testing since its inception. The predictability of dishonest behavior continues to be a major obstacle to acceptance of the concept of honesty testing (Stone, 1992). These tests have been questioned on issues ranging from reliability and validity to legality and constitutional- ity. This debate came to a head when the federal government de- cided to enact a law that protected private employees from being forced to take polygraph examinations. This law was entitled The Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988 (EPPA). Although there is a sizable amount of opposition that seeks to discredit polygraph and those that use it in decision making, public sectors across the nation continue to utilize it as a step in the applicant selection process. Organizations with strong personnel security vetting through polygraph examinations can identify organizationmembers whomay bemore likely to commit various types of misconduct and criminal transgressions (Guido and Brooks, 2013). Identifying these individuals before miscon- duct is committed will always be a potential problem for depart- ment executives. Albert Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5minutes thinking about solutions.” If this samementality was applied to pre-employment polygraph it would be easy to con- clude that spending extra time before the problem occurs saves precious time in the long run. LEGAL ISSUES The Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988 (EPPA) is a United States federal law that generally prevents employers from using polygraph tests during the course of employment, with cer- tain exemptions. The Act provided for provisions that exempted the United States Government, any state or local government, or any political subdivision of a state or local government (Employee Polygraph Protection Act, 1988). But this was not the only time polygraph practices in pre-employment were legally challenged. The United States v. City of Austin Texas was a landmark case that addressed hiring issues with the city of Austin, Texas. In a rul- ing against the city, the court found that Austin’s use of cognitive/ behavioral test scores, as well as other selection process factors, as a pass/fail device in its 2012 hiring process had a statistically significant adverse impact on African-American and Hispanic applicants (United States v. The City of Austin, Texas, 2014). Al- though polygraph testing was not the only factor in this decision, it was specifically cited. This further hampered those in the poly- graph community who desired to polygraph a larger percentage of public employee candidates. VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY ISSUES There have been numerous studies in regards to the valid- ity and reliability of polygraph testing as a whole. One of those studies was conducted by Handler, Honts and Nelson (2013). This study revealed that a conditional probability analysis of 900 truthful and 100 deceptive applicants with a Psychophysiological Detection of Deception (PDD) test can be accurate 90 percent of the time. This should be of comfort to law enforcement execu- tives around the country that are grappling with the notion that civilian employees should not be polygraphed based on reliability problems with the examination. As the American Association of Police Polygraphist Research & Information Chair Mark Handler told me in an email correspondence, “successive hurdles” are ex-

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