More or less true, as Bill Door sez… Look, the Polygraph is not a Lie Detector. It has almost no scientific validity and is not admissible in US Criminal courts.
The idea behind it is that the “operator” is a experienced “cold reader” interrogator. I have had some of them tell me they dont even bother with trying to interpret the results.
First, most of the time, the subject will confess before the test. If he doesnt, the operator will simply point to a jiggle and say “The machine sez you are lying”.
Putting aside the morality or legality of your lies, you can just continue your story. The operator will say you’re lying. You could just say that you’re really nervous about having smoked pot as a kid, since it was illegal. Dont fess up.
Wow, you are in a quandry. Seems you can do one of three things: 1) withdraw the application with no explanation; 2) continue and admit to the lie and the past drug use; or 3) try to beat the polygraph. I have zero experience with polygraphs, but I did just recently watch the Penn & Teller “Bullshit” program on polygraphs, where they concluded they are indeed bullshit and can be reliably fooled or invalidated. I imagine there are websites offering advice on beating polygraph tests, too. Again, I have no personal advice on how to do it, or how easily it is done, but my relatively uninformed opinion is that they are bullshit.
I might normally have some reservations regarding someone lying on a law enforcement application, but it is my firm belief that the practice of denying anyone who has tried illegal drugs from entering law enforcement simply results in entire forces filled with uptight, pinched-ass, self-righteous types who seem to possess little empathy or judgement. YMMV.
If you decide to go with the combo of: try to beat the polygraph + no one puts a lot of credence on the results even if deception is detected, is there a chance your drug use will be uncovered in a thorough background check?
We do not use polygraphs in my state. But I do get involved in background investigations. Lying will not automatically invalidate you but it would certainly put you at the bottom of the pile behind truthful applicants.
Yeah, that sounds like something that should be given serious consideration. If the investigators snoop around, how hard will it be to discover the issues the OP is worried about? Perhaps a polygraph will be inconclusive or fooled, but what about the background check?
Maybe the best thing to do is kinda come clean. During the pre-interview at the Poly, admit you may have done more in the long past “but it’s all kinda hazy*”. Dont admit to lying. Do admit you’re nervous about it.
this is very true for many dudes who experimented with some recreational pharmaceuticals decades ago.
As an employer, I would always choose a non-lying candidate over a lying one. And, just a WAG, I’d think this especially important for someone going into law enforcement as a career. If a person has proved they’ll lie for self-interest, wouldn’t that bode poorly on their ability to be scrupulously truthful if called to the stand in court, or in writing reports?
This is why I made this thread. I’ve never lied in my life, except for this shit. I’m not distrustful, I expect no distrust, it’s a foreign language in me. I’ve never cheated on any exam or test, or anything in my life. Even when I see people hop transit without paying as the attendant is away from the booth, I throw in my change.
I will do what it takes. I’ve done a lot of drugs, but I’m no addict, never have been. I’ve made some mistakes but I’ve cleaned up. I’ve lost a LOT of friends over this decision. I got friends who hate cops who told me I was a piece of @!#$ before deciding never to talk to me. Some of them just pretended I didn’t exist because I decided to move on from whatever crumby lifestyle I was in.
That’s fine with me. You discover who is who in your life when you decide to make drastic changes.
More so, I love this country. I actually wanted to get into social work or counselor(that’s still on the table), but decided I was better equipped to be police. Hell, people immediately think I’m a cop during volunteer work. I can’t get past it.
I’m gonna hammer through it, I was about to send a letter to withdraw from the pool but a few people I work with told me I was throwing a great opportunity away. I’m gonna post results after the interview. I’ll let you know how it went. Maybe it’ll go to shit. I’m gonna stick with what I wrote down.
I see a couple reasons that you may not be fucked; the first being mentioned already that polygraphs are not crystal balls and can fail to detect all kinds of lies. The second is the depth of a background check; first of all not everything is verifiable; all kinds of bad & illegal things happen in society that either don’t have any proof, or that people don’t know to look for. Then, just how in-depth do they check you out? I doubt a department has the resources or interest to do much more than talk to your known aquaintences and employers, and perhaps some select family members (and they’ll get those contacts from you). Unless you give them the names of your old coke-buddies, how are they going to know who to ask about your most devious acts over the years? You’re just at the application phase; why would they go nuts learning everything about you when you might flunk out of the program during the first week?
I don’t see the huge character problem of a law enforcement applicant being “dishonest” some poeple are talking about. Police work involves officers using a lot of deception on the job; it’s necesary and you get trained how to do it. Why would a department reject a person with the very qualities and skills (using decpetion to your advantage) that they’ll end up training you to do anyways? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to paint LEOs in a negative light; but just watch any episode of COPs when an officer is talking to a suspect: they tell lie after lie after lie to pressure/trick the suspect into confessing, giving them some other clue, evidence, or permission to search further. Then there’s the other types of decpetion necessary, like calming a dangerous person down and convincing them to put down the broken bottle and that noone is there to hurt them… while of course secretly calling in backup and getting ready to violently dogpile the guy and throw his ass in a jail cell the second he lets his guard down.
LEOs are expected (and required) to practice deception (aka lie) all the time yet are still trusted to tell the truth in court, so the difficulty in trusting a person who lies to gather evidence or keep themselves alive (self-interest) isn’t really there.
I appreciate the optimism. You’re absolutely right, regarding the dishonesty. Forget lying to small time criminals. There is potential in the organization for mass anti terrorism activity, against both domestic radicalism extending to international terrorism among other things. Lots of undercover work with serious consequences if caught.
Your inability to tell the difference between lying to a suspect and lying to others isn’t convincing. An advertising copy writer may heap BS upon BS to sell some product, but his employer would still be correct to fire him for lying on his time sheet. Simply because some level of deception is involved in a job doesn’t mean that all levels of deception are indistinguishable.
And we all know how important it is to put untrustworthy individuals in those jobs so they can get it done right. (cough cough Senate torture report cough cough)
The odds that my application will be worse off if I tell them I lied is 100%.
The odds that the polygraph will detect the lie and, if the lie is detected, they will take it seriously and hold it against me are less than 100%.
Read up on the polygraph. Or just watch some documentaries about it on Youtube. Or look it up on Wikipedia.
If anything, I would think that the chief utility of polygraph tests is in scaring people into telling the truth pre-emptively because they have the same worries you do. Also, some people expect that the polygraph will detect a lie so when they lie while hooked up to a polygraph, their stress goes up and the polygraph picks up on that.
My $ 0.02: You never, never lie in the background check. The agency would rather hire an honest applicant with a distant checkered past than someone who lies to look clean. And it’s not just because of lofty morals; there are very practical considerations, too.
Keep in mind that being hired is not the end-all. You will sign notarized papers that say everything you said was true. You will have an interview with a chief officer whom you will look in the eye and assure that you have been honest and that he/she can trust you in their agency. If they *ever *find out you lied in the application process, you will probably be fired and have your peace officer certification suspended or revoked. There is often no appeal because you agree to it when hired. Major agencies have been through all this before, they have been burned by bad hires, and they will cut you loose without even thinking about it.
What often happens is this: Somebody you used to know, maybe with an ax to grind, sees you’re a cop and says, “That’s bull, he was as bad as any of us!” and makes a call to Internal Affairs. Or they get picked up for something and come out with “Hey, I used to sell (substance) to a guy who’s on your department, what about that?” Or you screw up in some other way and the bosses start scrutinizing your background again.
I guess I’m saying think seriously about if that’s the way you want to start a career. You will have to lie again, and remember what lie you told to whom. You will always have it in the back of your mind that your pay, benefits, years of service and everything else could come to a sudden, screeching (and embarrassing) halt.
30 years ago I interviewed with the CIA and with Naval intelligence. At that point I had smoked dope two or three times in college and had never done anything else illegal (well, speeding and such of course.) I was honest about my past drug use. In both cases, the interviewer immediately ended the interview the instant I confessed and that was the end of any career for me in secret government work.
They may say they want applicants who are honest about their past but I believe that is to weed out the actual honest people. They want employees who can tell a good lie and keep a secret.
Excellent point. Who knows, maybe they’ll be so impressed with his fraudulent application that they’ll assign him to an elite task force of liars wearing fully engulfed uniform pants.
I think everyone’s missing something. I admitted on the application i smoked weed for years. I didn’t admit the hallucinogens. I went through, and am progressing.
At no point did I say I was a squeaky clean motherfucker on an application. It was just a half truth.