[mikestew]

Boy, they sure didn't open with a case I could be sympathetic with. Lied to the state police, lied when applying to a city PD, but this time, oh, this time he's telling the truth!

My guess is, word gets around, and "inconsistencies" is just the excuse they need. I'm not saying it makes it right, because next it's going to mere coincidence that a black woman had "inconsistencies" when applying. But in this case, I might be willing to let it go.

[crooked-v]

> He had first applied to the Connecticut State Police and was failed for deception about occasional marijuana use as a minor. He then tried again with a police department in New Britain, where a polygraph test showed him lying about his criminal and sexual history.

> This time he had failed the New Haven polygraph for something cryptically called “inconsistencies.” “[But] I’m not hiding anything,” he said at the hearing. “I was being straight and honest and I’ve never been in trouble with the law. I’m not lying about anything.”

His argument seems to be that all of the polygraph tests were consistently wrong and that he didn't do any of those things. This is consistent with later comments by other people in the article:

> While undergoing a polygraph examination for a position at an FBI field office in New Haven in 2010, a black man was told that his recollection of using marijuana only a few times in high school was showing as deceptive, and that he should change his answer. Later, he wrote: “I was convinced that [the examiner] may have made an assumption, based on a stereotype about African Americans and drug use, and used that stereotype to profile me. I also realized that what [he] was asking of me would reflect negatively either way—if I didn’t change my answer I was being deceptive, and if I did change my answer I was lying on my application.”

[mikestew]

Yeah, I read it several times, and it still came out to me as addressing only the final application. But now that you point it out, it seems more likely to address all applications.

Regardless, that's about as far as I got because my two personal experiences with polygraphs tells me they're about on the same level as dowsing rods. "Have you ever used marijuana?"

"No", he said, higher than a kite having smoked a bowl an hour before the test. It was asked both times, passed both times.

[leetcrew]

what kind of job hooks you up to a polygraph to ask if you've used marijuana and doesn't bother to give you a gc/ms screen?

[mikestew]

The kind where 30 years ago peeing in a cup wasn’t nearly the industry it is now, and therefore not as affordable or available at all. That’s what kind. But that also kinnnda wasn’t the point of the story.

[crooked-v]

The kind where the management doesn't actually care if you toke up privately, but wants a good excuse to diqualify anyone they don't like for whatever other reasons.

[NikolaNovak]

It's tricky because I interpreted the paragraph differently: the _polygraph_ has deemed him of lying about these things, not that he -actually- lied:

"He had first applied to the Connecticut State Police and was failed for deception about occasional marijuana use as a minor. He then tried again with a police department in New Britain, where a polygraph test showed him lying about his criminal and sexual history."

[gknoy]

> the _polygraph_ has deemed him of lying about these things

I think the article's point is that the polygraph _operator_ decided that (perhaps not consciously), not the machine itself.

[Lazare]

> Boy, they sure didn't open with a case I could be sympathetic with. Lied to the state police, lied when applying to a city PD, but this time, oh, this time he's telling the truth!

You misunderstood the article. There's no evidence to suggest he lied ever.