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View Full Version : Two out of three Border Patrol job applicants fail polygraph test, making hiring difficult




Zippyjuan
04-13-2017, 01:33 PM
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-border-patrol-lies-20170113-story.html

They are having troubles hiring enough people just to replace those who quit every year so they are considering easing or even scrapping the lie detector test.


David Kirk was a career Marine pilot with a top-secret security clearance and a record of flying classified missions. He was in the cockpit when President George W. Bush and Vice Presidents Dick Cheney and Joe Biden traveled around the nation's capital by helicopter.

With credentials like that, Kirk was stunned that he failed a lie detector test when he applied for a pilot's job with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which guards 6,000 miles of border with Mexico and Canada. After two contentious polygraph sessions that lasted a combined eight hours, Kirk said, he drove home "with my tail between my legs," wondering how things had gone so wrong.

Two out of three applicants to CBP fail its polygraph test, according to the agency. That’s more than double the average rate of eight law enforcement agencies that provided data to the Associated Press under open-records requests.

It's a big reason approximately 2,000 jobs at the nation's largest law enforcement agency are empty, with the Border Patrol, a part of CBP, recently slipping below 20,000 agents for the first time since 2009. And it has raised questions of whether the lie detector tests are being properly administered.

CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske said the failure rate is too high, but that is largely because the agency hasn't attracted the applicants it wants. He and other law enforcement experts contend the polygraphs are generally working as intended at the agency, which has been trying to root out bribery and other corruption.

But others, including lawmakers, union leaders and polygraph experts, contend that the use of lie detectors has gone awry and that many applicants are being subjected to unusually long and hostile interrogations, which some say can make people look deceptive even when they are telling the truth.

Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona said he suspects CBP examiners fail applicants to justify their own jobs. He said he worries applicants are being wrongly branded with a "scarlet letter" in the eyes of other potential government employers.

"There seems to be no good explanation, and when we hear so many anecdotal stories, it starts to look like a trend where they feel like they have to fail them, a certain number," he said. "It makes you angry that people would be put through that."

In December, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general said it was reviewing whether CBP's polygraph tests are effective in hiring. The hiring difficulties have become so acute that the Border Patrol recently took the unusual step of asking Congress to use money earmarked for 300 jobs for other purposes. That raises doubts about President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to add 5,000 agents.

Taking a polygraph test became a hiring requirement at CBP in 2012 after a huge hiring surge was followed by a similar surge in agents getting arrested for misconduct.

James Tomsheck said that when he was CBP's chief of internal affairs from 2006 to 2014, about 30 applicants admitted during the lie detector test that they were sent by drug cartels; one said he had killed his infant son.

afwjam
04-13-2017, 01:42 PM
Government corruption? Unheard of!

phill4paul
04-13-2017, 01:57 PM
Lol. "Don't ask, don't tell."

timosman
04-13-2017, 02:01 PM
FBI has had this problem for a while.

dannno
04-13-2017, 02:46 PM
FBI has had this problem for a while.

"Have you ever consumed marijuana?"

Danke
04-13-2017, 03:31 PM
How to cheat...



http://m.wikihow.com/Cheat-a-Polygraph-Test-(Lie-Detector)

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/09/25/nsa-whistleblower-reveals-how-to-beat-a-polygraph-test