This is an excerpt from my memoir, Officer Banfield — the honest story of my years as a corrections and police officer, hitting bottom in alcoholism, and the long road to recovery.
The University of South Carolina Police Department had a hiring process that is one of the most incredible things I've ever been through getting a job. It is similar to what I've heard at many police departments that have a thorough process for screening officers prior to hiring, not as thorough as some, but much more thorough than the Department of Mental Health.
This chapter focuses on my interview and polygraph getting hired at USCPD because, in my opinion, this is one of the most interesting parts of the story.
How does one get hired at a police department? What is the polygraph like?
What kind of questions do they ask? How do you get through it?
I see, as the takeaway out of this, that it is remarkable what one is capable of when one really wants something. I really wanted to be a police officer at the University of South Carolina's police department. I really wanted that job and I am just blown away at what my mind did and what my body did to get me through the polygraph that day.
I had interviewed at another department before who would ask some probing questions into my undetected crimes. Those interviews with that department had gone very poorly. They had me for a second interview and it was one big roll around in the mud where all we even really got into was
my vandalism, which was fairly minor out of all the undetected crimes I had done and it felt so uncomfortable.
I felt so guilty and ashamed of it and I put that right out there on the table and naturally, they did not call me back or want to go any further with me. I did not even get to the polygraph at a different police department.
At the University of South Carolina, I don't know if it was destiny or if it was easier or what happened, but I managed to get through the entire process. I think one thing that really helped was being certified.
As I explained a little bit before, when a police department hires an officer, at least in South Carolina or other states where the department itself pays to train the officer and send them through the Academy, the departments have to foot the bill for that and pay for an employee that essentially is useless until they become certified.
Therefore, it is in the department's financial interest to hire officers who are already certified, because that takes a lot less risk than hiring an officer who is not certified, and it gives an officer who is immediately available to be trained and that you can put into the field on their own. Therefore, departments have a very strong motivation to hire other certified officers and understandably a lot less motivation to hire someone who is not already certified.
As far as I can see, the USCPD made the hiring process a little bit easier if you were an already certified police officer compared to if you were not an already certified police officer. That's the best I can explain it on their end.
On my end, the day I did the polygraph, I had some kind of special trance come over me that day. I was in a relaxed and peaceful state that
was very uncommon to my sober life.
What I find today and what Tony Robbins talks about in his books is the management of my state, the overall health and presentation of my entire being, my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual state. The state I'm in is critical to everything I achieve and I'm amazed that I was able to get into a state like that for the polygraph.
Let's give you the whole picture here.
At the University of South Carolina's police department, the hiring process started with filling out a ton of paperwork. The initial application was fairly short, but after the initial application, there was an interview. The interview required sitting down with a few different officers, including the major, a captain and the sergeant who asked questions about why I wanted to work at their police department.
They noted on my resume that I had not stayed very long at the Department of Juvenile Justice and at the Department of Mental Health before applying there. I was actively employed at the time of this interview with DMH as a police officer.
I also ended up running into my ex-girlfriend randomly on campus that day, or maybe I set up a meeting with her, I don't remember. It was in close proximity though, that I ran into her as a random aside. She tried to introduce me to the guy she had cheated with right when I had that USCPD interview, and thankfully, I had some kind of instinct and did not run into him.
Wow, you may think, "Come on, with that tangent. Really, we were in the middle of the police interview."
In the middle of the interview, they asked what was different about
USCPD. They wanted to hire officers who would be willing to stick with them for a long period of time because the attrition rate at USCPD was fairly high.
As I write this today, which is 10 years or so after I started working there, hardly any of the officers there will still be the same as when I was there 10 years ago. In fact, just two or three years after I left, at least half of the officers who were there while I was there were gone.
Attrition tends to be high in police departments generally and at the University of South Carolina Police Department, attrition was especially high because the job often, compared to some other action-oriented police departments like the city or the county in Columbia, South Carolina, USCPD offered fairly little action while offering higher pay. It also did not offer much of what a lot of officers considered real policing compared to the city or the county.
Therefore, the University often attracted officers who didn't want to get out and do a lot of real policing, and then the ones who did want to really get out there and kick in doors, point guns and getting car chases, would often be attracted to go to the city or the county, the Highway Patrol, or even Federal.
The officers there then kept rotating very frequently as people came in for the high pay, and then got often bored or annoyed with the bureaucratic environment, or like me, got into so much trouble, got into having such a good time, let me say that they couldn't stand it anymore and needed to quit.
Therefore, the interviewers were very interested to know what was different about me. Why would I be staying at the University of South Carolina Police Department instead of just coming in for a year and a half
like I did, and then quitting?
What I said was that I simply hadn't been at the right place yet. I had graduated from college and I had taken the first job I could, and naturally the DJJ correction job was awful. I took the first policing job I could to get out of that, and I simply hadn't been in a place that properly appreciated me yet.
Little did I realize the only place I would get properly appreciated to my satisfaction was my own business, and here we are today. I've been doing that for seven years now.
I did do the University of South Carolina Police Department for almost a year and a half though. One of the longest jobs I ever had.
Therefore, being satisfied with my answers in the interview, they sent me in for the rest of the hiring process. I guess the first thing they did was the application, then the interview. If you passed the interview, then you got into the detailed hiring process, which included first, a bunch of questionnaires.
There were hundreds of questions, several psychological tests, they asked a lot. For example, they asked about how much you drank. I remember I put a really low number for what I drank because I hadn't been drinking that much when I applied to the University of South Carolina Police Department.
I had only relapsed essentially a month or so before, and I still was trying to take it easy. So compared to the end of my drinking where I was averaging a handle of vodka or more every week and I was getting drunk several times a week and having binges, if you did an average drink, I was probably having an average of three to six drinks a day.
When I applied to USCPD, my drinking was still significantly lower than
that and I was able to answer the questions honestly without looking like a total alcoholic. For many of the questions though, I simply did not answer them honestly.
There were two different ways to approach the test in my mind. There was the truth about how I felt inside. For example, I remember a psychological question on one of the tests asking the following:
When people are mean to you, do you feel like hurting them? Yes or no?
Now, the honest answer was, "Absolutely. I felt like hurting them."
My mind was routinely full of dark, violent, intrusive thoughts I am deeply ashamed of and that I hated having.
Those were routine thoughts in my brain on a daily basis.
Now, I didn't like those thoughts. I hated those fucking thoughts. They made me feel sick and worthless, and I didn't understand why my head was full of bullshit like that, and yet I felt obligated to engage when a thought like that started to come up.
I would explore it. I would say, "Sure. Let's see where this goes from here. What would that look like?" and then I would feel ashamed, like that was confirmation I was a piece of shit for having that thought in the first place.
Therefore, I absolutely thought about hurting people. I did want to hurt people and plot revenge, and sometimes I did hurt people, mostly emotionally and verbally, which hurt enough to push someone to a really dark place
or do something really stupid.
So let's not think that emotional and verbal are any worse than the physical. In fact, I've heard plenty of people say they would rather get hit or beaten than hurt or mentally abused.
I'm grateful today that I don't feel that way. I don't want to hurt people today when they are mean to me most of the time. Sometimes a thought does come up and I consciously say, "No, thank you," to that thought.
"No. No, thank you. I don't want to hurt this person."
I realized though, that there was a correct answer on the test that if they were going to hire me as a police officer, give me a gun, a badge, statewide jurisdiction, and throw me on college campus with the children, then certainly I would need to put "No" on that question.
I noticed the tests attempted to be smart with you. They would ask the same question all bunch of different ways. Now, the idea was that you would catch an amateur liar with their inconsistency and hypocrisy by asking the same question 100 different ways.
When your mom says something mean, do you feel like hurting her?
Well, "Yes," but I'm going to put "No."
When someone is acting out, do you think they deserve to be punished? Well, let's just put "No" on that one too. That sounds a lot like the other one.
The problem is, this does not catch a pathological liar or a smart liar, one who realizes exactly what you are trying to ask, reads between the lines and sees, "Ah, this is another one of those 'Do you want to hurt other people' questions. We're going to put no on that question."
The test basically only works if you are not a very good student or not a
very good liar. Therefore, I got through the test spectacularly being a good student and I would classify myself at the time as a pathological liar.
A pathological liar is one who believes their own lies. One who actually says something and believes is the truth, but it's not. That's a pathological liar and that's what the polygraph also does not detect, pathological lying.
The polygraph only detects someone who knows on some conscious level that they are lying. If you believe your own bullshit, you can bullshit a polygraph. You must actually believe it though. You must be able to sell yourself on some things so completely that there is no more objections or resistance and any counterpoints are completely forgotten.
That is an expert level of bullshit. Life is miserable with that kind of hypocritical bullshit and I'm grateful today that I choose not to live my life with that double life today.
However, at the time, I was so used to living that double life, it was natural. "What do you think is the right answer here?" was more important than "What do I honestly feel is the right answer here?"
I went through and answered as honestly as I could, while consciously lying on many of the written tests because with another human being, I needed to be in pathological lying mode, but in sitting there with a written exam, I didn't need to try to sell myself on something different than the truth.
I honestly confronted the differences in what I was putting on the test versus what I felt in my heart.
I got through the several hundred questions test. There was a written one and there was one on the computer, all with lots of different kinds of historical questions.
Then, for the polygraph, there was another written booklet, which I hope never to do anything like that again.
Although I'm sure if I did have to do something like that again, it actually would be a lot easier because I could just be totally honest about it instead of having to make it look good.
I was watching a show at the time and I absolutely mentally obsessed over passing the polygraph, I imagined passing and succeeding at the polygraph at least 100 times and I hope this is communicating to you the power of your mind and your imagination.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.