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.
If you wrecked your car drunk driving, is it honest to just minimize it and say if you get in a car accident that you just bumped it over the curb?
Is it honest to make it out and act like you aren't watching or downloading porn anymore when you have got a porn stash that you are
ashamed of?
I don't think that's honest today because those were relevant parts. In my opinion, omission of critical details is a part of lying. At the same time, when you focus on getting what you want, there you go.
From here that was the most difficult part of the polygraph and I've shared in so much detail with the hope to help you either if this is your story and you can relate to these things yourself, or if you need to be able to understand when someone else in your life is going through these things.
I've got letters from wives who have husbands with porn addictions, that just don't understand. I used to rage about things I saw on the news and today I'm able to view things, anything that happens with love and compassion. When I'm comfortable telling you all of my own past worst secrets, I'm also comfortable with your worst secrets and everyone else's too.
I understand how one can get into a place that looks horrible for those that don't understand. I understand that you take one little step at a time and you go from normal to deviant over a period of years making one little, not major, one little bad decision after another.
"Wow, Jerry. That was a hell of a tangent."
Well, I hope this is helpful for you because we need to talk about this stuff.
In a rare moment of having any honesty and talking about this, a polygraph was one of those rare moments where I had to get into some of these very uncomfortable things and I'm amazed I was able to get through that.
Finally, the polygraph questions themselves.
The polygraph that the captain did with me was fairly easy compared to most polygraphs I've heard.
Now, most polygraphs I've heard were done on officers who were not certified yet. It seems that there is an easier version of a polygraph at some departments like USCPD, at least when I got hired. It seems there is an easier version of the polygraph given to officers who are already certified with kind of this understanding that probably the department that certified you already went through some kind of rigorous hiring process for you.
Therefore, we don't need to be as thorough, we just need to make sure you haven't gotten anything dump since you have been in law enforcement. About half the questions on my polygraph consisted of asking about my law enforcement history.
Things like, "Have you ever lied to a supervisor as a police officer?" "No."
That was very easy to be honest. I was always absolutely honest and straightforward with my supervisors at DMH. That was a very easy question to answer.
Another question related to, "Have you ever done anything at work or mistreated anyone as a police officer?"
"Nope."
That was very easy for me to answer.
At DMH there weren't a lot of opportunities for that and I always tried at work to do my absolute best, to be the best person and to be fair.
There were several more questions about my law enforcement experience and my integrity as a police officer at DMH.
I don't know the exact question, it was something about showing up to work or about making an excuse not to come to work, another integrity question like that.
Then there were the drug ones or something along those lines too. "Have you smoked marijuana in the last year or two or whatever it was?" "No."
That was an easy question to answer.
Then, "Have you lied to me about anything we talked about today?" "Nope."
Now what the captain did notice is moderate reactions, little tiny blips, and he said, those are when you are offended by something. When you feel so strongly about something that just the fact that I asked you, the question offended you a little bit.
Therefore, when asked about my integrity, I got offended a little bit that he would be asking me something like that, but then he said, "Look, what happens is, you got a little bit offended that I asked you the question, but immediately the rest of your results you had the tiny short little spike and immediately it went back down to flat after that."
He said, "I'd know you were lying to me if it spiked and continued to go up and down after that. Because you'd be uncomfortable having just lied to me. You would be sitting there uncomfortable that you just lied to me."
Well, maybe, maybe not.
In my opinion, if you are a pathological liar, you believe your own lies, you are not uncomfortable having said something that's a lie because you believe it, but you do get a little offended still just like an ordinary human being.
I got offended on a couple of the questions that he even asked them, that questioned my integrity, but I believed what I was saying. So I was not uncomfortable with what I said.
The polygraph part itself was only 10 or 20 questions long. I've heard some of my friends that were police officers went through 500 questions. I don't know if they made that up or not. They said that their polygraph took several hours, hundreds of questions, and the dispatcher said that she went through a much more intense polygraph than I went through as a certified police officer than she did as a dispatcher, which interested me significantly.
I can see looking back today that the main thing they wanted to check for is that I hadn't been dishonest or that I hadn't been a dirty cop at DMH and that I was honest in answering the questions about my history. Having been satisfied with that, they did not want to work really hard to potentially disqualify me.
For example, one of my friends said that they had a question about bestiality on the polygraph test, which I thought was funny. The dispatcher told me that they had a question about being part of a molestation situation on the polygraph that she went through with USCPD.
Neither of those questions was on my polygraph, which I was grateful for.
I'm glad those questions weren't on my polygraph either way.
Also, I didn't need to get into the fact that I was molested by a babysitter when I was very young, something I eventually told my parents about, and they made him apologize.
That must have been a difficult ride home for him afterward.
I'm glad I did not have to have those questions on the polygraph because that would have been some uncomfortable shit to talk about at the time. I was not ready to talk about that stuff until about 10 years later when I did my fifth step in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm grateful today that I do have the courage to talk about this stuff because it is essential that we be able to talk about everything as human beings. It is the things we won't talk about that eat us alive, that give us cancer, that lead us to murder each other and to do horrible things to each other.
Can you imagine a world where men felt safe talking about their sexual needs and where rape also existed?
I cannot picture the two going together. If men could openly talk about their need for sex with women, there would be no more rape. Literally, all we need to do is be able to talk about stuff and most of the worst things in the world would go away.
It is our refusal to talk about things that lead to the worst of the worst happening. That's my view anyway and that's my truth today, and if I had to take a polygraph, I hope I would pass it on that.
Thank you for reading this chapter. I'm very grateful to have this experience to share with you. I hope this is useful whether you are thinking about taking a police polygraph or whether you are just curious how the process works or whether there is someone as sick as me in your life that you need to be able to love and understand instead of critique, judge and condemn.
Because if I had not got so much love, so much understanding, so much kind help, so much patience, instead of having this story to share with you, I probably would not be here today, and others might have been hurt along the way.
That's the difference love makes. I've seen the miracle in my life of people loving me back to a place where I have a very normal, very healthy, very sane and safe life today and that's because I'm willing to talk about absolutely anything. That's because people have helped me feel loved and understood, and I'm capable of understanding anyone today.
I've been dreading making this polygraph section of this book because it gets into revealing so much, and yet, I think if we are going to talk about my career in law enforcement, this polygraph is a critical moment because this was my gateway, this was the big hurdle I got over to get hired at USCPD.
Once I was in, I was in for better until it got really worse. Thank you very much for reading the polygraph section of this. I love you.
You are awesome and I appreciate you being here with us.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.