WANTED: between 80 and 100 new police officers.
Not wanted: applicants who can’t pass or would not take a lie detector test.
This tough stance by the Royal Barbados Police Force was revealed by Attorney General Freundel Stuart who told the SATURDAY SUN that people who refuse to subject themselves to a reasonable request designed to ensure the integrity of ranks need not apply.
“In discussions with the Commissioner of Police [Darwin Dottin] the issue of submitting oneself to polygraph testing was being put in place and there were persons interested in coming into the force who were resisting submission to that kind of testing,” Stuart said.
The Attorney General cited the case of a special constable who wanted to move into the ranks of the regular force but balked when asked to take the test. He has not been recruited and the matter is now before the AG’s office.
Stuart acknowledged that a polygraph examination wasn’t a foolproof or the ultimate test but it was still a useful method of at least narrowing down risks that candidates for the force had not lied about any criminal history.
Results of polygraph tests are often inadmissible as evidence of guilt or innocence in many courts of law in different parts of the world.
“In any event, certainly in terms of recruitment, I don’t see offhand how the matter can attract the attention of the courts,” Stuart said.
“The right to recruit or not recruit is in the discretion of the recruiting agency anyhow. So, I don’t think the courts would have to consider it.
“The person would have to be in the system and in a position to claim that they are being asked to do something that is either illegal or unnecessary. If it is a command of a super-ordinate to a subordinate I don’t know in a disciplined organisation that it could attract the attention of the court.”
The Attorney General said that the force was finding it difficult to recruit acceptable candidates for training as police officers and that was particularly true of young Bajan males.
As a result, the island may have to turn to neighbouring islands for young male trainees.
But that may present its own set of challenges, one being the real chance of non-Barbadian applicants claiming academic and qualifications they don’t possess.
