Diabetic High School Girl Beaten by Police Officer and Arrested -- For Falling Asleep in Class

[noamnety]

67. I would encourage you to rethink your position here.

I'm speaking as someone who has failed three polygraphs. Never accused of a crime, btw - I simply volunteered to take one because I was a counterintelligence geek and my people kept asking me what to expect if they got randomly pulled for one. I never dreamed I'd have a problem getting through it.

I don't usually see things as black and white, so any question became a philosophical thing for me. That doesn't mean I would be jumpy or trigger happy with a gun. It means if I'm asked something like would I betray a family member, I start envisioning hypotheticals - ironically, like what if a family member committed a crime, wouldn't I turn them in? And then I can't give them a clean NO, which is what they needed in the polygraph.

It tests the way your body physically react to thoughts, which is different than testing whether you are telling the truth, or what your decisions would be on the job or in a moment of crisis.

Personally, I would rather have cops who can see multiple sides of an issue, instead of ones who see things in black and white terms. We run into problems like the ones described in the OP when they can only see rigid right and wrong - "she's sleeping, she shouldn't be, she must be punished" - vs. "She can't stay awake, I wonder what the root cause is? Maybe there's something going on here."