Long Odds to Join Las Vegas Force
By KEVIN JOHNSON, USA TODAY
Posted: 2007-08-10 15:20:33

LAS VEGAS -- Kayvan Kazemi spent the night before his police entrance exam studying the gambling tables.

The 24-year-old Long Island, N.Y., officer candidate lost about $400 in the casinos before calling it a night. But nothing he did violated the law or disqualified him for a spot in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department academy. It was just a typical night in Vegas, where Kazemi is still in the running for a job. And Lt. Charles Hank, the department's personnel chief, says there are worse examples of pre-test preparation.

Of the finalists for the 400 available jobs this year, a staggering 70 percent are expected to fail the required background and polygraph examinations for attempting to conceal a range of criminal activities, from prostitution to fraud and drug use.

If the recruiting effort were a one-year campaign, the washout rate might be a lesser concern. But Vegas plans to hire at least 400 officers every year for the next five years to keep pace with the region's explosive growth. And Vegas' experience is not unlike that of a number of departments nationwide.

War Siphons Pool of Recruits

In Phoenix, where recruiters are in their own long-term hiring campaign, more than a third of the applicants are failing polygraph examinations. In Orlando, about half are not surviving critical pre-polygraph interviews.


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"As much as we tell 'em not to lie, they come in here and lie and they think we're not going to find out. Maybe they forget: We are the police," Vegas police Sgt. Dan Zehnder said.

The last time police officials were voicing such concern about the quality of recruits was seven years ago when the federal government began phasing out the landmark police hiring program aimed at adding 100,000 to the ranks across the country.

Now, a protracted war is siphoning away scores of traditional recruits, forcing departments to cast a wider net to fill thousands of jobs. Many of the jobs have been created in response to rapid community growth and the steady retirements of hundreds of baby-boomer officers.

But many are citing the war as having exacted a particularly heavy toll in the police ranks. Last year, an analysis of Justice Department data found that the deployment of thousands of local officers to Iraq and Afghanistan as military reservists was outstripping the pace of hires.

The analysis found that 11,380 officers were called for military Reserve service in 2003, compared with 2,600 new hires. Since that report was published, Justice statistician Matthew Hickman said anecdotal evidence suggests that departments are "having a lot of trouble" with both recruitment and retention.

Jeremy Wilson, associate director of the Rand Center on Quality Policing, says the national law enforcement hiring market is caught in its own "perfect storm" stoked by intense competition for a shrinking universe of applicants even as departments have relaunched aggressive recruiting campaigns.

A Vice Squad Void of Vices?

Vegas police recruiters were all smiles when a record 647 officer candidates streamed into a cavernous convention center July 10 to sit for the first in a day-long battery of entrance exams.

Nearly 150 applicants had come from as far as Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Iowa and Michigan to fill the hundreds of available slots.

Sgt. Zehnder, a department training instructor, offered a sobering dose of reality. For every 100 candidates, maybe 10 will eventually make it through the training academy and then to the street.

About 23% of candidates never get past a multiple-choice basic knowledge test. Forty percent fail the physical training workout -- a mix of calisthenics, agility and running drills. But no other test comes close to producing the failure rate -- seven in 10 -- than the department's background check and polygraph exam.

"I can't tell you how many candidates I've lost," recruiter Luke Jancsek said of those caught lying. Many, he said, try to conceal the frequency of past drug use, some of which would not necessarily disqualify them. "I want to smack 'em in the head sometimes."

At an applicant reception on the night before the July 10 test day, recruiting officers urged a gathering of about 100 candidates to come forward if they thought past conduct might bar them from law enforcement. When the meeting was over, a handful of candidates grudgingly acknowledged a range of criminal activity in private meetings with recruiters.

Lt. Hank said one acknowledged paying for sex "just a few months ago" at a bachelor party. Another candidate from the East Coast, who had flown in at his own expense, also admitted to paying a prostitute. Both were encouraged to look elsewhere for work.

Most of the private meetings, however, involved questions about prior drug use.

If there was good news in the eleventh-hour confessions, it was that they came before the start of the lengthy and costly testing and training process. Candidates begin drawing a $47,777 annual salary while they are attending the 23-week academy.

Employing Tourist-Trap Tactics

Given the high disqualification rate and the department's enormous expansion plans, Sgt. Eric Fricker said the department must maintain the current pace of attracting about 600 applicants a month.

To keep those numbers up, the department is using the same kinds of tactics the city has used to attract 40 million tourists and 50,000 new residents each year.

In the department's recruiting trips to the Midwest, the department emphasizes the warm, dry climate and surging economy.

A big part of the department's hiring campaign is being managed by the same marketing company that developed the city's signature motto: "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." Fricker is unapologetic about using the city's natural lures and vices to keep candidates coming. "It's Vegas," he said.

I wouldn't pass a lie detector test either & I think I am pretty straight laced.

A lie detector is not proof of character.

I can purposefully pass or fail a lie detector. It's very easy.  I've done it before, with someone I knew who had a detector and administered the test.  It's all in your mind, breathing and heart rate.

Quoted: I can purposefully pass or fail a lie detector. It's very easy.  I've done it before, with someone I knew who has a detector and administers the test.  It's all in your mind, breathing and heart rate.

...and how good you are at the art of lying.

Quoted: A lie detector is not proof of character.

If some of the best leaders "had" to pass a lie-detector test, the world would be  a terrible place. Some of the best men in history were flawed in one way or another; either gamblers, heavy drinkers, fighters and other sins that would NEVER get you a security clearance.

Churchill and Patton come to mind.

I'm sorry but I dont want pansies that have never been real men being priviledged enough to hold security possitions or law enforment jobs. Get me some down and dirty, hard drinking, fist fighting, napalm spitting son-of-a-gun to watch my back. Pansies need not apply.

When the FBI started using the polygraph test on cadets, the entire first class failed. They let that class go on and graduate.

Voodoo.

Quoted: Quoted: A lie detector is not proof of character. The Polygraph is nothing more than the opinion of the operator. Lots of good people get kicked over a test that isn't admissible in court due to it being unreliable.

And the deception tactics the operators use.

Voodoo.

The reliability of a polygraph is no better than a coin flip, but can increase slightly with the credentials of the teat administrator.  I've seen these TV court judges bring in an ex cop to administer the test.  That wont get it.  

Don't beleive in lie detectors myself, but you didn't get the title quite right.

a staggering 70 percent are expected to fail the required background and polygraph examinations

Makes you wonder how many fail the poly and how many crash and burn on the background.

Quoted: I can purposefully pass or fail a lie detector. It's very easy.  I've done it before, with someone I knew who had a detector and administered the test.  It's all in your mind, breathing and heart rate.

Most don't get tripped up that way. The operator will tell the person they detected deception, then the person confesses, when actually it never showed anything to the operator.

They do voice stress here, as well... Bama is right, many times they pull that "you have lied" stuff to see if the app will cough up something.

A lot of times they just want the truth, many departments are willing to overlook stuff as long as you tell the truth before hand. They are looking for honesty.

If you had a night with hookers and blow ten years ago, but haven't done anything wrong since, they are apt to let it go, just be honest.