Lie detector tests may be required

Police officers accused of misconduct could soon be asked to take lie detector tests to keep their badges as part of an effort to weed troublemakers from the ranks of state law enforcement, authorities said.

The director of the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy said the measure is among various changes he is mulling to create a fairer and more thorough review process for officers accused of wrongdoing.

Director Hubert Harrell said he also is considering creating an outside, impartial panel that could hear appeals of decisions banning officers from law enforcement. And he wants to talk about South Carolina joining some 29 other states participating in a national database that currently tracks 11,300 officers stripped of their badges. The database helps participants watch for problem officers who try to continue their careers by crossing state lines.

Harrell said the measures, which would require approval from the academy's governing council, could improve the state's ability to hire and monitor some 16,000 law enforcement officers in South Carolina. While a number of improvements have been enacted in recent years, the system remains imperfect, leaving some cases difficult to decipher, Harrell said.

The Post and Courier recently detailed one such case in an article about Cottageville police Officer Randall Price, who cycled through eight police departments in 12 years while fighting allegations of excessive force and other misconduct. Price insists he is the victim of small-town politics and vendettas waged by officials who didn't like his strict enforcement of the law. While his critics deny that is the case, they provided the academy with little documentation to support the allegations against him.

Harrell said such situations are hardly rare in South Carolina, and the competing stories make it difficult for academy officials to decide whether an officer should be denied a new badge or be allowed to keep working in law enforcement.

"We are being asked to make decisions, in part, on what someone else said or did," he said. "We really have to be careful because we are talking about someone's career."

The state put stricter reporting requirements in place for police agencies after The Post and Courier's 2005 series "Tarnished Badges," which chronicled how troubled police officers remain in law enforcement despite histories of professional misconduct and criminal behavior. But political interference in police matters is still a reality in small towns, and some agencies remain reluctant to share information about the root causes of officers' departures, Harrell said.

At hearings to decide whether fired officers can regain their badges, Harrell said, he would like to see representatives from the terminating agency have to testify about the exact nature of the misconduct.

Harrell said he also would prefer that fired officers contesting misconduct allegations be required to take polygraph tests at their own expense to prove their innocence.

"This puts the onus on the guys who have been fired," he said. "If you say you shouldn't have been fired then take the polygraph, and the question is going to be: Did you do what they say you did?"

To make the hearing process fairer, Harrell said he is considering the creation of an outside panel that would hear appeals of his decisions in misconduct cases. The panel might include a police official, a sheriff's office representative and a citizen, he said.

Goose Creek police Capt. Dave Soderberg, president of the South Carolina Police Benevolent Association, said he has reservations about requiring officers to submit to polygraphs, particularly since the results aren't admissible in court. But he said some of the other proposals may have merit if they improve the screening process for problem officers and help protect those who have been victims of personnel vendettas.

"We don't want bad officers in the ranks either," he said.

Jeff Moore, executive director of the South Carolina Sheriff's Association, agreed that improvements are necessary to put more information into the hands of the academy's director when he is called upon to make decisions about a fired officer's future. "It's a very delicate and difficult thing," he said.