Page 375 - NIXBOOK

Once we started testing the applicants, the number of them who qualified dropped considerably as we weeded out the ones
with questionable background incidents. So the days of sending ten guys off the reserve academy were over; 5, 4, or 3 was the
new number. I remember one painful incident when we had to drop a candidate who had failed the polygraph test: He was a
superstar enlisted sailor stationed on one of the local Trident subs. His education, training, and professional navy
accomplishments were beyond comparison. He was super smart and even better, had enough common sense to be able to make
hard decisions in the absence of clear and easy black and white scenarios. But he didn’t want to admit to the polygraph examiner
his past history of drug abuse. At first he completely denied it, but when the failed the test the examiner let him try again, after
assuring him that the Department of the Navy would never find out the results of the test. So the examiner started over and the
guy admitted that back in high school he had smoked marijuana a few times. But he still failed the test; the results were still
showing some deception. The examiner talked to him some more, and convinced the sailor to fess up. So he then admitted he
had smoke actually a lot of marijuana, like maybe once a weekend during his senior year. But still the machine showed deception
on the squiggly lines bring printed out. The polygraph test, normally an hour or so, became a three hour ordeal. So they tried
again, and the sailor admitted that well, he had been a dope smoking fiend and was using the stuff like every day in high school.
The examiner thanked him to being truthful, continued to assure him the Navy would never find out, and that we didn’t really
care how much dope he had smoked back then because in his career since then he’s being clean and law abiding. But after the
test the examiner came to me and shook his head. “He’s
still hiding something else,” he told me. “I think he was
using some harder drugs back then too, but he just won’t
admit it no matter how much I try to get him to.” So we
never could hire that sailor as a reserve officer, which
was really sad because he was just so super smart and
capable. Police officers – the paid full time ones and the
volunteers, have to be proven impeccable in their word
and trustworthiness is of extreme paramount
importance. Officers who have a record of telling even
one lie are subject to a US Supreme Court ruling that
requires prosecutors to tell any and all defense attorneys
that that officer has a history of lying. And so of course
defense attorneys love hearing that; it calls into question
all sorts of elements of doubt in the prosecution’s case
when that officer is involved in charging a defendant
with a crime. Hence, we can’t hire anybody who is less
than truthful during their background checks.

Toward the end of my career our department got down to only a few reserve officers. Just like what happened with the full-time
officers, the total number of interested candidates dropped considerably over the years. And not just for our department; this
was a nationwide trend – there were just a lot fewer folks who wanted to get into police work, for all the reasons you could
probably imagine.

Later on in my career I became a state certified Field Training Officer, which is what you call the experienced officer who takes
the rookie officers from the academy and introduces them to actual police work on the streets. I’m talking real, paid officers,
not volunteers. So I trained a few of the new officers we hired and wound up at one point rewriting our Field Training
Officer/New Hire checklist/manual which I guess was one my specialties. I updated it regularly and it was used for all the new
volunteer reserve officers and the new paid officers that we hired.

At one point I also applied for an opening on the county’s multi-agency SWAT team after they announced they needed a position
filled. I passed the physical fitness test but during the interview process I lost out to a Bremerton police officer who had prior
experience as a Special Forces soldier before becoming a police officer, something I couldn’t compete with so I didn’t feel bad
about not making the team.

For quite a few years afterward, I’d get letters or calls from employers, inquiring about guys who had been a reserve officer and
had listed me as a reference. Of course the only ones who did that were the ones who left in good graces, so it was easy for me
to give them good recommendations.