Police Union Sues Over Polygraph Tests

The Los Angeles police union on Thursday sued the department, saying that officers should not have to submit to lie detector tests in order to transfer into certain elite units.

The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by the Police Protective League, contends that the department requires such polygraph examinations, a practice it said deprives officers of the “rights, privileges and immunities” guaranteed them under the constitutions of California and the United States.

Named as defendants in the suit are the City of Los Angeles, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and three of his ranking subordinates.

A department spokesman refused comment, saying the case is in litigation.

The plaintiffs include 15 officers whose careers have been damaged by “unreliable polygraph examinations,” said Bill Violante, president of the league. He said the officers had asked for transfers into, or promotions within, units such as narcotics squads and the department’s anti-terrorist division.

The suit contends that within the last three years, the plaintiffs “have been requested and required, as an express condition of pay grade and transfer opportunities, to submit to polygraph examinations. . . .

“The Los Angeles Police Department . . . specifically advised various plaintiffs that if they took and passed a polygraph, ‘the transfer was theirs,’ ” the suit says.

Violante said that because of the inaccuracies of such tests, some of the officers, despite telling the truth, ended up with ambiguous scores that “denied them access to coveted positions and stigmatized them.”

The suit seeks an injunction forcing the department to halt the polygraph tests. It also asks the department to admit that the tests were improperly administered, destroy all test results and allow anyone rejected on the basis of the tests to reapply without prejudice.