BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force will soon be implementing a number of new vetting procedures, including the use of Polygraph Test, to clamp down on rogue cops within the law enforcement agency.
Making an appearance on the Government’s weekly radio programme ‘Working for You’, the Assistant Commissioner of Police with responsibility for Crime, Ian Queeley, along with other members of the Police High Command, explained that the Force has recognised that there are “bad apples” within its fold and some measures are currently in place to rectify the situation.
The ACP was at the time responding to statements made by two callers to the programme; one of whom claimed that some officers in the Force have been providing information to persons who the police had targeted during their search operations. And the other caller claimed that sometime in the past a male Caucasian was robbed on Nevis and he had allegedly identified the robber as a police officer.
In an effort to show that the High Command is taking steps to ensure the Force has enlisted trustworthy and professional men and women, Queeley said: “As a matter of fact we are currently incorporating in our recruiting process, vetting procedures which would include polygraph for example and other vetting mechanism.”
He pointed out that several departments within the Force would also undergo screening, noticeably those dealing with classified information.
“What we are attempting to do is to make certain that persons who do handle sensitive information are cleared to handle sensitive information. And that is a process that is ongoing and would even further intensify as we go further.”
For several years many citizens and residents had declared that they had lost confidence in the Police Force and refused to provide information, especially in gun-related incidents, claiming that their identity would be given to the perpetrators by some unprofessional officers.
Polygraph Test, better known as ‘lie-detector’, is often used to assess nervous excitement during criminal investigations, SKNVibes understand.
According to Dictionary.com, polygraph is an instrument used for receiving and recording simultaneously tracings of variations in certain body activities.
In other words, it is said to detect if someone is lying or telling the truth, but the results are often inadmissible as evidence in some courts.
