Beyond the Pants on Fire, Police Look for Liars

There are about a hundred police specialties but Gothamist loves the idea that there's a special group of police officers just dedicated to polygraph tests. Because then we'd get Law & Order: Polygraph Edition, with all the action in an interrogation room. The NY Post calls a group of police officers "The Truth Squad," and six of the officers are in the Major Case Squad (what L&O: Criminal Intent is about). We're not sure if the officers use polygraph machines or a combination of machine and CIA-spook style lie detection tells, but who knew that pregnant women couldn't take polygraph tests? Since the Post makes a big deal out of this being something new for the NYPD, our hunch (from L&O SVU) that most polygraphs were given by other experts, like from the FBI, was probably right.

Our favorite polygraph scene is the Seinfeld episode where Jerry confesses he loves Melrose Place ("Did Jane sleep with Michael?" "Yes! That stupid idiot. He left her for Kimberly, he slept with her sister. He tricked her into giving him half her business, and then she goes ahead and sleeps with him again. I mean she's crazy. How could she do something like that? Oh that Jane, she makes me so mad..") Here are some techniques for telling if people are lying, and during interrogations, police are big liars, too: Detectives will not hesitate to trip up suspects by stating one fact, and then saying the opposite thing.