When a suspect lies, Brian Horton hopes to know.
He?s been hired as the Carroll County Sheriff?s Office?s first polygraph examiner.
“Truth tends to be intuitive, it tends to flow out, but someone trying to use deception has to pause to fabricate,” said Horton, a 25-year veteran of the Baltimore City Police Department.
So far, he has tested five deputy applicants, but he said he eagerly awaits his first chance to examine a criminal suspect.
Many people harbor incorrect images of polygraph exams from TV and movies, police say.
Tests no longer involve the outdated mechanical needle that scrawls up and down across rolling paper and suspects aren?t tied down or injected with truth serum.
Instead, police apply sensors to the subject to measure heart rate, blood pressure, sweat and respiration as results flash on a computer monitor.
The sheriff hired a polygraph examiner to help the departmentmore easily comply with a 2005 law that requires all police agencies to test applicants, sheriff?s spokesman Lt. Phil Kasten said.
Previously, Carroll had to rely on state police for that.
Horton continues to learn under a mentorship with nationally known expert Wendell Rudacille, a Howard County police officer and former National Security Agency investigator.
“Rudacille is very well-known and well thought of,” said William Cotton, president of the Maryland Polygraph Association.
Rudacille?s textbook ? which law enforcement and aspiring police officers across the country read ? details 16 categories of phrases liars commonly use.
When a suspect is asked a question, for example, he might say, “There is really not much that I can tell you about that,” then speak for 10 minutes and end with, “and that?s pretty much all I know,” according to Rudacille.
“He is literally telling you that he is not going to tell you anything, and then that he hasn?t told you everything,” he said.
In Maryland, polygraph results aren?t admissible in court, but police say they are helpful in identifying suspects.
