Maine’s policing regulator has used a new law to discipline officers for more conduct with draft new standards of conduct and while truthfulness to the watchdog or in police reports is a problem, lying to suspects (the public) is still just fine.
In its proposed standards, the Maine Criminal Justice Academy (MCJA) states in its first paragraph that all certificate holders must be “truthful and honest.”
MCJA does more than train officers. It is known as a POST agency, or Peace Officer Standards and Training entity that regulates police officers in the state.
MCJA’s proposed standards include prevention of sexual or racial harassment and discrimination in the workplace. For the public, it also bars “harassment of someone because of race, color, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, physical or mental disability, religion, age, ancestry, national origin, or familial status.”
The Academy then reiterates its need for probity and truthfulness in applying to be, or remain, certified as a police officer by not making any “misrepresentation” or making an untrue statement.
The draft standards go further. A person will have been deemed to have violated the standards if that person “[m]akes any misrepresentation or is found to be untruthful in connection with their official duties as the holder of a certificate including, but not limited, to falsifying written or verbal communications in official reports or records or in interactions with another person or organization when it is reasonable to expect that the information may be relied upon due to their position as a certificate holder or applicant.”
But then comes the chaser in parentheses: “Except the use of misleading information during interviews, interrogations or special investigations in order to elicit information in the course of conducting official investigations.” The parentheses in the guidelines have been deleted here.
The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed ‘untruths’ to be used to illicit confessions - something other countries (such as the United Kingdom) had prohibited by statute. Instead, a falsity or lie used for that purpose (such as stating that incriminating evidence exists when it plainly and knowingly does not) is added as a factor in whether the confession is voluntary or not. This is known as the “totality of the circumstances.” Research has shown that lying leads to more false confessions. Not only that, but courts use what is produced in evidence - and courts are supposed to be crucibles of truth. Accepting that evidence can be produced with a blatant falsehood is not relying on the truth to find the truth. In fact, judicial integrity was the basis of the application of the exclusionary rule to the states in 1961.
Previously, the MCJA could really only discipline for convictions or allegations of criminal offenses against police officers. That relied on police chiefs actually reporting them to the academy. For the first time, the standards also place a police chief’s own certification in peril for not reporting a criminal charge but also any breach of the new standards.
The guidelines were made possible because of a new statute that added subsections to 25 M.R.S §2803-A, giving this rule-making power to the agency. The extra provisions were enacted in 2021. The standards have yet to be adopted.
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