Texas Police Licensing Board Votes Sept. 3 on a Polygraph Certificate for Officers

The state agency that licenses every Texas peace officer and jailer votes Sept. 3 on rules creating a certificate an officer would need before administering a polygraph test — either to someone applying for a law enforcement job or to a subject in a criminal investigation.

The rules carry out a law the Legislature passed last year. It tells the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement to bar an officer from giving those two kinds of polygraph exams unless the officer has finished a training course the commission approves and passed a commission test on investigative polygraphy. The law took effect in September 2025, but officers do not have to comply until Jan. 1, 2027 — a date that leaves the commission about four months to finish the rule if officers are to be certified in time.

The package in front of the commissioners came from an advisory committee of nine, chaired by a Texas Department of Public Safety major, that the commission created in September 2025 and that reported back in July. Besides the certificate rule, the committee proposed a model polygraph policy that police departments and sheriff’s offices could adopt, and two rule changes that would require every agency employing licensed officers to have such a policy at all. The Dispatch found no version of the certificate rule in the Texas Register archive, which suggests a vote Sept. 3 would start the public comment clock rather than end it; anyone wanting to weigh in should watch the Register in the weeks after.

The rest of the agenda is housekeeping and discipline. Commissioners take up a set of licensing rule changes and repeals, including one made obsolete when the Legislature largely scrapped the process for contesting an employment termination report in 2023, and the removal of a recertification requirement for community supervision officers who carry firearms. They will also consider starting a second advisory committee, this one on firearms qualification, and hear a report on an outside audit of the agency. Also on the list are proposed default orders that would suspend the licenses of jailers, telecommunicators and peace officers who did not answer the agency’s disciplinary petitions. The agenda does not describe the alleged violations, the commission has not voted on the orders, and the Dispatch has not obtained the underlying petitions.

The commissioners hold a workshop Sept. 2 and meet the next morning at the Department of Public Safety’s DFW Airport headquarters, the location on the posted notice; the commission’s own calendar lists Plano. The meeting is streamed and archived.

Meeting at a glance

Commission members

• Kim Lemaux — presiding officer; Arlington; UT-Arlington police chief.
• David Criner — Midland; Midland County sheriff.
• Jason Griffin — Liberty Hill; assistant chief, Texas Department of Public Safety.
• Justin West — League City; Galveston County constable, Precinct 4.
• Justin Berry — Austin; senior police officer, Austin Police Department.
• Janna Atkins — Abilene; regional law enforcement academy training coordinator.
• Sergio Saenz — Mission; public member; businessman.
• Conor Harvey — Fulshear; public member; attorney.
• Rita Watkins — College Station; public member; licensed professional counselor.

Roster assembled from the governor’s appointment releases — Criner, Griffin and Watkins appointed March 27, 2026 and Saenz appointed in 2024 — and from the commission’s individual member biographies, because the agency’s roster page is out of date: it still lists three members whose terms expired in August 2025 and omits the three appointed in March 2026. Greg Stevens is executive director. Agency contact: (512) 936-7700.