"Bill Taylor"
Lifetime Achievement Award
(Initiated 2009)
William J Taylor
Captain (Ret) Texas DPS CLE
This annual award was created in honor of Texas Department of Public Safety Captain William J. Taylor, (Ret).
At their 1998 seminar and convention, Texas
Association of Law Enforcement Polygraph Investigators (TALEPI) awarded
one its founders, Dr. Antonio V. Suarez-Barrio (Tony Barrio) the
association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. At that time Capt.(ret)
William (Bill) J. Taylor, the other founder of TALEPI was terminally ill
and unable to attend.
TALEPI’s leadership, headed by President Lt.
Walt Goodson decided that year that henceforth The Lifetime Achievement
Award would be named in honor of
the other TALEPI founder, Capt. Bill Taylor.
Bill started his law enforcement career as a
Department of Public Safety (DPS) trooper stationed in Corrigan, a small
town in East Texas where in 1968 he applied for a position that became
vacant in the polygraph section at DPS Headquarters in Austin, Texas.
After passing the exams and oral board required, he was selected for the
position from among all the candidates by the then Polygraph Section
supervisor Mr. Henry L. Canty. Bill was then sent to Texas A&M polygraph
school and after graduation served his required internship under Canty.
Bill became a polygraph examiner in 1969 after passing the licensing
exam of the state Polygraph Examiners Board.
Bill progressed in his position at DPS
distinguishing himself and eventually being promoted to Sergeant,
Lieutenant, and after Canty’s retirement Bill rose to the rank of
Captain and supervisor of the entire DPS polygraph division, consisting
of eleven polygraph examiners.
During his career Bill served as member and
Chairman of the state of Texas Polygraph Examiners Board, where he
instituted many rules and regulations governing the uses of
Polygraph by all Texas’ examiners.
In 1976
Bill became a co-founder of
American Association of Police Polygraphists and
served two terms as its first president. Later, in 1992 he co-funded
TALEPI and retired from DPS after 37 years of service.
Bill possessed those qualities of integrity,
morality, ability and leadership that made him a model for all polygraph
examiners to emulate. His contributions to the field of polygraph are
legion and he will be remembered in perpetuity by the award named after
him by TALEPI.
The Bill Taylor Lifetime Achievement Award
will recognize those polygraph examiners that have had a long and
eminent career in the profession and had singularly distinguished
themselves by their contributions to the field, achievements and
actions, just as Bill Taylor had done.
The first recipient of the Bill Taylor
Lifetime Achievement Award, given at the TALEPI convention in 1999, was
Mr. John Caruthers, who had a lifelong and exemplary career as a
polygraph examiner with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Institutional Division. At the time of that award Bill Taylor was
already in hospice care and unable to present the award himself, but he
had been made aware of the honor bestowed upon him for posterity and he
was extremely humbled and proud of the honor. Bill asked Tony Barrio to
present the award to Mr. Carruthers in his stead and to thank the TALEPI
leadership and association for the honor they had bestowed upon him.
William (Bill) Taylor died on August 17, 2009
but his memory and legacy will live forever.
* * * *
Bill Taylor" Life Time Achievement Award Annual Recipients
Recipients of this award are recognized for their lifelong dedication and extraordinary advancement to the polygraph profession from a criminal justice perspective
Dr. Antonio Suarez-Barrio presents the first "Bill Taylor" Lifetime Achievement Award in Capt. Taylor’s absence to
John Carruthers
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
June 2009 Seminar
* * * * *
2010
Kelly B. Hendricks
2011
Jack B. St.John
See more historical documentation of both Cpt .Taylor as well as other Executive Board members of American Association of Police Polygraphists (AAPP) over the years - here