Thursday, September 24, 2009

protect and defend

Instead of watching fake FBI agents on "Bones" and "Fringe," I will be spending my Thursday nights through November 12th enrolled in the FBI Citizens Academy. Each of the Bureau's 56 field offices offer the class. I was nominated by Public Affairs Specialist Stacie Bohanan of the Knoxville Division. I must have passed the background check because they let me attend tonight's meeting, which was led by Special Agent in Charge Richard Lambert. Agent Lambert began his presentation by showing a video clip from his favorite TV show.



The first session focused on the history and mission of the FBI. We also tried to learn the names of our 29 classmates. I already knew Hana Kim of WATE-TV and was re-introduced to Capt. D.J. Corcoran, spokesman for the Knoxville Fire Department. D.J. came to my house several years ago when he was working as a cameraman on the DIY show "Ed the Plumber."

In future weeks we will learn about criminal law and polygraphy, international and domestic terrorism, identity theft and Internet crimes, civil rights violations and white collar crimes. One night we will take a field trip to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Another night we will meet at a hotel to study staged crime scenes and to see a slide show from Dr. Murray Marks of the world famous Body Farm. One Saturday in October we will learn about deadly force scenarios and go to the firing range to take target practice. The final session of the class deals with crisis management and disaster scenarios. Before then I need to figure out what they mean by a "command post hot wash."

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3 Comments:

Blogger Frank Murphy said...

In episode 2, Hana Kim takes a lie detector test and cannot fool the machine! Polygraph expert Al Wilson asked her to think of a number between 33 and 39 and to say "no" when he asked if each of the numbers was hers.

10/02/2009  
Blogger ames said...

this is TOO FLIPPIN' COOL! i didn't know these classes existed! how cool of the feds to give up staff and time to give the civs an idea of what they do and how they serve and protect the public. nice!!!
also, did the body farm = the initial reason you enrolled? ;D be honest, now... LOL

10/06/2009  
Blogger PLANET3RRY said...

back in 2004, when I was coming out of UT with a Masters in Statistics and no job, I thought about going through the FBI as an agent, of course, I would have ended up like Nicholas Cage in "The Rock" except instead of biomedical warfare, I would be a pistol packing number cruncher. And the benefits are good too, but the whole "you have no control of where you live" was big downer, slightly more inconvenient then have people playing tag with semi-automatic (or full-auto) weapons.

Now, you'll be able to "slip-in" when the FBI Academy comes to Knoxville again for Body Farm visits!

10/07/2009  

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