• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Nearly 90 police officers and FBI agents gathered at the Anderson School of Business last week, not as part of a crime scene investigation, but for the FBI’s annual Violent Crime Behavioral Analysis Seminar.

The four-day seminar, which ran from Monday through Thursday, consisted of a series of workshops intended to give local and national police officers further training on specific investigative and national police topics.

According to the university police Web site, the seminar included topics such as sexual assault, homicide, crimes against children, terrorism and threat assessment.

Manny Garza, captain of the Support Operations Division of UCPD, said that at the seminar officers study major national cases, and also have the chance to consult individually with FBI agents from the Bureau’s headquarters about the officers’ unsolved cases.

According to Garza, the seminar began eight years ago when the UCPD was approached by the FBI, who wanted to improve officer training in Southern California.

“They had a similar program at the University of Michigan and our old chief, Clarence Chapman, decided it was a good idea to start one here,” Garza said. “If the University of Michigan has done such a good job, we wanted to show the Federal Bureau of Investigation that we can do just as good a job here on the West Coast.”

Garza said approximately 20 FBI agents and four UCPD officers attended this year, and in the past officers from across the country have shown up.

John Adams, the captain of Field Operations at UCPD, said the seminar is unique because it is geared toward homicide and sexual assault investigators and a comprehensive list of 12 topics is covered.

“It’s a specialized training where the profilers come out and they go through case studies and analytical data, and there are different techniques to better work through cases,” he said.