Becoming an Agent: Preparing for the Field

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Video Transcript

New Agent Trainee: What we’ll do is if they’re there we’ll pull them out of the staircase outside, we’ll clear that first room and gain a good foothold in that, in that first room and then we’ll kind of use that as both a casualty collection point and a detail….

M.A. Myers: Many of the students here find the law enforcement skills portion of our training very demanding.

Voice of New Agent Trainee: Oof…Let’s go…Get out that gun!

Myers: We want to closely replicate what we think people are going to see in the field

New Agent Trainee: FBI! Search warrant! Open the door!

Myers: Our tactical instructors here look to develop scenarios based off of real cases. So a scenario over in Hogan’s Alley, which is where our tactical training is conducted, is going to closely mirror what our instructors have seen during their experiences.

Gary Lorin: Hogan’s Alley has been here 30 years. It’s something that kind of bonds all agents who’ve come through. You know, we have a bank, we have a pawn shop, we have a pool hall, we have houses, we have a hotel as well. So all different scenarios hit different venues, and it really makes it very realistic.

Sunny, New Agent Trainee: Hogan’s Alley is really, for us, where rubber meets the road. You encounter scenarios that you might have seen on TV, except for it feels real different when you’re in it and the way you respond, the movements that you make, kind of the muscle memory that they start to teach you.

Lorin: The scenarios we’ve developed are all from actual agent cases and events that have occurred. They have to arrest fugitives, they have to do surveillance, and use all the techniques that we give them in the first three meetings here. So it’s invaluable for them—this is the most important, most realistic, and prepares them the most for what they’re going to see out in the field.