Ask an ASAC: Community Outreach

The FBI’s Community Outreach Program supports our investigative mission by establishing relationships in the communities we serve. Watch our Seattle Assistant Special Agent in Charge discuss Community Outreach. We hope you will join us for a future event! Learn more: www.fbi.gov/seattle/community-outreach.


Video Transcript

Public Affairs: Greg, thanks for sitting down with me today. So as part of your portfolio, you have our Community Outreach program here in Washington State. Can you explain a little bit about what that is and why it's important to the FBI?

Seattle ASAC: Sure. Well, first, our Community Outreach program offers us the opportunity to build trust with the community. It also gives us the opportunity to talk to them about what the FBI is, what our priorities are, how we investigate crimes, and who we are.

Public Affairs: Can you give me some examples of community outreach efforts that this office takes?

Seattle ASAC: Sure. So every year we host something called Citizens Academy in which we host 30 or 40 members of the community for about seven weeks here. And we teach them all about what it is that we investigate, how we conduct those investigations, give them a peek behind the curtain. We even take them to a shooting range. Actually, our most recent Citizens Academy event just wrapped up this last weekend.

Public Affairs: Are there other efforts that the office does besides that with members of the community?

Seattle ASAC: There are a few others. We have something called Teen Academy, where every fall we have a number of high school students come here and learn about what we do and who we are. We also have something called the Director’s Community Leadership Award, which honors annually one person who's had a positive contribution in the community. And that person actually flies out to D.C., meets with the FBI director, and gets recognized.

Public Affairs: Well, it sounds like it's a big job. Is it just our community outreach specialist that handles things like this?

Seattle ASAC: So we do have a dedicated community outreach specialist, but it's the job of every FBI employee to represent the FBI to the entire state of Washington.

Public Affairs: Well, it sounds like it's very important to the FBI as a whole and Seattle. Thank you.

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