Video Transcript

The FBI Citizens Academy program, it’s a program where community leaders get together. And it’s an eight to 10-week program and there are presentations from different areas of the FBI. You'll have agents coming in with case presentations on things that they have actually worked. Each week you typically will hear about some different area of the FBI.

I was a assistant state attorney in the Tampa Bay, Florida area. So I was already very pro-law enforcement, but I myself really had no idea of the daily life and inner workings of the FBI.

You actually get that perspective of what they were feeling and what it was like to be feet on the ground and investigating a case. So it’s a really unique experience.

I felt truly honored to be selected to participate in the FBI Citizens Academy and I really wanted to find a way to give back to the FBI. So I immediately joined my Citizens Academy Alumni Association and I later then became the president of the Tampa chapter.

So we have 60 different Citizens Academy Alumni Associations around the United States and as national we coordinate the efforts of all 60 Citizens Academies.

We have a goal that our national organization will assist chapters to come together on a given day to do some form of a national project where every chapter across the nation is facilitating that same goal and that same mission on the same day.

The FBI is continually trying to open up inroads of communication in different types of communities, be it cultural or religious communities. So the Citizens Academy Alumni Association attempts to have different community service projects in order to bring the news of the bureau to those communities, to allow communities to see that the FBI is not just coming to knock on the door and arrest people. The FBI is actively engaged to try and prevent harm, prevent crime, and to assist those neighborhoods with being safe.