We have about an hour so
we have panelists here representing.
Greg Castanzo is with the Oregon
State Police. Phil Sauer is with
the Oregon Department of Corrections.
Wendy Hamilton is with Polk County Juvenile Department.
This isn't working? Okay.
Did everybody hear those earlier?
Good enough? Okay.
Next is Sabrina Hunter who's
with Salem Police Department. And then Kevin Jones
is at the end and he's with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
What I'd like them to do is to talk
about their careers a little bit.
What are the requirements for the career at entry level?
Maybe something about pay and benefits.
And what the job is like.
What they like about it, preferably, and maybe
some things that they don't like about it. Whatever they want to talk about.
They all have about six or seven
minutes to talk about that, so we'll leave plenty of time
for questions at the end. Keep some questions in mind.
I think we'll start at this end
with Trooper Castanzo.
We'll move down the line, and you guys can give your proper
titles and experience and everything else.
Is that okay? Yes, sir.
Hopefully they'll talk about the importance of an education, too,
to their profession.
That was just a hint.
Well, good morning. I'd like to welcome everybody here. I'm going to do
a quick introduction about myself, because I do think it's important.
I grew up in Medford, where I went to North Medford High School.
I participated in athletics, from football to wrestling to baseball. And then in
1988 I came up
much like you are doing here for a tour of Western, and I met 
Doctor Gibbons back then, and I think he was my advisor back in 1988,
which seems like a long time ago. I knew that
Western was going to be a place that I would get my degree in Criminal Justice.
I had the unique vision for myself that I knew I always wanted
to be in law enforcement ever since I was a young kid, and that was
very lucky for me, because it's a career path that I've
enjoyed for over 20 years now.
In 1988 I also applied for a scholarship where I went into the
ROTC program. Back then it was at Oregon State, so I did a
minor in ROTC and a major in law enforcement up here at Western.
I went through my four years
and in 1994 I graduated and I went into the
military. I served my country as a first lieutenant
all the way up through a captain where I had a lot of fun. I was on SWAT
and I got to jump out of airplanes. I went to pathfinder school.
Unfortunately, or fortunately for me, I also met a young gal at Western
who was a teacher, who I've been married to for 21 years now, and she said
'we're getting out of the military.' So I had to think, what type of work do I
want to do? And I knew I wanted to be an Oregon State trooper.
I got hired in 1998. I was stationed in Salem.
I've been a motorcycle officer. I've had a canine
for ten years. I've been a field training officer.
I've been on specialty teams, and now I'm a bomb technician for the state
police and I absolutely love going to work every day.
Some of the things that I've done that college has benefitted me
is being able to speak in public. Also writing is very important.
My four years at Western and with Doctor Gibbons has really shaped
me into being a well rounded police officer, and that's the number one benefit
that I see with education.
Those who don't have it struggle with some of the day-to-day tasks of
law enforcement because they are grueling when you get into academic
skills such as writing and being able to articulate what you've learned
over time. Criminal justice has changed. One of the things
I love about it is the people that I
work with. The people up here on the panel; there's something about going to
work as a team and being able to sacrifice
yourself for a better cause, and that's serving the community.
I absolutely love it. I have been doing it now for
twenty years. The pay and benefits...I think there's a little bit of a misnomer
out there. A lot of people come up to me and say they don't get
paid very well being a police officer. I will tell you, for what I do, I feel lucky
every day. This might not mean much to you but I
make 110 to 15 thousand dollars a year, which
is pretty good for me. I work very little overtime.
The education that I have and my specialty
training allows me the opportunity to make that much money.
About four years ago I went back and I started researching where I wanted
to get my masters degree, and I met Terry Gingrich who's over in the
corner, and I came back to my home of education and that was Western,
but there are many schools out there that are very good. Western just fit
my personality style.
There's a lot of different things in law enforcement to do. The state police has
a myriad of things. Sometimes people ask me why I never promote it.
It's because I'm not an office guy. I like being out every day, working
in the community doing specialty things and that's what I do
down in Southern Oregon being a bomb technician and working
patrol half-time. With that being said,
that's about six minutes and I'll pass it off to the next guy in line.
Thank you, Greg.
applause
We have a late arrival; he had a long way
to come. This is Matt Olafsson from the Monmouth
City Police Department. Took him a while to get here.
I'm on patrol right now.
Oh you are? He may be called away, too.
Next is Phil Sauer from Oregon Department
of Corrections. Good morning. I'm Phil Soward from the Oregon Department
of Corrections. I'm a Corrections officer. I went to Western
Oregon also in 1988 and 1989. Doctor Gibbons
was my advisor, but I have something better than that. I actually
went to grade school on campus here,
right over there at the ITC building. It was a campus elementary.
I've been here my whole life.
I actually lived in town most of my life
and just recently my wife and I moved to the other side of Salem.
But I've worked for the Department of Corrections since 1993.
I did a practicum 'pilot program' while I was here at the college.
I contracted into that, and that program is still going on today.
From there, I was a
recreation specialist, where I taught them how to recreate
and pro-recreation,
pro-social skills. And then from there I went into security.
Like this person here next to me, I've never
promoted up because I like doing things as well. I've also been on the special
teams; I was two years on the TERT team, ten years on the crisis negotiations
team, and also I covered many
different other skills. 
I can say that this school really
is what calmed me down in life. Like I said,
I've lived here a long time and the atmosphere here is very
comfortable. If you're a little nervous about going to college
or going away or whatever, this is the school for you.
Everyone here is like a family, and if you're going into corrections,
or into the criminal justice field, you're stepping right into
a family feeling. Everybody in there treats everyone like family.
Or a team.
I make, like, five dollars less than him, but
I make a good living and let me just
also say to you, if you're thinking about coming and starting
in a correctional or criminal justice profession,
starting college next year, it's working out perfectly for you.
You cannot be in a better time. Within the next four or five years,
more than fifty percent of the DOC staff
employees are eligible for retirement.
More than fifty percent. We have fourteen thousand, nine hundred
employees with the Department of Corrections right now. That's over
seven thousand individuals. So there will be seven thousand
plus job opportunities. 
All I can say is that if you get a college degree, you are
two or three steps above people who do not have that, and you will advance
way faster and make a lot more money a lot faster
than the average joe coming in off the street.
Again, like him, I cannot express to you 
how much writing you will need to take
in and learn. Just get yourself
better at it. Public speaking, if that's your
thing - It's not mine, but I do it -
writing. That's the skill you need. That will keep you out of trouble
and it will keep the people that need to be in trouble, in trouble.
I'm pretty much done. Like I said,
Doctor Gibbons - this is his last year, I guess.
He's retiring. He's 'thinking about it.'
He keeps thinking about it. That's all there is.
We'll see, maybe we'll see some of you on campus next year.
Hope you come here. Go Wolves. They have a great football team.
applause
Thanks, Phil.
Hopefully you are already picking up that there are a lot
of different things you can do in criminal justice.
There are training opportunities and all kinds of specialty
assignments that you can get.
Like bomb tech, fish and wildlife,
SERT teams and corrections. There are a lot
of different things. Next I'll pass it over to
Wendy Hamilton who is going to talk about
the juvenile justice system. She's a juvenile probation officer
with the Polk County Juvenile Department.
The juvenile justice system is a while other
system that provides another level
of jobs and job opportunities for people.
So I am Wendy Hamilton and I work for the Polk County
Juvenile Department. I am a juvenile probation officer. I graduated
from Western in 2000 with a Bachelors of Arts in
Corrections. I will say that I started my journey at Western as an elementary
education major, however, and changed once I took
one criminal justice class. That's all it took for me to come to the dark side.
I started out in
Linn County as a practicum student and was hired from my practicum to
do a temporary assignment working on an expungement. Expungement
is huge within the juvenile justice system because it basically means getting your
record shredded, for lack of a better word. From there I filled in as an
intervention specialist, which was working with middle
school aged youth in addition to a regular probation officer,
offering services. I've also worked as a
diversion coordinator in both the peer court system as well as in Polk County.
Our diversion program is called Sanction Court. And from there, I am now
a juvenile probation officer. Day to day is working with
youth and families and that's the different between juvenile and adult, is
that you do work with families. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles,
older siblings that are raising their younger siblings.
Day to day is meetings at schools with treatment providers.
I work closely with law enforcement because that's where we get our business.
The only way you get involved with my department is if you meet one of these
folks first. The other piece is that we
make decisions every day on youths' futures as to whether they will
be detained in a detention facility or if they're going to be released
back to the community to live with their parents. As far as
pay, it ranges from county to county. I make
roughly 60,000 dollars a year. That does include retirement
as well as insurance.
My biggest piece of advice for you all, especially if you're interested in the
juvenile justice route, is now is the time to gain experience working with
youth. I would say particularly at-risk youth.
But any experience you can gather now is beneficial.
Whether or not you choose Western as your school, I think
college is probably the single most important decision you'll make in your life
for reasons that have been discussed up here. Not only financially being able
to support yourself, so that you're healthier, happier, and
just passionate about what you do in life.
I think that's all. Did I miss anything?
applause
Thanks, Wendy.
sound cuts out momentarily
occupation, there's
adult probation and parole as well. It's a similar
job but, actually juvenile probation officers
do a lot more hands-on work, oftentimes,
including the courts, too. 
She presents cases in court. She basically serves as a lawyer, I think.
We do present cases in court regularly,
making recommendations to a judge on what we think should happen to 
a particular juvenile. I also should have mentioned that there's a wide range
of professions within the juvenile justice system, starting out with
running a community service work crew program, working in the detention facilities
like a correctional officer, all the diversion programs that
are out there statewide, all the way up to probation officer.
There's many, many opportunities out there. To be a juvinile
probation officer, public speaking is part of it. I used to hate it; I've gotten over it.
You kind of have to when you're in a courtroom before a judge
and with people behind you. So my other piece of advice is
to take some communication, speech type classes because you're going to need it.
And I'm going to emphasize writing. It's huge, because we do a lot of reports as well.
Thanks, Wendy. Okay, next
I'll just move down the line to Sabrina Hunter, who
is an officer with the Salem Police Department.
I've been employed with Salem full-time since 2013.
I was a part-time community service officer in 2011.
I went to Western from 2004 to 2007. I graduated with
a bachelor of science in law enforcement with a minor in political
science. When I first graduated high school in 2000,
I had zero interest in college. I thought it was garbage.
I was like 'I'm not going to waste four years of my life, this is stupid. I'm going to
start working and making money.' After a few years of minimum wage jobs,
I realized that got me nowhere.
So I chose Western. They had really small class sizes. It was a really
beautiful campus. The teachers know you by name.
I still talk to my professors ten years later.
It seemed like a good fit for me.
I struggled after college to get hired.
I put in a lot of effort volunteering. I did a practicum with state police.
I worked for Marion County Parole and Probation with sex offenders.
I worked with a couple domestic violence shelters.
I put in a lot of work and I couldn't get hired. I had hundreds of applications,
over the course of seven years before I actually
got hired. What I'd recommend to you is don't get discouraged.
It's a super competitive field. When I was applying
ten years ago, policing was a lot different than it is now.
The day I showed up to test with Salem there was five hundred applicants
testing for five positions.
Now police are getting more of a bad image with the media and everything,
so it's hard to get good applicants. Our pay
is really good. I work graveyard. I'm just a
lowly beat cop, so I don't know if you guys like to watch 'Cops' at all,
but basically every day of my job is like an episode of 'Cops'.
I got punched in the face a couple nights ago. People spit on you. I've plugged peoples'
gunshot wounds. Held dying children. Pulled people out of burning houses.
I've done everything. It's a good time.
It's fun. You get paid to shoot, drive fast, fight
each other. It's cool.
Salem is the second-largest city agency in the state.
We're supposed to have about a hundred and ninety officers. We're down ten
to twelve right now just due to retirement, people moving, stuff like that.
I can't top the first panelist.
I made about 90,000 last year, which is pretty
good money. Since I work graveyard, all of my
court is overtime. It's kind of tough on
family life. If you guys don't have a good support system, you won't 
make it. My husband is also a police officer.
I actually just got off work at six a.m. so I apologize; I'm a little delirious.
If I'm rambling. Our hiring process
is long and strenuous. It's called F-TEP, and
right when you guys are hired, you go through six weeks of
in-house training, so our officers would
teach you how to shoot. We'd go to the range.
You'd go through con-sims, which are like scenario-based
situations. There's defensive tactics,
there's EVOC, which is like how to drive like a crazy person.
You know, without getting in trouble. And then you do sixteen weeks at the police academy.
That's required for every police officer in the state, to go through that.
And then F-TEP for our agency is four phases.
It's about four to six weeks with a coach per phase.
It's super stressful, I'm not going to lie. I'm sure you've
got the same story. I lost twenty pounds,
I wasn't eating, it was stressful. But it's so worth it.
You're graded on everything; your appearance, your officer safety,
your report-writing, how you talk to people, how you interact with other
members of the department. That portion,
after you're hired until you're in your own car, is about nine or ten months.
So it's a long ride but it's worth it.
I'd recommend to you guys, if you can do any kind of volunteering that makes
you stand out from other people, for me,
I had past internships, I even
went on my own time and sat in court rooms so I could learn how the court process worked.
I'd sit in traffic court and circuit court just to have that edge on the next applicant.
I don't know if you guys have ever heard of the ORPAT.
It's this terrible, awful physical fitness course which
is required by most agencies to get hired.
If you guys can go test that out, I would recommend doing that as well.
And then ride-alongs. Those are key.
A lot of people think they want to be cops; they think it's cool to watch it on TV.
And then they'll actually get out and realize, 'oh my gosh, this isn't what I like.'
So I just encourage you guys. I rode with lots of city agencies, state, county...
big, small. Just get your name out there and make a lot of contacts.
That's it.
applause
applause
I think I'll go with Matt. I'm going to skip
just to stick with the police so
we have the second-largest police department in the state represented
by Sabrina. Now we'll have Matt Olafson, who's been with
Monmouth PD, which is the third largest - oh, no, not quite. Just a little
guy. The small police department. Matt is a sergeant
with Monmouth Police Department. And the other thing is, you might notice
a trend that all the panelists are Western graduates.
You know, it's basically who I know.
I put the panel together and I called them up and they're willing to come.
I'm proud of all these former students.
They're great professionals and they do a great job.
Go ahead, Matt.
My name is Matt Olafsson; I'm a patrol sergeant
here in Monmouth. Like I said, I'm on duty today, so
I could leave at any time. I'm going to tell you a little bit about how
I got started. When I came to college,
I was a jock. I came to school to be a football player, played football
here at Western. And then, about my sophomore year,
was when I started growing up a little bit, and I had a
professor tell me, 'hey, you can't just play football all your life, man.
You've got to figure out something.' And I wanted to be a football coach like every other jock
does. So I kind of started looking.
No offense to you guys, but I didn't want to deal with high schoolers all my life.
So my professor said, 'hey, go find some
jobs that interest you
and go observe them.' I had a cousin at the time that was working in Newport
that went to school here, as well. And I jumped in a car with him
one night and, honestly, I look back at it now, and we didn't do much.
We ran code, which is lights and sirens, down highway 101 one time,
and went to a domestic another time, and
I think he roughed up some guy that had a warrant for a little bit, but
it wasn't much for what I see now, day to day.
But at the time, I was like 'man, that was
awesome!' I had the greatest time of my life.
A lot of the stuff that I learned on the football field,
it started transitioning to that job. I mean, that job that he was doing
at the time, was that patrol car, that little box,
that's his office every day. He goes around helping people
that need him. I found an interest in that.
So I started taking some classes and I changed my degree.
I wasn't totally settled on it yet, because that's part of growing up. That's what you get
four years of college for, I really believe, is to figure out how to grow up.
So I ended up majoring in community crime prevention.
I was worried that law enforcement might be just too specific.
I wanted something else to fall back on if I didn't make it or
if I didn't have the desire. While I was playing football
I was able to get into the reserve program with Monmouth.
The reserve program is pretty cool. If you haven't heard about it,
look into it. Basically, you are hired on as a reserve
which is volunteer-based. You go in and you go through
immense training just like a full-time officer does. We do full background checks,
psych, all the same stuff that you'd do in a full-time process.
We do that for our reserves. They then go through training. Just like
the full-time police officers. Many of the instructors in our
MVRT training are full-time academy instructors.
So they get a lot of really good training. They do it twice a week
and then on the weekends in the evenings.
It's over a period of time but I was able to get a lot of credits through the university
too, in practicum hours, and some other credits, so it worked
toward my degree. After that was done, I got to go in full uniform
as a volunteer and be a cop with a full-time officer.
I really got to know people, I got to learn how the job worked
and I graduated. I was done playing football in '04,
and I graduated in December in '04, and an opportunity
happened here. I thought I was on my way out, going to leave Monmouth
finally, and an opportunity opened up and I got hired by April.
And so I've been here since 2000. I'm now raising
my family here and it's awesome, awesome town. It's not like
I thought it was in college. It's a lot different and it's
been awesome.The one thing I tell everybody that comes in and talks
to me about wanting to become a police officer is:
I tell them, 'you've got to continue to learn.'
Everything in this job changes every day. Whether it's
case law, whether it's updating laws, legislation comes out with something new,
we are always learning. And that basis started
when I was in college. Learning how to live on my own for the first time.
Learning how to manage my time
with school and football and social life.
I learned while I was in college. I have some friends
at a high school that went
right into the workforce. One of my best buddies, he
bought a house before me, but he's still working for the sanitation place
that he started his job at. I was able to
grow up, figure out what I wanted to do, learn how to be
a young man and set myself up for a career.
I'm making a lot more than him now, I'm
at about 85,000 a year, and
I love it. Every day is different. I don't have to sit behind a cubicle,
I'm a road guy. I go out and talk to 
people in the community and meet people every day. I spend a lot
of times going to the schools and just having lunch with elementary kids.
Just because I want to change that image of kids at a young age, and I can do that.
Because my job allows me to. If I want to go home for lunch
I can go home and say hi to my kids. There are so many perks to this
job. But really they key is
figuring out where you want to go. What I loved about
Western is the same thing that they talked about up here is
the fact that the class sizes are small, and Doctor Gibbons
and Doctor Gingritch were part of helping me figure 
out what I needed to do to get where I needed to be.
I could tell you a whole bunch of stories; I've done a whole bunch of stuff, but
I won't bore you with that.
Thanks, Matt.
applause
Okay, last is Kevin Jones, who's a
staff operations specialist with the FBI.
Hey, everybody. Can you all here me fine out there?
Alright. My name is Kevin Jones. I work for the FBI, based
out of Salem here. I graduated from Western Oregon in 
2012. My job as a staff operations specialist is
tactical analysis.
As opposed, of course, to strategic analysis. But I basically
spend all my time and energy finding people,
places, and things. I get paid to do that all day.
I find myself to be pretty good at it. I sit at a desk all day.
Last week, I had a pretty crazy experience, much like
Sabrina, who had to rescue kids and
plug gunshot wounds. I couldn't log into my computer last week.
I lost files, I didn't know where the were. I left them by the other
computer. It was pretty hectic. It was tragic.
I know. So, basically, like I said,
I just do a lot of analysis and research.
I was talking to somebody a while ago and they said that I basically have the job of
that gal, that analyst off of 'Criminal Minds.'
What was her name? Garcia. That's what it was.
I can't work that fast, and I don't get my information
as quickly as she does. But, anyway, a little bit about me.
I went to high school at Benson over in North Portland. I grew up
in Southeast Portland. I had no idea what I wanted to do
after high school. I actually came to the preview day; this exact room, listening
to a similar panel. My mom came with me,
and I was like 'mom, no, you don't have to come, just drop me off.' But she
was persistent so she came with me. So I sat here and I
learned as much as I could. Basically it came down to, this was
the best university that's out of Portland where I grew up,
and I wanted to kind of get out and experience something different. So I came here
with a thought that I wanted to be a biologist, until I took a biology
class and realized that I don't know anything about science.
I still don't. So then I shifted from biology to
education. But then I quickly realized that I didn't want to do that. I took some 
psychology classes. I wanted to be a psychologist until I realized
I'm not fit for that either. So what happened was, I'm sitting in the dorms.
I stayed in Landers over here; I don't know if you guys will get a tour of that or not,
but I stayed in Landers and a dorm-mate of mine came in and was talking about
criminal justice. He was like, 'I just got out of my criminal justice class.'
I'm like, 'really? What did you guys learn about?' And he said 'oh, it was 
with Doctor Gibbons or it might have been with Murphy or Gingritch, but
we talked about murders today, drugs, and
all these different...' and I'm like 'at school? You talked about that at school?'
He said, 'yeah.' I said 'I want to sign up for a class.' So I signed up for a class
and quickly realized, 'this is what I want to do.' So I did my
three years going into my internship. I had Doctor
Murphy, standing in the back there. I had him as my advisor.
We were sitting down and I was trying to figure out where I wanted to do my internship.
He had experience with the marshal service, and he said 'why don't you consider federal?'
So I applied for the FBI. I thought it was really cool that
I was applying for the FBI. It was in the library here, people were walking by,
they were seeing that I was on the FBI's webpage. I thought I was pretty cool.
So I applied, and I didn't think anything was ever going to happen. I got an email back
from an FBI recruiter up in Portland, and then I also felt
really cool that people were walking by, and they might have read the FBI thing.
So long story short, to do an internship
with them you have to do a polygraph, you have to do a background check, they
sent an investigator here and talked to all of my professors,
my roommates, my dorm-mates, neighbors, all that kind of stuff.
And then I had to do a lot of stuff for that. A lot of paperwork.
Surprisingly. So I did that.
I worked up in Portland for ten weeks. Then I was on a
cyber crimes unit, and also did some work with the International Terrorism Division
there. At the end of that, they said 'do you want to continue your senior year
here at Western and still work for us as an intern?'
I said, 'yeah, absolutely, sounds great.' So I did that. Two weeks before I
graduated, just like Sabrina, I was applying everywhere.
Any place. I was trying to get a job as a police officer. Similarly to her
experiences, I walked into one place and there was like two hundred fifty people.
Somebody raised their hand and said 'how many spots are you hoping to fill here?'
They were like, 'well, one. Maybe two.' I was like, I'm never going to
become a police officer. So two weeks before my graduation
the FBI called and said 'hey, we're about to post two jobs.
We want to know if you would like to know about them first.' I said 'well, yeah
absolutely.' They told me what they were and I said 'well, here's the question. Do I get paid?'
They said 'yes, you do.' I thought, well, yeah.
You're going to pay me to do the work I was doing, that sounds great!
So I put forth an application, did an interview, got hired, and the
day that I graduated here on the football field, that night I was up in Portland
and I was flying back to Quanitco, spent a week there, 
came back and worked up in Portland in our confidential file room, handling all of our
confidential human sources and stuff like that. I did that for about
two or two and a half years. A job opened up here in Salem
to do tactical analysis. I said, 'yes, absolutely, that is right up my alley.'
I never thought I would ever want to come back to Monmouth.
But when you leave it, you tend to really oddly want to 
come back. It's strange. Just like Matt said. When I left,
I was like 'I'm never going to ever come back to Monmouth.
It's just too small of a town; I'm a big city guy.' But then I went back to Portland and quickly
realized, if I'm going to get married and have a wife and kids and raise my family,
it's going to be in Monmouth. So I've been working at the Salem office
for going on three years now. I really enjoy it.
The requirements to get into the FBI
are very dependent on what you want to do. All of it has to do with polygraphs,
background, figuring out who you are. It's a lot of that kind of stuff.
All that information is pretty standard
and it's all online. Careers: there's special agents, there's analysts, there's
anything. If you like computers, there's that. 
Anything that you guys can think of, there's probably a unit back at headquarters that does
it, or out in the field as well. As far as pay, when I started right out of college,
I was getting paid 33,000 dollars.
So that was in 2012. 
Now, last year I got promoted and I
am getting paid 65,000. In May I jump to 78,000.
And then it just progressively goes the longer I'm in the position.
Also, another benefit is if you want to
continue your education, they'll pay for that. If you don't have a degree and you get into the FBI
they'll pay for bachelor's degree, they'll pay for a master's degree. They paid for
my master's degree. I'm finishing up a master's degree at UofO right now. 40 grand.
I don't have to pay anything, I just have to pass the classes.
And then, also, your student loans. If you come to the FBI with student loans,
they'll pay that stuff off, too. You just have to put in an application.
Then they review your performance. If you're a good employee, they'll pay it off too.
But all of this basically stemmed from when I came to Western; I did not know what I wanted to do.
There are a lot of good advisors here; a lot of good teachers. Everybody wants you
to succeed. I can directly attribute my
trajectory into the FBI and the criminal justice field
to all of the faculty
here. I never thought in a million years that I'd actually be doing this but
when I didn't really have the know-how or the
option or the knowledge to even go about something like that, even
applying, I sat in Doctor Murphy's room and he said 'why don't you consider this?
Consider the FBI.' I was like 'really, you think so?' He was like 'why not?'
So I know exactly where you guys are at. All of us do.
We were all here at one point. There are a lot of unknowns, but
education is so important, regardless of what you want to do in life.
It will help you every single day.
You'll never be able to bring it down to one class, but with the education you get here,
especially, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's been the most valuable
thing I've ever had. That's it for me, thank you.
applause
applause
That's great, and we have plenty of
time for questions, so hopefully we have some questions out
there. Is there a microphone for people? Okay,
Dave's going to come and get it. Anybody have
a question for any of the panelists, or generally?
Right in front, that's great. Right there, Dave.
Sorry, I saw one back there.
Is it true that you guys have to get tased to become a
police officer? -We have to be shot, too.
With our agency, it's optional. If you want
to you can. -Did you? -No, we have
to get OC'd, which is just some pepper spray that burns for, I don't know,
like, a week. But otherwise the tasing is optional.
It's optional for us, too, but I highly recommend
it to our guys and I'll tell you the reason behind it.
In a lot of police force situations, you have to testify to that. If somebody were to get
my taser from me, I know what that effect is on me.
It's going to incapacitate me to a level that I can't control my body or
anything else. I also know what that does to somebody else. So if I deploy it
on somebody else, I know what they're going to go through, so I suggest that
you do it to people. It's five seconds, and we call it 'The Ride,'
and it's quite a ride.
You take a nap afterwards. But it's optional.
How about you, Greg? Did you have to be tased? -With the state police it's not
required that we get tased, but I have been tased for some of the same reasons.
It's something that everyone should do.
Okay, another question.
So a technical analyst, what classes do you recommend
for students that want to go into that? -That's actually a really good question.
Not surprisingly, I write all day, every day.
If I find something; I'm doing a write-up on someone and
whatever I find out I have to put that into a document
that gets serialized to the file. Just take as many writing classes as you can.
That's what I did when I was here; I took a lot of writing classes.
Research writing, research methods, stuff like that.
Basically, if I could summarize it I would just say writing.
Because it doesn't really  matter what you're writing; if you can
spell right, if you can put a period...all these different things
that seem pretty common sense now, but there are a lot of people
that really struggle with it. If you can go through college and
if you make sure you're a good writer, because, surprise, when you come to Western,
you're going to have to write. You'll eventually find yourself getting better at it.
That's my two cents. Computer science stuff, too. If you can learn how
to use computers, if you don't know already,
computer science is a good option if you want to
go into intelligence
writing is especially good, political science. The good thing
about the FBI is that you don't have to have a criminal justice degree to get in the door.
We don't hire just people with criminal justice degrees. We've hired
bus drivers from Boston and we've hired gym teachers from Alabama.
That's not a joke. We really have. If you have the background
to support why you're coming; if you have a unique set of skills to bring
to the table, then if you're going to be an asset to the team, you're hired.
Hopefully that answered your question.
Forgive me if you already answered this,
I came in a bit late, but what degree
would you say that would be beneficial to join
whether it's the FBI, state police, or just a
county division of police?
I'll answer that real quick.
I know for me, any degree that you find that is fascinating that motivates you
to go to class every day and be the best student and person you can be,
go towards that. We don't require any specific degree, but pick one
that motivates you because that's what's going to make your four years here at Western
more fulfilling: actually enjoying learning. So don't 
go to classes just because you think you have to. Pick something that motivates you
and fascinates you so that you can learn.
I wouldn't say there's any specific one...we have officers
that have art degrees, and music, and Spanish.
It really doesn't matter. We're just looking for that extra education. That just shows
us that you're motivated, you're dedicated, you can see something through.
I went for forensic chemistry as well for
a little brief period of time before I realized it kicked my but. It was super hard.
But, yeah, there's nothing really specific. If you're passionate about
criminal justice, then you'll have a blast here at Western.
I think the important thing,
like what they said, do something that you're passionate about and
that you want to go to class, that you're interested in.
That also translates to better grades.
That makes a difference: having a GPA
that is well over 3.0.
It's not that you can't get a job with a GPA
under 3, but it does make a difference when they're looking
at your file. They will look at your
transcripts, unlike some professions.
In criminal justice, especially in law enforcement, they
will look at your transcripts and see what classes you took and what grades
you got, and it can make a difference. It's something that sets you apart.
Like they're saying, you always want to look for something that will set you apart
from other people, and everybody up here has said that in one way
or another.
Hi, approximately how many volunteer hours do you have to
do, or where would you recommend
the kids go to get that experience?
To get your
college degree, you do have to do a practicum, and that's a four hundred
hour work experience, and that's to get your degree.
As I said before, any experience that you can get
is vital. I have a similar situation like these folks.
I worked seven days a week for four years
so that I could keep my foot in the criminal justice door.
So that was having a part-time job within juvenile justice and a full-time job to pay the bills.
But don't give up. Continue to apply. Volunteer wherever
and whenever you can. Particularly with juvenile justice,
even working at the boy's and girl's club, at the YMCA,
anything like that. Just the experience showing that you can work with youth
is vital to entering our system.
So, as Wendy said, if you major in Criminal Justice
at Western, we require our students to create a four hundred
hour practicum for twelve credits, or internship for twelve credits,
usually during your senior year. We place you
with an agency in the field, as close as we can get
to something that you're interested in, and a faculty member
supervises you, and then there's a professional in the field that supervises you, too.
And then,
do as much else as you can. Get experience, as everybody
has suggested, in other ways.
With Oregon State Police, do you get
a certain job when you're hired, or after your training
can you request a job, like being a game warden
or highway patrol? -Yeah, we have actually a lateral
program now, but the two jobs that you'll get right off the bat is that we'll have
people hired right into fish and game, and then we have people hired right into patrol.
It's changing so quickly now, we have detectives that are
lateral over from other agencies that will fill that detective job.
But right out of college you will either be put in patrol or in fish and game, and
then whatever path you want to take will progress from there.
First, thank you, everybody for serving all of us.
When you go into the police force, if you want to be a mounted
policeman or S.W.A.T, how would you go
about going into those different roles? Do you have to do, like in the military,
where you do a general service and then you go into a specified role?
How does that work?
Well, generally speaking, it depends on where you
go. I can speak for my agency; we're a small agency.
I was fortunate enough, after two years of being on patrol,
to start getting into specialized units like
a special response team, which is like a S.W.AT team, and I did that
for several years. Within five years, I was in a detective role.
But you have to start at the bottom and kind of work
your way up and show that you can do that job.
And apply for it. I know other agencies have
time caps until you can apply.
And you can time into that position as well.
I know that being bi-lingual is
a perk if you are going into a law enforcement, but is a required thing to know
a second language?
I can speak to that. It's not required with our agency. It's an
extra five percent pay incentive. In Salem,
a huge portion of our community is Spanish-speaking.
Especially where I work in North Salem.
Half my night, I encounter Spanish-speaking citizens.
We usually have a Spanish-speaking officer on that will be
happy to translate. If we can't go through a Spanish-speaking
officer we'll use our dispatchers; we'll have a
1-800 number called Language Line. It's not required, but it definitely
makes you stand out. Not just Spanish, but Sign Language or Russian.
Or any other language of that sort.
I've heard all the importance of the academics.
Could you speak to the hiring process? You've mentioned
sort of the psych eval, the background checks, the importance of
making good moral choices now so that when they go to apply for these jobs,
there are not disqualifying things in their background?
I can say, when it comes to
background checks, it's really thorough. They do it a lot differently
than when I hired on. They ask things
such as your last ten addresses, and all your neighbors
and stuff like that. I don't even know them.
But I can tell you, as long as you are truthful,
and you fill out everything in a very truthful manner...
so if something should come back, it's not something that you tried to conceal.
It was some dumb mistake...
you and your buddy snuck into a drive-in. Well, that's
something that skipped your mind, but when it comes back for a background check,
it's going to say 'hey, what about that?' Defrauding
an innkeeper or something. They're going to ask about that.
'Well, I forgot about it.' Well, you deceived. And they won't hire you for that.
They have someone else who did not deceive. So just be very truthful,
be very up-front with it. There's nothing
wrong with stating the facts, and then let them justify it.
I'm going to add something to that.
In addition to the whole 'being truthful' thing, social media is huge
right now with our background investigators. Luckily I didn't
have any social media accounts when I went through backgrounds.
But they'll go on your Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and they'll get your passwords.
And they will dig. Background investigators are looking for any kind of dirt on you.
If you have it, they will find it. They talked to my next-door neighbors
when I was a kid, my ex-husband, everybody that
I've ever hated in life. They'll find them and ask why.
So just throw it out there, be honest. Everybody has skeletons
in their closet. It's not a big deal. There are a lot of things you
can do, like you smoked weed last year. Just own it,
be responsible for it. If you hide it, they will find it, so just be
cognizant of that.
Okay, so, for Sabrina,
you know how you said that
you did your volunteering hours before you got your job,
did you do that on your own or did you have certain
support from the county, and looking into certain
different opportunities. -When I was a student here, I actually
worked for Abby's House.
It was a domestic violence resource
center downstairs here, actually. 
I did that on my own, I volunteered for state police longer than
my practicum. I did everything on my own.
I even worked. I thought outside of the box when it came to volunteering.
I thought, 'okay, I don't want just criminal justice experience.' I would
volunteer at my daughter's school. I would volunteer for
Salem Harvest where we go out and pick fruits and veggies for homeless people.
It just showed that I had love for my community and I was super
passionate about helping people. But I'm sure
Doctor Gibbons and Doctor Gingritch would definitely set you up
if you were curious of places to look or you could even talk
to me afterwards; I can set you up with some stuff or give you some ideas.
Anyone else? Here we go.
My mom has talked to a detective who's gone to Western Oregon,
and he said that if you're interested in being a police officer
then it's recommended to volunteer for
campus security and it would make you stand out. So I was wondering about that.
I'll touch on that.
I think any volunteering, getting your foot in the door somewhere, is very
important. We work very closely with campus public safety here.
I know some police officers, actually a friend of mine, that,
when I got hired, was working for Monmouth and had worked for public safety first,
and now she's working for the department of justice as a criminal investigator there.
So getting your foot in any door is
good, because it can be a transition into where you want to be eventually.
And we have
had several students over the years who have worked for campus public safety,
and they're usually parking enforcement, so they drive around and give
other students tickets for parking illegally or whatever, but
it's a good start and
as Sergeant Olafson just said, our
campus public safety works very closely with Monmouth Police Department.
One more thing, too, I'd like to add a little bit more.
When I was here, I volunteered when I was living in
Landers. I volunteered for the Judicial Board.
It was a committee of peers and faculty that,
if you live in the dorms and you broke the rules, instead of
being sent to one person you would come in front of a committee, myself and the others,
and you'd kind of plead your case and we'd learn about what happened, 
and you'd step out of the room and we'd try to determine what steps would
be appropriate. I did that for two years, and then a step above that,
is the Student Conduct Committee. And instead of just the dorms,
if you do anything on campus outside of the dorms, if you
are in a fight in class or something like that, again, instead of going to one
person, you'd come step forward in front of the committee,
and that was a really good experience for me, and anyone can do it.
You just need to volunteer, put in a little application, and
they'll interview you, and if you're a good fit, you'll be on the board. It's really good
because it kind of showed me how to talk to people, how to ask
questions, how to interpret things, and how to work with others so you
can find out if they have a different opinion on what should happen. So that was a huge
asset to me, especially when I applied afterwards.
What are some of the major general disqualifiers? I know it's different
for each department, but what are some of the major rules?
What are some major disqualifiers, things that you can do that would absolutely
exclude you from any o these jobs?
-Murder. -Don't lie. -I mean the basic
ones are arrests are going to be disqualifiers. If the background
investigator finds you being deceptive, or lying in your background,
or even omitting things on your application and they find out,
that's considered a lie. There are a lot of different things that
you can do, and I like to always tell people your application process really starts
now. You're competing against hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people for one
or two jobs, so if there's any reason they can get rid of you, they will, because
there's always somebody more qualified, so just think about that as you're doing things.
That list is infinite on what you can be disqualified for.
To add to that, your GPA. It also falls under that, and
if there are two positions and four candidates, they're going to look at the person
that has the better grades. So keep that in mind.
If you want to be in the FBI,
would joining a pathways program help you?
I did not hear it, I'm sorry. If you want to be in the FBI, what?
Would joining a pathways program in college be a good idea?
Yeah, I think, just a continuing trend with everybody on the board,
the more that you're out there, the more stuff that you can get
experience with would only benefit you. Because, what happens
is a lot of people put forth an application right out of college, and it'll be pretty
bare, because you've been in college for four years. But if
there's an application that has not much on it, but you have
other things like pathways, or any other organization or community that you've volunteered for,
that you've worked with and you have experience with, the more experience that you can bring to the table
that you can offer that agency, regardless of what that agency is, it would only
be better.
Here's one last question.
Do you guys work with criminologists?
If so, what do they help you guys in?
Criminologists.
What do they help with?
With, say, officers in your specific fields.
I guess I could touch on that a little bit.
Anybody who can provide statistics to the FBI,
to Salem PD, to any police department,
it'll show that maybe there's a crime hotspot over here,
where there has been ten break-ins in the last
two weeks. Maybe we should provide more focus on this
area. To the FBI, same thing, but it's on a national level.
A place like Chicago, maybe we should increase police presence in these
neighborhoods because these neighborhoods are more prone to violence
and police shootings and things like that. It basically allows the departments,
and the police agencies, the FBI, and anybody
to know where to put their assets so they'll try to negate
the threat a little bit. I don't know if that really answered your question or not.
Anything that we do,
at least for the FBI, is really driven by statistics and where we should
focus our efforts. A lot of that comes from data. -Let's give the panelists a round of
applause.
Thank you all for coming.
