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.