Step-son now with the FBI

[boatman37]

Step-son went to the police academy at 20 years old then got hired by the city for our county seat 2 days after graduation (about 40,000 population in his city). About 4 years ago he was promoted to detective then about 2 years ago he was promoted to Cpl. He is also a member of the CERT team. His dept has joined a program with the FBI where he will still get paid by his dept and work part-time for the FBI. Anything that is confiscated in their jurisdiction by the FBI the city gets 25%. He gets sworn in with the FBI this week but went last week to help the FBI arrest 2 of the people that broke into the Capital building (please don't make this a political post....lol). At some point he could go full-time with the FBI. Still get paid by his city but the FBI reimburses his dept. If he gets full-time he gets to go in the FBI garage and pick his vehicle. He also will have nationwide jurisdiction.

His dept gets alot of drug dealers that come here from Detroit. They average about 1 homicide a month but have had 3 or 4 in a week. He was in line at a bar in Pittsburgh and a Pittsburgh police officer was working the door. They got to chatting and when he told him what dept he worked for the Pittsburgh cop told him he was nuts for working there cause of how dangerous it was. What he meant was that they only have about 7 or 8 cops per shift to cover a population of 40,000.

I think he has a 100% conviction rate on his cases and when he first got in the detective bureau he solved a 15+ year old cold case that they couldn't solve.

Not bad for a kid that only has about 30 college credits to his name. He was in gifted program when he was younger.

Just braggin' here...lol

[Aslan]

I actually considered joining the FBI in 2002. My application was approved and the first step is they take all the approved applicants and give you an "aptitude test". It's not a very hard test, in terms of the questions. But, it's a timed test and you're only given a very short amount of time to complete it. When you factor in the timed aspect, it was probably the 2nd hardest test I've ever taken...2nd only to the medical school admission test that I took when I was a junior in college.

I don't know how well I did on the test. The FBI doesn't tell you "You got X score and the cutoff was Y score to move to the next level." They just sent me a letter thanking me for me for my interest and encouraging me to apply again in the future. I think you're allowed to take the test twice, but you have to space it out by a certain time period (like 6 months or a year or something like that).

Had I made it past that first step, there as a physical test where I had to run a certain distance in under a certain time. And, if I passed that, there was a background test that included a mandatory lie-detector test.

Your step-son might have been able to avoid some of the usual hurdles by getting in through the program he was part of. Or, they may have changed things since 2002...I mean, that was nearly 20 years ago that I went through the process. Hopefully he enjoys it!