Interview

I'm heading to Jacksonville in April ref: Board interview & PAT, any advise anyone can offer. I'm retiring from a local PD in S.Florida next year. (26 years). THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.

There are usually 10 or so scenario based questions ie: what would you do if you were the case agent for a serail rapist or how would you handle responding to a police shooting. No real tell us about yourself stuff.

any idea when the april interviews are

April I think

i am wondering if anyone has heard when the next interviews are and
are they hiring anytime soon

If one does not have LEO experience how would you be able to intelligently answer scenario based questions such as "what would you do as a case agent handling a serial rapist case?" In my opinion, they would be looking for an intelligent answer even if you did not have experience right or ??

If you do not have LEO experience, go out and get some first. You cannot be a good investigator without some street patrol experience. Most of the guys and girls that I know at FDLE put their time in at local PD's and SO's. A lot of trainee's do not have the respect of the other Agents regardless of what they may say to their face. It's not a knock against them it is just that most Agents put their time in and struggled to get hired at FDLE. Just my 2 cents. good luck

Two, I appreciate your reply to my post, however, how does serving on road patrol provide the "investigative" experience to investigate a serial rapist case? I agree there might be some "general" experience in handling a rape call but beyond that I don't see their experience in an investigative question scenario other than they called a detective. Yes, I am not a leo so I might be wrong but that was what I thought an officer would do in a rape call. I was unaware if they actually investigate the case.

I would think that having detective experience would be most beneficial not a road patrol officer. I know you have to start in road patrol before being able to take the detective exam, but road patrol to the scenario listed above is not much more educated in investigations than the lay person.

I have worked with former road patrol officers in the private sector in civil investigations and some of them could not do the job because they had no prior basic investigative experience and had to learn just like a regular person off the street. I believe if someone has the aptitude and does get the appropriate training, uses common sense and logic with some intuition they can do a good job. Everyone started somewhere and I would wager some of the agents that are good investigators might have come from a different background than a leo. ie. attorney etc...

Your thoughts?

You are right and yes there are good investigators that were not patrol officers, but there is some what a lack of credibility. FDLE works with local agencies who use codes, signals, procedures that you just can't learn without doing it. I love working at FDLE, but would not trade my time on the road for anything.

Two, thank you for the reply. Point taken.

Unfortunately someone like myself does not have the "timeline" to put in on the road first so I am hoping that my ability to learn quickly, common sense and should I pursue an FDLE position and get hired, I would hope that the provided training would further allow me to successfully handle the duty of a Special Agent.