Criminal Justice Webinar

Know when you turn it over to me, OK?

All right. Good evening, everyone. My name is Greg Franz. I'm the associate vice president for enrollment at Mount Marty University. We're going to get started in just a minute or two as people file in to the webinar tonight. But our guest is Doctor Stephen Bell. He's an assistant professor of criminal justice at Mount Marty University, and he has a long, distinguished career in policing as well as.

As well as academia. And so he's going to talk to you a little bit about several different, several different items related related specifically to criminal justice. But we'll wait just a minute or two for others to file in and we'll go from there.

As you're entering the chat, if you wouldn't mind just chatting where you are, where you're listening from.

That's that always is kind of nice for us to see. So if you're if you're local, if you're from Yankton or Sioux Falls or Sioux City, or if you're not, if you're from elsewhere. We'd love to hear where you're from in the chat there if you'd like to, if you'd like to put in your your information.

Crofton, Yankton.

Great.

Kierney in the house?

Awesome.

Humboldt NE High Ashland.

Lincoln. I was just in Lincoln about two months ago. I went to a.

Pumpkin Patch Pumpkin Patch isn't doing it justice. It was.

Forget what it was, but it was interesting. There are big slides and maybe you can help me out with that edge. Avaya. I don't remember what the name was. You know what I'm talking about though. It had pumpkins. It had big slides. It was kind of out in the field.

It was really cool. It's just before Halloween, so it was appropriate.

All right. We'll go ahead and get started here in just one minute and I'll and then I'll turn it over to Doctor Bell.

Right, we'll go ahead and get started. Doctor Steven Bell is in his first year at Mount Marty University. He has a PhD in criminal justice leadership from Liberty University. He also holds a Masters of Science and Criminal Justice, Public Administration, and a Bachelor of Science and Criminal Justice. He has various certifications and he was an officer, detective, supervising Detective, and Sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Which he'll, he'll talk about. He was also a criminal justice instructor at Geneva College in Pennsylvania, at Johnston Community College in Smithfield and at Johnston Community College in Smithfield, NC and again he joins us this fall as assistant professor of criminal justice. So I will hand it over to Doctor Bell and I hope you enjoy this, this presentation about criminal justice and criminal justice about Marty University, doctor Bell.

Hey, thanks so much, Mr Franz. You. Your introduction makes me feel so important. I appreciate it. And you've got me excited to get started. I've been excited thinking about this not just today, but all week, ever since we found out that we were gonna be doing this. I've been excited trying to compile some information for everybody who's out there interested in a criminal justice pathway, specifically a criminal justice degree. We're going to talk a little bit about that tonight.

What I'd like to do is really kind of talk about what separates Mount Marty University from maybe some other schools that gives you an opportunity if you attend and enroll in the criminal justice program here, maybe give you a little bit of a leg up in your in your studies or in your your learning opportunities, your internships and subsequently your eventual career opportunities. So before we get started, what I'd really like to do is I got a list of questions that came to me during the enrollment process.

When folks are signing up for this and I just wanted to touch on at least one of those questions now and it may sound familiar to one or two of you because this question was really, really popular. And I wanna answer that question, read and answer that question before we get started just to give you. I think it's a great way to kick this whole thing off. And I saw this over and over, but it was worded differently, different ways. And this one says what got you into criminal justice or why did you get into criminal justice? Why was criminal justice important to you? Just worded.

A whole bunch of different ways, and I just want to touch on that to to begin with. And I think there's a ton of different ways to answer that. There's kind of like the book answer. I remember answering questions like that when I interviewed to get hired as a police officer. Why do you want to be a police officer? Why are you interested in injustice? And the thing that really popped in my mind at the time was I wanted to help people. And I think that's a very generic answer, but it's true. I wanted to help people and I didn't know exactly how I could go about doing that.

But I knew public service was a way to do that.

I could have done that in the medical field, I could have done that in the the fire services. So I had to ask myself what specifically drew me to the criminal justice aspect of that. And I think one of the the main thing was I just wanted to be in the loop. I wanted to be in the know.

I didn't want to be in the the justice field.

After the fact, I didn't want to respond after things happened, if I could help it. I wanted to have an opportunity to be there in the mix for me, specifically in policing. I wanted to respond to calls as as they were happening or see things that didn't even generate a call yet. And I think that's what's really, really appealing about the criminal justice field outside of just policing. I'm going to touch on later on in this presentation, I'm going to touch on just a few things about the different job opportunities.

But the idea that you can be in the know you can you can be in that loop the knowledge loop and be able to help people real time instead of afterwards.

In the court system, in the middle of a of a trial, you can be a victims advocate and actually help victims that have to testify. Or you can be a detective and actually solve crimes by by interviewing people as soon as the crime has happened and they're still at scene. Or you could be a police officer and respond to the call as it's happening, or see it happening. Or you can be pre law and you can be part of the trial real time. So there's just a ton of opportunities in the criminal justice field.

Where it's more than just that kind of cliche, I want to help people type of answer. I think it's more of a the excitement that that drew me to that that line of work that made it so much more appealing than giving just kind of that book a rote answer. But I wanted to answer that just to get us started off. You'll see on the slide there, my name is Stephen Bell. As Mr Franz said, I have a PhD in criminal justice, but I didn't start out in academia.

I I, I just started on policing as he mentioned and and as I mentioned and one of the things I really really like about Mount Marty University is the way that the administration here strives to make sure that the faculty here have a well grounded experience level in the fields in which they teach. The professors here come a lot of them come from the actual field in which they teach because you have in academia kind of give it kind of pull back the curtain a little bit for you.

In academia, you really have a couple of different kinds of academic experiences when it comes to professors. You've got professors that are pure academics, and they have a PhD in their field, and they produce new knowledge, they conduct studies, they publish papers in that knowledge, but they've actually worked in that field.

And then you have that pendulum swing all the way to the other side and you have pure practical practitioners who who've worked in the field for many years and then elect to teach in that field. And you'll see that a lot at junior colleges and trade tech schools and things like that. And what we've got here at Mount Marty and specifically here in the criminal Justice Department, is an opportunity to blend those two worlds together. For me personally, I I'm fortunate enough to join here at Mount Marty this semester.

And and lend the experience that I have 22 years with the Los Angeles Police Department.

A while I was with the Los Angeles Police Department, I was able to to gain a lot of that knowledge first hand, and a lot of that that experience with my own eyes, my own hands, getting my hands dirty and learning the lessons while at the same time having that background and academics, having the background and getting a degree, my undergrad and criminal justice.

And eventually getting getting a PhD and and writing papers, conducting studies and and being in the midst of publishing multiple studies as we speak. So that blended opportunity here at Mount Marty where you've got the, the experience but you also have an opportunity to to lend that experience in the classroom. And and I can share those hands on experiences with the students as we go over some lessons and I may give a few examples of that as we go on. So let me kind of give you a little bit of my background, I want everybody here.

You kind of know what we're getting into. Like, who is it that's going to be standing in front of you at Mount Marty? If you decide to take criminal justice classes at Mount Marty University, who isn't this going to be teaching you? I'm the lead professor in the criminal justice program, so a lot of the classes that you take here will be taught by me. We don't have, obviously, your other classes be taught by other professors, but their criminal justice classes primarily will be taught by me. So in order for me to lend.

Some credibility to that, I'll give you a little bit of background about myself.

I knew I wanted to be a police officer from from a very, very young age. I came up in a in a pretty conservative strict household. I was a preacher's kid. Some folks that I had a buddy who used to used to love the term square like Delaware and that pretty much describes me. I was square like Delaware. I wasn't very rebellious growing up. I had a pretty squeaky clean background as it was time to as I left my undergrad and I joined the military. And then from the military I came back and and went back to school and and eventually got hired.

By by the LAPD. But as I was hired with the LAPD, I was able to hold just a ton of different jobs. I was an officer, you'll see there on the screen there has my 3 badges. So I actually was promoted, promoted twice, held three different ranks as a police officer. I was a detective and I was a Sergeant. And as Mr Franz mentioned, I was also a supervising detective. So just kind of in between rank there. And I had I had jobs that ranged from.

You know, working in patrol, teaching at the police Academy, I had a ton of experiences in specialized assignments. But as we go through I'll show you a few pictures here. You can tell with the even as a young kid with my toy gun there I knew I wanted to be in some sort of criminal justice field. I thought this was pretty funny when when my dad found this photo not too long ago. But eventually I was hired by the LAPD and and this is a picture of my first day at the LAPD Academy. Just a young and fresh and and not knowing.

Exactly what I got myself into on that that first day with all the drill instructors yelling at me, I was able to to get through. I had some good friends and lifelong friends that I made in the Academy and eventually made it to the last day. This is one of my friends, Amy. She was one of my partners in the Academy and we still to this day we talk. And just the idea that camaraderie that the criminal justice camaraderie and policing parade that I have, it really it's something that I cherish. Excuse me, something I cherish and treasure.

I don't think any collage is complete when it comes to policing without the obligatory standing behind the door of the black and white. And for bonus points you can you can grow a horrible mustache. That was me as a young officer I remember taking this photo with with a good partner of mine, and we got into just a lot of stuff, a lot of really, really good capers. I remember one of the things that I have very, very vivid memory of shortly after I graduated the Academy and then here.

As young on the job I remember walking by reflections. I was see Windows as I walked down the down the street or or mirrors as I walk through buildings and I would see my uniform that I'd be wearing. And I remember literally thinking to myself I can't believe I'm LAPD. This is just this is a dream come true and just having like my I could not have been more happy. I couldn't have been more fulfilled. And that's kind of that that passion is what I try to share with folks in the classroom is when you.

Find a career path that just speaks to your heart and speaks to your soul. Like grab onto it. Never let it go. And I realized I was in the right spot, career wise, really, really early on, which is fortunate for me.

I had opportunities to to put really bad guys in jail. But I also had some opportunities to, as I said earlier on, to to help people. One of the incidents that really sticks in my head is that we had a call, a call of a woman screaming. We got it. I worked Skid Row for, for many years, Skid Row downtown Los Angeles, and I remember there was a we got a call of a woman screaming, lying on the sidewalk, and when we got there she was doing just that. She was lying on the sidewalk, and as we tried to speak to her, she was a little bit out of it. It looked like she was under the influence of.

Some sort of drug. And then we realized she was in the middle of Labor. My partner and I immediately realized, ohh no we don't. We called an ambulance. We don't have time to wait for that ambulance to get here. The baby was already on the way out. And so just one of the most rewarding moments of my entire career was, I remember kneeling down right there while she was lying on the sidewalk with a jacket in my hand and catching a live newborn baby in my hands. And I thought, man, what other job am I going to have?

Where I'm going to get thrust into an opportunity like this with no notice, very little training. I mean, the Academy taught us a lot of things, but delivering babies is not one of them. And just being able to to get into something new every single day having no idea.

No idea what you're going to get into that day. I didn't come to work think I was going to deliver a baby for by any means. But then being able to visit that baby the next day in the hospital and make sure that she was healthy. I still remember her name to this day baby Yvonne. And and I just remember thinking that I'm never ever going to forget and I never have.

The the idea that you're going to be in high profile incidents, maybe some incidents aren't nearly as as as important as newsworthy, but being with LAPD gave me opportunity to. I ended up on the news several times with some incidents where we were able to help families and some incidents where we put some really bad guys in jail. It was I know I worked in assignments like I worked in the same division that Rodney King happened, and that didn't happen that far or that long before I got.

Fired. And the idea of working in a high profile division like that, where people were those really on the forefront of people's minds, really taught me a lot about policing and interacting with the with the public and and when opportunities to help folks. One of these pictures there on the on the bottom is an interview I did where we ended up recovering the van that had been stolen from a plumber a couple days before Christmas. A plumber lost his van, lost all his tools and wasn't able to work.

A few days before Christmas and he essentially had to cancel Christmas because he couldn't afford to buy his kids any, any presents. So what my folks did in the team that I worked in, the unit I worked in, is they were able to not only recover the van, they were able to recover the tools, give all the tools back, and happen right after Christmas. A couple days after Christmas they gave all the tools back and then they surprised the family. We were able to surprise the dad and the daughters by getting a bunch of donations and a bunch of donated toys.

And surprise them with a second Christmas and was able to just see the the joy on their faces. So that's what I talk about when you know policing and and the justice world is more than just putting bad guys in jail. It's making sure people are as happy and as safe as they can be. The the picture on the top was an incident where there was a celebrity rapper who had had some medical issues and had fallen out and lost consciousness and the the team that I supervised was able to conduct CPR and essentially save his life and so we were able to.

Again, help people win when there's nobody else that they can necessarily help them.

As we as we go on here, you'll see that the policing will change and life will change. This is a 20 years apart, so that is my graduation photo from the Academy. And then 20 years, right real close to retirement. And you see I'm growing a beard there. One of the things that I didn't necessarily mention to Mr Franz didn't mention in this.

At the beginning of this webinar is I spent the first half of my career primarily in uniform, but the second-half of my career I spent primarily out of uniform. As proud as I was to wear that uniform, I had a really, really exciting opportunity to go into undercover operations and then ultimately supervise undercover operations and just see a whole new world. This preacher's kid who was square like Delaware, was able to see this this whole new world from a different perspective, working undercover assignments and and seeing the.

World from the other side.

We obviously we I grew a beard. At one point I had more ridiculous facial hair. You'll see here. I had just ridiculous mustache that that I don't know if my family appreciated as much as I did. I grew my hair out a a lot longer than it was. We ended up spending a lot of time working in bars and gentlemen's clubs and dance clubs. We infiltrated.

Raves we would go into if we were surveilling folks we would do operations inside bars and had a budget to actually go in there and pay cover charges and and blend in and order drinks and sometimes we as strange as the scenes we would spend our nights dancing while watching somebody we knew we needed to follow on the dance floor and that was the only way to get close to that person. And I just remember thinking to myself man, I cannot believe that I'm getting paid to go to a club and order drinks and.

And dance on the dance floor and listen to amazing music. Or infiltrate or rape, excuse me, Infiltrator rave or just all the crazy things that I did.

At some point there there's just a lot of undercover regulations that on TV look a lot different than in real life. And one of the things we talked about in class today, it came up we talked, I was able to share these experiences in class, these undercover experiences and actually make our lesson come to life. We talked about today entrapment and the legal definition of entrapment. One of my classes today and one of the students was, was asking about how do you differentiate, differentiate entrapment.

In the in the legal sense, in an undercover capacity, how do we know? Are people allowed to ask, are you a police officer? Do police officers have to say yes or no and they lend real-world experience and show them no. There is nothing in the law that says that police officer has to tell you that there are in law enforcement. That's what undercover work is all about. And the legal definition of entrapment has nothing to do with that. Although TV and and the media and and and movie portrayals would would have you believe that. So just another example of.

I was able to bring these these several this decade of undercover work into the classroom and actually make that lesson come to life.

Not only were we you know, going into the clubs and and going and and dancing, that was just a a part of it. Part of surveillance is in catching bad guys is actually buying stolen goods. This is a Bob's big boy statue. This we had an incident where we had an individual that was stealing collectibles. This is a very expensive collectible that cost thousands of dollars and was stolen from somebody. We were able to track down the person that bought that has stolen this item.

And we set up an undercover sting by and my team was able to buy this, this stolen merchandise in the Lowe's parking lot of all places and arrest the person is stolen. I think a lot of folks think about undercover work and undercover buy opportunities as being Drug Enforcement, but you never know. Again, it's another example, just like the baby, where you just never know what you're going to get your hands on that day. What type of police work you're gonna get into every day is just a new day.

And I just remember not knowing what I was going to do when I got to work and loving every minute of not knowing.

I'll, I'll give you just one example of something else we just never thought that we would. We would see and I'm going to share my screen real briefly and I'm going to show you a quick video, news video. And if you look at the very top of the screen at the beginning of this video, you'll see, as I was supervising this operation, kind of a bossy looking guy pointing around. That's me, but I'll show you here.

The LAPD took down a porch pirate crew at a gas station in Nuka. Entire Amazon truck filled with packages. OK, come on, it's Richard. Kim is live now with details on how police tracked him down.

Yeah, Jeff and Susie. We just got a look at the loop here at LAPD's Topanga station hours earlier. The suspects were caught red handed and we caught the takedown.

Skyline was overhead when the LAPD took three suspected porch pirates into custody in Winnetka. Police say this all started when an Amazon delivery truck was stolen around 7:00 PM. The driver was making a delivery when he saw a woman jump into his truck. When he tried to stop her, she locked him out and drove off. This is first time I've ever heard of somebody taking.

An entire truck of deliveries instead of taking them off the porch, police say. At some point the female suspects met up with two men in this Gray minivan and they transferred around 45 Amazon packages into their car before dumping the stolen truck not far from where it was stolen. Not long after that, police got another call about something going down near a 711 at Sherman Way and Oso Avenue. A citizen saw several people in the back of a van opening Amazon packages that were clearly labeled Amazon.

And taking the contents out and then hiding the the empty boxes in here that gas station. Plainclothes officers arrived and watched the crime in progress not long after that, but three suspects were arrested and police laid out the stolen goods.

Down to make up, we've got seat cushions, looks like some cleaning materials, even down to a fruitcake. Sergeant Bell says because there are so many delivery thefts these days, he's glad the owners of these items will have a chance to get their goods back. And it's great to actually catch somebody in the act.

Now, police say they're going to try to contact the owners of the stolen goods, but if you believe you were a victim, please call detectives here at LAPD.

So I know I've that that that just kind of gives you an example of some of the things again excitement the helping people, not knowing what you're getting into the justice world is your criminal justice world is just rife with opportunities to be beside yourself with the with what you're going to get into. The final assignment that I had in undercover operations was shortly after the George Floyd incident where there's a lot of civil unrest.

In our country, and we were assigned my undercover team that I supervised. We were assigned to infiltrate those riots, and we were assigned to be inside, either surveilling from a distance or actually being inside the protesters and the rioters, depending on which.

Which day it was. Sometimes they were peaceful protests at other times it devolved into riots and and we were inside those those crowds at some point and able to to get just a kind of view that I never ever would have been able to see. This is what a police car that obviously I was undercover so we didn't drive a police car. But this police car #21 comes from Topanga which is the same station where my team and I worked, where that last video came from. And you can see just a couple of pictures of us infiltrating the scene and we were able to go in there mask.

Up at some point on the right there you see we we put a vest on and we were able to watch from a distance and not infiltrate. But seeing these these fires and these riots from from first hand perspective was just something that I never could have forecast or imagined in a million years. I know I've talked a lot about myself and I know one of the things I want to do it was on purpose. I wanted to give you each of you an opportunity to just kind of see like I said at the beginning, I want you to see who it is gonna be standing in front of you at Mount Marty University and what kind of experiences.

We're going to be discussing and using these these experiences to bring criminal justice to life. Justice studies is more than just.

Learning from a textbook and reading and doing and taking quizzes is having active discussions in class and using our experiences to not only learn ourselves but to teach others.

Uh, I I have a very narrow scope of experience. I think I have a lot of experiences, but it's very narrow because it just has that one path that I took. Each and every one of you have your own path. And as we all come together in that classroom, we all end up in the classroom the exact same time, the exact same location. But I guarantee you that we took different sidewalks to get there. We're all in the same park. We took different paths to get there. So we're all going to have our different experiences. And so when we talk about.

Uh, you know, victimology and we say how? How is it that victims react to being involved in crime? Maybe I was involved in a crime and I could experience that. Maybe you were involved in a crime, maybe your family members. Maybe you've talked to people that are involved in crimes.

All those different experiences come to life in discussions that we have in class. And I'm able to kind of bolster those discussions with some of the experiences that I had and kind of get the ball rolling. And that's why I talk a little bit about some of the experiences I have, not so much to say, oh wow, I was on the news. Look at me. It's more of a hey, take a look at this. This is an opportunity where you're at Mount Marty, where they really, really value experience, the marriage of experience and academia all in one.

And you get the best of both worlds there. One of the things I really impressed upon students is they're considering Mount Mary's to understand that this program, this criminal justice program, is exactly that. It is criminal justice. This is not a policing program. You may take a class in policing, and I may come from a policing world, but we're going to take classes in criminology, courts, corrections, victimology. I'm teaching a class this summer on serial killers that you never know what path you want to take as you leave.

College and I by no means want to pigeonhole somebody into a policing program. I want to make sure that they you see every aspect of the criminal justice world. Things like forensics, victims, advocacy, their jobs and investigative reporting. I have several students who are going on to law schools and and this is a de facto pre law program. We very much married into the psychology program. In fact, part of the criminal justice program requires at least one or two site classes so that you can get.

Your mind, no pun intended, your mind wrapped around that and figure out where you want to go from there. Do you want to be a profiler or do you wanna be in policing or a private investigator? You never know. The criminal justice jobs are are as limited as your mind can can take you. Because most folks you know come into that and think, OK, criminal justice policing and they don't have the opportunity to be exposed to all those different career opportunities. And we at Mount Marty, we have internships, you're required to do an internship to graduate.

And the networking that I do, the internships can be things from the site world, the service world. It could be home. We have service learning and homeless shelters. We have corrections opportunities where you can intern at a prison, you can intern at the courts. I have at least two students right now that are interning at a law office. We have also when we do have policing as well. So don't relegate yourself away from that. Policing is also available. It's just not the primary focus. I don't have a primary.

Focus in my program. I want folks to. I want folks to know.

Exactly what they can do outside of policing in the entire criminal justice world. And then the last thing I wanted to touch on is the fact that not only is the criminal justice program here at Mount Marty, I think just just superb. I couldn't be more happy with the program. I also couldn't be more happy with Mount Marty University itself. As Mr Franz mentioned in my introduction, this is my first semester here at Mount Marty and and I.

CPU as I got into to this university, I felt the apprehension that I think any incoming student, any incoming freshman or transfer student feels.

Faculty members are not immune to that that feeling of being the new kid in school.

I didn't know any other faculty members. I didn't know any of the staff members. I had only met who the the folks who had interviewed me for the job, and I was very, very apprehensive coming into this. I had that feeling of not knowing anybody, and that's not a very comfortable feeling. I was coming from academia. I came from two other schools and one of the one of the things that I remember coming from those schools.

Yes, I felt comfortable. I felt, you know, I enjoyed my time at those schools. But I always was wondering, like, what is next? I don't know what my next step is. So I taught in North Carolina and my time teaching in North Carolina. I never even bought a home because I was always wondering, OK, where, where am I going to be next? Compare that with the welcome that I got immediately upon coming to Mount Marty. The moment I got here, I felt like a load had been taken off and I felt like I was home.

And I'll tell you, you're contrasting that with with the other the other places that I've taught and didn't buy a home. I bought a home here in Yankton, SD, my first semester at Mount Marty because I knew I wasn't looking anyplace else. I didn't wasn't looking. OK, where's my next step? Where am I going next? This was my next step. This was home. This is where I wanted to be. The class sizes are amazing. I know my students on A1 on one basis. All these students that my advisees that I'm talking to and giving advice to life advice.

Rear advice, school advice. I have that one-on-one first name basis relationship with my students. And I thought, yes, this is what I want. This is where my career has been taking me. I'm finally where I wanna be. This welcoming environment that the people, the students and the faculty, the staff, the management, the administration all welcomed me on wide open arms and I see them doing it every single day with students. It's not just faculty the the when I see administration knowing students by their first name.

That tells me a lot. That's the reason people are going out of their way to make this a warm learning environment that that it should be. That's exactly what college should be. A place where you can learn because you're comfortable, not because you need to be put in an uncomfortable place and forced to learn. People learn because they're in a place where they want to grow, they're encouraged to grow. I love that about Mount Marty, the engagement that when I see kids at, I see faculty members and students at the Games, I go to sporting events. So many faculty members.

Know these sporting events and we're there all the time. We see our own students and we have. We continue that relationship.

After the, you know, at the games, not just in the classroom, we have this, this, this essentially.

Holistic view of the the learning experience, whether it's in the classroom, whether it's at a sporting event, whether it's A at a an activity at the cafe or at the the dining facility after hours. There's just there's just so many opportunities to interact with your with your classmates and with your faculty members. One of the things that I was just talking to Mr Franz about this week is I use the phrase everybody is somebody here at Mount Marty because because I know my students so well and I know that have relationships with them and I know them when I first name basis.

Know something about every single student.

Everybody is somebody. You're either the student from Crofton or Ohh, you're the student that went to Yankton High or Ohh you're on the basketball team. OK Ohh you're the one that's going to law school or or you're the one that used to live in in California. Ohh you used to live in LA, used to live in a place where I used to police ohh and every single one of my students is somebody. Nobody's a blank page where I'm thinking, oh, I don't really know anything about them.

I get a chance to know something about every single student and I and I just love that.

I think what I'd like to do now is, is, having said all that, I'd really like to open it up. Are there any questions that folks want to type into the chat? I don't know if they're I'm gonna review real quick and see if there's anything on there. And maybe I'll open up to Mr Franz too. If he has any questions that he can read or or toss my direction, I can always answer those.

Yeah, definitely.

I'm going to look and see if there are any that came in early.

Can you hear me right now, Steven?

Yes, I can.

OK, great.

Yeah. I don't know.

Doctor Bell, I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Um, the FBI came up a couple of times in the the questions that came in before the webinar. Uh several students asked about careers in the FBI. While I I know a bit about the FBI just from from my experience in in law enforcement and in criminal justice academia. I'll share what I can.

The degree is required to be hired by the FBI. Somebody asks is a criminal justice degree enough to get a job with the FBI? Absolutely it is enough. You can get hired within the FBI with a with a degree. You just need to have a four year degree. What the criminal justice aspect of that will do is give you kind of a more well-rounded view of the justice, the criminal justice system that we have in the United States. So it gives you kind of a leg up knowing about the the court system and victimology and criminology.

These sources of crime, as a criminologist myself, one of the things that I study when I'm, when I'm conducting studies or or publishing my research is that I try to look at the root causes of crime. That's criminology is. And you know, having an exposure or having an exposure to criminology and criminal justice program here at Mount Marty will just kind of give you a leg up in understanding, you know, if you want to come back crime in a law enforcement capacity or in a court capacity.

A low capacity knowing where the sources of crime are is just a great start to that.

DJ asks. Is there anything you know about forensic science?

I do. I do know a bit about forensic science. I came from a from a program that taught forensic science and I was exposed to quite a bit of that, especially in Los Angeles police. And we have a lot of forensic technology that we use as detectives and supervisors were fortunate enough to have criminalists. And that's one of the things we talked about in our classes. The difference between criminologists who studies the source of crime and a criminalist one who goes out and gathers evidence and was able to be exposed to a lot of those criminalists who are gathering evidence and.

We cover a lot of that technology in a few of our classes. We have a class called Policing in America that covers that. We also have a class called Criminal investigations and one of the one or two of those chapters that we spent a couple of weeks talking about the forensic side of things, the DNA, serology, blood collection, blood splatter, ballistic evidence, the the way in which fired weapons can be traced and things like that. All the different forensic type of investigative techniques.

Hello.

A lot of those are covered in like I said multiple classes and I think it's a really exciting week. So we get into and it's really it's, it's a great opportunity to get your hands on to and some real juicy topics because I like the fact that we don't focus as a policing program. We don't focus an entire program on forensics. I think if you want to get into forensics a great start is a more holistic approach into.

Into the criminal justice world. And then in grad school there's a there's a great opportunity to get into the science of of criminalistics which is it just opens up just a ton of doors into larger municipal laboratories or or police office police departments that that focus on the need for forensics and and criminalists.

Craig Harm, Craig's the father of Kade, who's looking about Marty, asks, can you just apply for the FBI after graduation, or do you need to be a police officer or a Border Patrol first?

You can absolutely apply directly to the FBI. You do not need to be officer or or any other type of law enforcement first. If you look at the FBI as the investigative arm of the federal law. So Jamaica very, very simplified the FBI.

Would be the detectives of the federal law. They're investigating federal crime. They're investing in federal crime and they are filing cases and sending these cases to court. They're the detectives of the of the federal system. So you don't necessarily and in doing that you don't necessarily need to be a A line officer or a patrol officer first. You can go directly into that as opposed to one of the questions that I got a few times in the preloaded enrollment questions was can I be a, can I start out as a.

Fire.

Protective for a Police Department and that answer is generally no. You have to be a patrol officer 1st and promote to detective, which is what I did. I was a police officer for just about 10 years, 10 or 12 years before I got my first promotion into detective work. So I've already done one round of undercover work as a police officer, promoted to be a detective, started supervising my own units and then returned to undercover work as a as a supervisor in those environments. And so the idea that you can go directly into Detective.

Work at the municipal level or the county level usually isn't feasible, but at the at the federal level, at the FBI, you can absolutely. In fact, I just had a meeting this week with one of my students who's doing exactly that, applying for the FBI pending his graduation this year.

This is the only thing I'll say related to this topic, but one of my wife's friends is applying to the FBI right now, and it's her second time, and she's currently an educator in Santa Clara.

California, she graduated in 2015 and her first time she made it like on a, you know, a zoom interview and then the second time she got invited to to go and interview in person. But she has no prior law enforcement experience. So it was, it's been very interesting seeing her her pathway.

I'm actually reviewing some of the pre preloaded questions, see if there's anything I hadn't answered and I'll give you guys an opportunity to type in any other questions you may have while I look at this.

One of the questions is what can you study or do if you're not quite 18 years old and can't start your career yet with the FBI?

That that kind of touches on a similar topic is that in order to be hired by the FBI you have to have a four year degree. It's a requirement by the FBI and so one of the best things to do is to go to college, start school, Start learning and start working towards your degree. And if you start working towards your degree here at Mount Marty's we learn a lot about the the background of of policing and investigative work. And I'm able to lend a lot of, you know a lot of experience and lessons that I learned as a detective and as a.

Advising the tective and just kind of gives you an opportunity. Things you can draw on even if it's in the interviews or once you're hired and you're able to you put your boots on the ground and actually handling your own investigations. I encourage my students to maintain contact with me, keep my contact information if there's ever an opportunity to collaborate academically or investigative wise, if you have questions about the careers or or prospects for jobs or even just how to make decisions within the law.

First one or or criminal justice career, I encourage. This is a lifelong learning opportunity. But you know, once I leave the classroom at if I have a 2:00 o'clock class and I leave the class at 3:00 o'clock, I don't close my office door and say Nope, no questions here. I've got students dropping by all the time, whether it's dropped by my office, sending me an e-mail and asking me questions. And I got contact with students that I've had years prior because I encouraged that. I want you guys, I want students to have an opportunity to continue the learning.

Process long after the the bell rings, the proverbial bell rings.

Sarah Frederick asks what positions are available behind the scenes that support the officers, like paperwork or filing.

So I just met with somebody that was interested in the forensic side of things. They didn't want to necessarily be a line officer or a police officer out out on the in the field and they were interested in working laboratory and that was one of the opportunities that came up. Outside of that, there are just a ton of non police officer opportunities inside police departments, let alone all those opportunities that I showed on that slide that are in the criminal justice world. You've got folks that are doing polygraphs.

If you look at the Los Angeles police find there are 10,000 police officers in the LAPD, there are 14,000 employees, which means there's 4000 almost half, again as many civilian employees as there are officers. So they're just you've got, like I said, when I was taking my background or conducting my background to be accepted into an undercover capacity. Part of that background was to take a polygraph test. And there has to be an employee who gives.

Polygraphs. There has to be employees that are willing to go out in the field and take photographs of crime scenes or have they have to be able to hack into iPhones that are locked because there's a search warrant for child *********** inside that phone. And then somebody needs to get it past that password. There's training and job opportunities for that. There's liaisons between the Police Department and the district Attorney's office where cases need to be filed. There are, you know, analysts that are looking at.

I'm drawing out maps for the officers and the specialized units, saying, hey, the Northeast quadrant is just getting killed with burglaries from vehicles. We need to saturate this area. We would never know that if we didn't have those analysts that weren't out in. They're not police officers, but they're able to to analyze the data. That's just off the top of my head. Some of the jobs just really exciting opportunities where you just don't need to be a police officer to have an impact and have a really exciting career.

Great. Any final questions for Doctor Bell from those that are those that are on the call?

Well, thank you so much, Doctor Bell, for taking the time this evening to explain some of your experience and your expertise in the field and to talk to these students that are interested in in Mount Marty and in criminal justice in general. It's very appreciated. For those of you that are on, thank you very much for your time this evening. I hope you have a great holiday season. Merry Christmas. Come check us out at Mount Marty. I added a link there to visit as well as a link to apply for your senior if you're a junior.

Um, you can start applying August 4th, August 1st, 2023 and then we have events throughout the throughout the year as well if you are coming to this webinar afterwards. So if you're not listening to it live and you got the recording from us, thank you so much for checking it out. A couple of the other links that we shared were the story about Doctor Bell and his unit helping the person whose truck was stolen just before Christmas. We have a link to the Mount Marty criminal justice major and curriculum.

On there as well. So you can see the specific classes that are taught here that Doctor Bell himself teaches many of them and please just reach out to us if we can ever be of any of any help. And then lastly I'm going to drop in Doctor Bell's e-mail so he can't get away that easily.

Yeah.

Ohh, thank you so much. I was just about to, I was just about to figure out how we could get that in there. So you, you read my mind. I want to say thank you to each one of you as well. I really appreciate the opportunity to share some of my experiences and give you a first hand.

Description of of what it's like to to come into the the criminal justice world and then to teach in the criminal justice and and and kind of if you if you have an opportunity to to visit us and and maybe see some of our classes come and chat with me we can even maybe give you an opportunity to get a taste of what life is like here at Mount Marty. I've already I Can't Sing its praises enough and I just can't tell you any more passionately how much I enjoy it here and I'd love to see each and everyone of you come join me.

Awesome.

Well, thanks again. It's supposed to snow tomorrow into the evening in Yankton. So if you're close to the area, I hope you enjoy the snow and be safe. And if you're if you're elsewhere then I hope you have again a great rest of your December. And happy Holidays and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Mount Marty. Have a great evening. Bye, bye. Thanks again, Doctor Bell.

Thank you.