Ever consider a career in federal drug enforcement?

[johnnyfarragut]

I compiled some miscelaneous information from a D.E.A. Special Agent who used to post in a famous law enforcement forum some years ago. They verified the credentials of any law enforcement personnel users, so the info comes from an apparently reliable source. Hope you find this useful/entertaining.

 

 

DEA TRAINING

"There are three main areas that are tested:

1. Physical fitness and defensive tactics. Unless you are unlucky enough to get injured, if you passed the pre-test to get in, in the first place, you will pass this without a problem. You do need to be in good physical condition when you get there as they don't see their job there as to get you in shape. You get tested three times, failing the first test or the last test will get you dismissed. Failing the second one just gets you yelled at. And, yeah you box a lot, and grapple a lot, and run a lot.

2. Academics. These courses and tests are on a college level. Since everyone who is at the academy has been to college, and been graduated, it is rare to have someone fail these tests, although failing two tests will result in your dismissal. You also do practicals, which are basically doing pretend investigations and pretend raids, where you are observed, tested, and critiqued. You also do stuff like EVOC, which is driving cars on a large lot, learning high speed handling, etc., learning things about how to do drug investigations, how to conduct surveillance, physical and electronic, and stuff like that. And, of course, how to do the paperwork.

3. Firearms. You have good, and often great, insructors, and you shoot over 5000 rounds. If you fail final qualification, they will give you more instruction and let you, "shoot for your job". If you fail again, you are dismissed. With the instruction they give you, and the amount of rounds you fire, if you can't pass this test, you probably wouldn't pass anyone's qualification. The only thing different from most places, is that DEA (for reasons unknown to anyone) still makes you qualify with a pistol on targets at 50 yards. It sounds hard, but, again after that many rounds, that much practice, and that much instruction, it is hard not to be able to do this by the final test.

Probably the worst thing about the DEA academy is that it is a live-in academy. You even have to stay there on weekends for the first six weeks. And, the fact is that for most people, it is too far away to go home much anyway, once they start giving you weekends off.

Again, except for having to live there, I would not characterize it as harder than other police academies. From having attended the FBI trainee academy as well, and from what I have heard from others, it is a much more para-military academy than the FBI or FLETC, but I would still not say it is as physically demanding as most state police academies. There is a lot of the "yes sir, no sir, three bags full" stuff as well and you wear BDUs and combat boots most of the time."

THE JOB

"It's basically an investigative position, a detective, with drug and drug related violations being the primary focus.

The job can vary tremendously depending on what office, what group, and what country you are assigned to. And, of course will change as you move from assginment to assignment.

Over the years, the DEA has been steadily trying to focus on bigger, multi-state, and multi-national organizations. That doesn't mean that agents don't work on smaller, more traditional drug investigations, it just means that those are not the priority.

The main thing that is different about DEA than many other positions is that, with some exceptions, there is a low level of supervision of your day to day activities. Generally, the more productive you are as an agent, the less supervision you get, and the less productive you are as an agent, the more supervision you get. You also have to be a self-starter and have to be the kind of person who thrives in a very unstructured (really to the point of being completely disorganized at times) work environment.

You also have to be flexible and ready to take on any assignment, on short notice, sometimes at night and on weekends. It will be rare to go your whole career without several TDY's away from home for weeks (or even months). Again, if you want structure, a set schedule, and knowing exactly what you will be doing, and when you will be doing it, you won't like it. And, whatever tasks you haven't finished the day before, will be waiting for you the next day. Each new day is not a clean slate like in patrol.

When working overseas (and DEA is one of the easier agencies to get an overseas assignment with) you will have even less supervision (but, more scruitinty of your actions) than a domestic agent. If you are not dead set on going to Europe as your assignment, and have a good reputation as an agent, it is almost a certainty you will get an assignment overseas if you apply yourself ,even a little bit, toward getting one.

You also have to be able to master a complicated reporting system that frequently seems to almost shut down those who don't take to it, or really figure it out. It is redundant and duplicative, set up for a certain type of investigation, and it absolutely has to be done. If you arrest five members of a drug cartel, with 100 kilograms of cocaine and a million dollars, the paperwork is the same as if you arrest five street dealers with 50 grams of crack and $10,000. Something to keep in mind when choosing the cases you want to work.

In a street task force group, you do kick a lot of doors, and hook up a lot of people. In a group focused on major drug trafficking organziations, you may do a lot of surveillances, wiretaps, and debriefings of witnesses and informants, and only arrest a few people in a year.

It's a good job if all of that stuff sounds good to you. But, keep in mind, a DEA agent is primarily a detective, conducting investigations. And, while you do have thrilling moments from time to time, it is not as thrill a minute job as the television, books, and movies try and make it out to be (although if, if thrills are what you have to have, there usually are places in DEA you can go and get that (there are plenty of agents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Mexico and Colombia, and other places, getting all the excitement they can stand).

More than anything, what I have seen is that the job is as good as you make it. There are probably few law enforcement agencies where what you do, and how happy you are, is so much in your own hands."

APPLICANTS

"1. The average hiring time is running from about a year and a half to two and a half years to get on with DEA from first application to being sworn in.
2. DEA does hire a very small percentage of new agents directly from college.
3. DEA does hire a small percentage of persons from other than law enforcement career fields.
4. The vast majority of DEA agent hires are of people with state and local department experience and/or military experience.

They have been giving finance, economics, and finance majors a leg up the last few years. I think they will continue to do that in the future. But, any degree will get you in the hiring pool. But, think of how many people you will be competing against with a CJ degree.

Minor in CJ, and get some kind of finance degree and you will have the best of both worlds. Or stick with your CJ degree, but minor in Spanish or some other useful language, and try really hard to get fluent enough in it to get a government score (your language teacher will be able to explain how that works in detail to you as it is the same throughout the government)."

PAPERWORK

"There is a lot of it (you should be working complex cases, and if you don't record your investigation thoroughly, you are not going to be able to get a prosecution or conviction)."

UNDERCOVER WORK, INFORMANTS

"Undercover work used to be a requirement for promotion in my agency. Now, we are lucky when we have new agents who are willing to do it.

Sadly, as another poster stated, we use informants in situations we used to use agents, but it's agents' reluctance to do it, not agency policy, that has caused that for us.

Generation Y. "Why do I have to go undercover? The informant can do it."

I know it sounds like walking to school uphill in the snow, but I would have been scared to say I wouldn't go undercover when I came on.

One of our best undercover agents who used to teach at our academy, was once asked by a student, "What's the safe way to do undercover?" He said he thought for a moment, started to bull**** the student, and then finally admitted, "There is no one hundred percent safe way to do undercover."

Having been the UC, or controlling a UC operation, for about twenty years now, I completely agree. I actually had my ASAC ask me on an undercover deal we were doing a few months ago, "Is there any chance this could be a rip?" I looked at him like he had two heads and said, "Of course there is."

The better your CS is, the more easily he can duke an agent in, no matter who he is. I interview gringo defendants all the time who have met with CPOTs and RPOTs in Mexico (or other diverse ethnic criminal organizations) and who were dealing directly with them. And, every time, we walk away saying the same thing, "And, people say nobody but Mexicans can get in with Mexicans (or blacks, or asians, or whatever)."

And, as far as money laundering investigations go, you will have a far easier time infiltrating as a gringo than as a hispanic.

The CIA used to say the same thing about Al Queda until the American Taliban's story came out about he got hooked up with them.

Yeah, going undercover is, and was, sometimes dangerous. So is kicking a door down, or driving a hundred and twenty miles an hour in a chase. It's easy to reduce risk, if you don't care what you have to give up to reduce it.

It became clear to me about Generation Y when conducting UC rescue training, and when we had trouble getting some of them to understand that when a felllow agent was in trouble, you didn't get the luxury of weighing the risk before you went in to get him. Their complaint was that they could be killed or seriously injured. No sh*t.

It's also one of the big reasons I have a real problem with agents running undercover operations who have never been undercover. The guys who haven't done it, often have unrealistic expectations of CI's and UC's, and haven't experienced the expectation that if something goes wrong, people are coming in to get you, no matter how dangerous.

We used to flunk people out of the panel interviews for saying they wouldn't work undercover. Now, we are not even allowed to ask the question.

But, the good news is that most agents don't really like doing undercover work, so those that do, get all they can handle.

I spent two weeks guarding and debriefing Max Mermelstein when he testified against Fabio Ochoa in 2002. I dont' know that anybody could have got higher in the Medellin Cartel than he did, without being named Ochoa, Rodriguez, or Escobar. And, he was Jewish white guy.

Being hispanic (or of the same ethnicity of any target) gets you in with less talent, and that's all in my experience.

And, I got duked in with some Colombians to the point they gave me 300 kilograms of cocaine. It was all about having the right CS who got caught buying machine guns for Pablo Escobar. He could have duked in anybody.

Once an informant strays the slightest bit from what I tell them to do, their time as an informant is over. But, the main problem with informants (or any other defendant cooperators), is that if they were that smart, they wouldn't be in the position of having to work for the police in the first place. And, I never cease to be amazed at the ones who haven't figured that out, and stlll think they are smart enough to scam you.

But, it is a fact of life that it takes a long time to put an undercover agent in a position of trust that an informant has right away. While it may be worth it to take enough time to get an undercover agent in for a large, higher level organization, it's just not really practical to spend that much time on low level or mid-level dealers."

DRUG DEALERS

"Unless you are working street dealers, you really don't have to spend a ton of time working at nights unless there is a specific reason. You would be surprised how many of the larger drug dealers work banker's hours as well, including shutting down for Christmas and vacations. And, it has been years since many of them were even in the same house as any drugs. A ballpoint pen will put more of them in jail than an M-4 ever will.

Occassionaly, you get a vampire though, and it can really screw up your life trying to operate when he does. And, it is hard to generalize too much, as one office may be working entirely different levels of cases and violators as the next one. The job is not going to be the same in New York, as it is in Miami, or Laredo, or Bogota, or Paris. Some offices do a lot of street work, and some don't do much at all. Some offices do a lot of wiretaps, and some never do them. Some offices kick a lot of doors, and some almost never do. The same as with different police departments and with different assignments in police departments.

But, that is one of the advantages to being able to work all over the country, and in fact, the world. There is pretty much something, somewhere, to make anyone who likes doing narcotics enforcement happy. But, Miami Vice it ain't. Barney Miller is much closer."

FIREARMS

"SIGs cost a lot more and I have four of them. If there is a higher quality off the shelf handgun made, I have never seen it.

Glocks are cheaper, but what you are getting for that bargain price is slighty less accuracy, not less reliability, and both are capable of more accuracy than 98 per cent of the owners are capable of anyway.

I carry a Glock 22 as my primary weapon, and a SIG P239 as my back-up and off-duty weapon, so obviously, I don't feel bad when carrying either one.

To me, a Glock is a technological marvel of a firearm, but a SIG is more like a work of art.

Get the one you like best and feel good about whatever choice you make because both are great defensive handguns. "

 

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by johnnyfarragut

[sdiegolo78]

Do they teach you how to detect if your brother in law is a meth kingpin?