CID agents!
GETTING STARTED
First thing you want to do is ask yourself if you really, really want to become an agent. The hours are long (longer than your regular line unit) and the sheer nature of investigations may not sound appealing to everybody. You are going to investigate big cases like sexual assaults, rapes, homicides, suicides, natural deaths and less “sexy” cases like drugs, sexual contact offenses, and economic crimes. You are going to miss holidays, birthdays, and your four-day weekends will be cut short at the most inconvenient times. You are going to have to hear “Oh shit, here comes CID, hide the drugs” about 20 times a day. You will be disliked by junior enlisted and officers alike, but your best friends will be senior level commanders and the garrison command. If it's something that still interests you, let's move on!
Okay so you decided that you can handle being an agent. Let's see if you meet the initial entry requirements:
- US Citizen
- Minimum age of 21
- Completed WLC
- Maximum grade is SGT (CID promotes from within); SSG is okay as long as you don't have a TIG of more than 1 year.
- Minimum of 2 years of military service but not more than 10 years
- Minimum of 60 college credit hours
- Minimum ST score of 107 or GT score of 110
- Valid driver's license with a favorable driving record
- No courts martial conviction or record of any disciplinary action under UCMJ
- No record of Less Than Honorable discharge or any lost time
- No record of emotional or mental disorders
- No record of unsatisfactory credit
- Upon graduation of CIDSAC you incur a 36 month duty obligation
- Must have completed at least 12 months (CONUS) or two-thirds the tour length (OCONUS) at current duty station prior to application submission.
These are the most important ones to remember, but the rest of the list can be found at
www.cid.army.mil. Okay so you meet all those standards, oh boy what's next!? At this point, I would go to the same website and go to Join CID and start the application process. CID now has a central recruiting team in Quantico, VA that reviews all initial applicants and if they meet the initial qualification, proceeds with the actual packet itself. In the past, you would work with your local CID detachment and there was a lot of paperwork involved. This cuts the process down from 6-8 months to about 5, but as always, your mileage may vary.
So, now you have your application has been approved. Next up is the actual packet. The recruiting team will work with you and your chain of command, as well as inform the local detachment that you are interested in joining CID.
Now, what I suggest you do is go to your local detachment and meet the Special Agent-in-Charge and Detachment NCOIC face to face. Talk to them, ask more about the profession. The Det NCOIC will gladly show you around and let you meet the agents.
Moving on, you met your local detachment, decided you still wanted to do the job, your packet was approved, and you finally have a school date! But oh no! You have about 6 months until you go to school. What do you do? Well, if your chain of command is cool with it (and most are, I haven't met one CoC that wasn't), you submit a DA Form 4187 requesting to become an Intern at the CID office. What this means is you are detached from your unit and now belong to the CID office for accountability. Awards and personnel action is still through your unit. This will give you the opportunity to actually embed with a CID agent and shadow them around. You're going to learn the daily activities of agents, types of cases that pop up, responses, the mountains of paperwork they deal with, the whole nine yards. You are a CID Intern.
So, your 6 month internship goes by and now you finally go to the U.S. Army Military Police School at sunny Fort Leonard Wood, MO.
SCHOOL
CID Special Agent's Course (CIDSAC) is about 4.5 months long. While you're attending the course, you are going to be staying at the on-post lodging, directly across from the NCOA or directly across the parking lot from the schoolhouse. Your first week there you take the height and weight and an APFT in order to be eligible by TRADOC standards. While you are in a TRADOC environment, you are still allowed to drink alcohol and go off post and do all the things you normally would do. You are TDY there, usually with a follow-on assignment to your first duty station as an agent, although some people are TDY-and-return. Anyways, school consists of learning Military Law & Federal Civilian Law, Criminalistics, Post-Mortem Anatomy/Physiology (commonly referred to as Death Block), Crime Scene Processing, Economic Crimes, Interviews & Interrogations, and finally Counter-Narcotics. So, at the end of your stay at FLWMO, you are going to be an expert in all things CID, right!?
FIRST DUTY ASSIGNMENT
So, you graduated CIDSAC, got your shiny new badge & credentials, and you are now off to your first duty station as a fully qualified CID agent! You'll in-process your new duty location as if you were senior enlisted – just show up to your appointments and you'll be fine. Of course, your mileage may vary, especially if going OCONUS. Okay so you show up to your detachment, meet the Special Agent-in-Charge (CW3-CW4), Det NCO (E6-E7), and your Team Chief (Usually a WO1-CW2 in small offices, or a CW2-CW3 in larger offices). Your Team Chief will be like your squad leader from before. Everything goes through him. He will review your cases, provide guidance, leadership, and mentorship, and train you. Your first year as an agent you are actually an Apprentice Agent, which is a fancy way of saying you are a probie! As a probie, you'll be conducting your own investigations, but you will most likely be partnered up with a more senior agent in your team. This is very dependent on the size of your office. So, what teams are there in a typical CID office?
- General Crimes: The biggest teams and where most probies end up starting. This team conducts homicide, suicide, and natural death investigations, child porn, child assault, larcenies, and so on.
- Special Victims Unit: A new team to the table, and in larger offices, one that is headed by a civilian Sexual Assault Investigator (usually has about 10+ years in sex crime investigations in civilian Pds). Investigates all Article 120 offenses, including sex crimes against children.
- Economic Crimes: Another team that is popular with the probies; this team investigates any time of financial frauds against the military and military organizations like AAFES.
- Drug Suppression Team: This team is headed either by a CID warrant officer or a high speed CID Sergeant First Class, but the team itself consists of Military Police. They investigate drugs, self explanatory.
Keep in mind, not all offices have such clear cut lines. In small offices, it's common for everyone to be General Crimes and maybe one or two senior agents be the SVU.
So, after a year, you become a fully accredited CID agent! But wait, there's more! CID agents receive a LOT of follow on training because of the evolution of the profession.
SCHOOLS
- Protective Services Training – Learn how to be a protective services agent and be secret service for DoD.
- Domestic Violence Intervention Training – self explanatory and is a general MP course offered to 31A, 31B, and 31D.
- Child Abuse Prevention/Intervention Training – self explanatory, same as above. General MP course.
- Sexual Assault Investigations – In order to be an SVU-certified agent, you need to take this course. It's taught by Russel Strand at the USAMPS.
- Advanced Crime Scene Processing – learn how to do a lot of cool CSI techniques in regards to crime scene processing.
These are the most popular schools, but others include Economic Crimes/Fraud Investigations, Digital Evidence Collection, Arson Investigations, and a multitude of other courses that I don't remember off the top of my head. Courses are either offered by USAMPS or the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, GA. You also get opportunities to train with local police departments, Scotland Yard, German Kriminalpolizei, Italian Carabinieri, and the Royal Mounted Canadian Police. If you're a really high speed, you will be sent to Scotland Yard or the RMCP Academy to conduct their full training just like foreign country Military Criminal Investigative Organizations come to USAMPS to train.
CAREER TRACKS
So, you aren't going to be a probie forever and you certainly won't be the same type of investigator forever. What kind of career tracks are there? Isn't CID all warrant officers? I thought they were civilians? Well, let's answer these questions!
First off, CID agents are Enlisted, Warrant, and Civilian. Army CID, however, is more military than civilian – in direct contrast with our OSI and NCIS brethren. So, let's look at career tracks for each then:
Enlisted
- Case Agent: Nothing special, you are a regular case agent for either GC, EC, or DST. Usually E-5 and E-6.
- Leadership: As you make E-7, you become the Detachment NCOIC which is just like a Company First Sergeant. Your direct involvement in cases becomes smaller (again, mileage may vary. In small offices, the Det NCOIC carries his own case load in addition to doing Det NCOIC stuff). You are also the Evidence Custodian and are supposed to be the Crime Scene Processing expert.
- Special Victims: Must be a graduate of CAPIT, DVIT, ACSP, and SAI. All you focus on are Article 120 offenses.
- Digital Forensic Examiner: You get sent through various courses for digital forensics at FLETC. Upon completion of all of the courses, your primary duty is now digital forensics. You do all of the data extraction and combing through various digital media. Be prepared to look at a lot of child pornography and sexts.
- Forensic Science Technician: These agents go through the FLETC courses for forensic sciences and end up with an International Association for Identification (IAI) certificate. This is a new program for enlisted agents. The Battalion Forensic Science Officer manages his Forensic Science Techs which are at the detachment level.
After a minimum of two years (many agents will argue this is way too soon, but many agents will also jump at the opportunity), you can put in for your packet to be a 311A – CID Warrant Special Agent.
Warrant Officers
- Case Agent: Yep, just like your E-5 and E-6 brethren, you are still a case agent. This is usually WO1-CW2 in large offices, or just your WO1 time in smaller offices
- Team Chief: You now supervise agents. CW2 in small offices, can be CW2 – CW3 in large offices. Team Chiefs can (and most do) carry their own case load, but their primary job is to supervise their team, review cases, and dispatch reports.
- Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge. The ASAC of an office is usually a CW2 or CW3, depending on size. The ASAC will review cases monthly to make sure they are administratively correct, dispatch serious/sensitive reports, and generally be the #2 of the office.
- Special Agent-in-Charge. The big kahuna. They are the detachment commander. Usually a CW3 or CW4. They manage the office, assign team chiefs, and do what most company commanders do in a regular unit.
- Digital Forensic Examiners: Same as enlisted.
- Forensic Science Officers: FSOs are high speed CW2-CW3s that put in their packet for the CID FSO program. The FSO program enrolls you to George Washington University as a graduate student in Forensic Science. Upon graduation, you are a battalion FSO and the top dog regarding crime scene processing.
CONCLUSION
So there you have it, a basic intro guide for CID Special Agents.
this was a post from ( https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/2v9ggv/how_to_become_a_31d_cid_special_agent/ )
