ROCIC

Meet Eric with ROCIC!  This non-profit is built to serve the active LEO.  Whether you need training or intel, whether your agency is large or small, they can provide you free or low-cost services.

Mid and Upper Management cannot cry about departmental issues if they do not push training and intel-driven policing.

LEOs cannot cry about career stagnation if they do not attend training consistently.

Listen here to what they have to offer, locations, and everything in between.

I have no sponsors, so if they're on here, I believe.

-LEO

ROCIC - A Proven Resource for Law Enforcement

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Good morning. It's that Leo guy here with Eric Anderson. Good morning. Good morning. Eric works for RowKick, and we'll get way into what that is. Do you want to be clear on he's laughing? Maybe I said it wrong. Maybe maybe we don't say the word, we say the lettuce. But I do want to say that I'm not sponsored by anybody. I'm not here to plug anybody. My content is strictly to educate and help law enforcement. So he's not sliding me a 20 or covering my yearly subscription. Eric, you want to introduce yourself and kind of tell him a little bit about what you guys offer and then we can get into it? Sure. I'm Eric Anderson.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

I retired after 25 years law enforcement with the Franklin Police Department, Franklin, Tennessee. Shortly after my retirement, I got hired with the Regional Organized Crime Information Center, which is based in Nashville, Tennessee. I am the law enforcement coordinator for the state of Tennessee currently. And I spend a great deal of my time working very closely with law enforcement agencies at the local, state, and federal level across the state of Tennessee and throughout the Southeast.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah, I was gonna snipe you because I think you were at South Haven, Mississippi. I saw you not too long ago. Correct. So you dabble out of state as well. I I do.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

We we have a the the Regional Organized Crime Information Center, normally referred to as ROCIC. We have a 14-state region. Okay. So we go from, if you can imagine on the map, Virginia, West Virginia, all the way around the Southeast through Texas and Oklahoma, Kentucky, Tennessee, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

So kind of how a lot of federal agencies set up the Southeast Field Division, too. Correct. Similar. Similar breakdown. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

So we have law enforcement coordinators in all of those states, and we frequently uh interact with one another and work with each other, especially in these border regions. So if we have communities or areas of responsibility along the borders of our states, oftentimes we um co-mingle cross-border and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

All right.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

And I think there's six regions, but it doesn't really matter. But you guys cover you guys do cover the whole U.S. You offer services to 50 states?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Well, we do. We're part of the regional information sharing system. So under that program, the United States, all 50 states, U.S. territories, are covered by a RIS R-I-S-S center. So we're the Southeast center. Okay. And then there are five others that cover the rest of the United States.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

And correct me if I'm wrong, you guys offer training. Yes. And we'll we'll get into that. But what I think is interesting is the Intel. Yes. Um, and especially, like I said, I saw you at South Haven, which is, I don't want to call them a small department. They're not one of these five officer departments. You know, I think they have about a hundred or so cops, legitimate command staff, professional organization, but still smaller as compared to their neighbor Memphis, right? With 2,500 cops. Correct. So I was really interested in the Intel services that you guys offer, because 100 officer departments and down may not just have the funding for a fully developed Intel full-time unit.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

That's absolutely correct.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

So, whichever one, whether you want to go into training, I've recommended you guys for training previously to my my Fed and my local and state friends because I I think you guys export training. So why don't we go into training first? What kind of classes y'all offer? Do you have a facility or do you travel to people? What are costs normally associated with it? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

So we have a very robust training program that's coordinated through our headquarters in Nashville. So I would say a majority of the classes that we put on or that we host are hosted in Nashville, but that's not exclusive. Uh we often host and or co-host training with agencies across the Southeast. We do a lot of co-host training with the Madison County Sheriff's Office there outside of Jackson, okay. Tennessee. So they're they're one I I like to focus on because they're good folks. They have great facilities there. I'm really proud of what they do. So I recommend folks, especially in the western part of Tennessee, northern Mississippi, northern Alabama, it's fairly close for them to get to Jackson. And there's plenty of amenities there in the community. So what are some classes you guys offer? Well, we we offer law enforcement classes really from soup to nuts. So if you if you can imagine it or you can uh if you're interested in it or you have a need or an area of responsibility that needs to be met by a particular training, we are probably going to host it. So everything from tactical operations to managing narcotics investigations, working with confidential informants, financial crimes investigations, officer wellness programs, really everything, the entire gambit of law enforcement training.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

I went to a shooting class, I don't know, it's been 10, 15 years ago at Fletsi in Charleston and Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Charleston. I wasn't, I was right between, as a city cop, I was right between them and Fletsi Glencoe. So I could go, and they offer a lot of free stuff to state and locals. And I got an email I thought was awesome about a week before the class started from the instructor. And he said, You will go to two kinds of classes in your career. Those where the instructor tells you stories about how cool they are, and those where you shoot a lot. This is the latter. Start drinking water. Right. I was like, man, I love this guy. Right. So what's the general background of your instructor? I know that's a very broad question, but uh, do y'all have staff instructors or is it active law enforcement or or what's the general so I would say that the vast majority of classes that we host are being conducted by professional, vetted, active duty, so to speak, law enforcement professionals that come from other areas or other entities.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Like, like, for example, like Fox Valley. There, they'll they may they'll they'll put on some classes. So we, you know, we'll host their their their classes there in in Nashville. So that's just one example, just to give them a little quick shout out. But so all of the significant, respected, again, vetted um law enforcement training businesses or individuals will often come and put on their classes at ROCIC headquarters, or in Madison County, or in places in Arkansas or Louisiana or Mississippi. So we and and it's it's a reciprocal sort of agreement or or relationship, I should say. But we because ROCIC exists to support law enforcement and to support those folks that are conducting criminal investigations, we're we are just as likely to share information about training opportunities in the particular states that we're responsible for that have nothing to do with us, along with training that we do. So it's we're just pumping up the volume for all of the resources that are available for law enforcement, not solely ours, not solely the things that we do, because we're not making any money off of it. We we exist to support law enforcement, right? We're not a for-profit entity. So we we we are funded solely and completely through the Department of Justice. So we we exist to support law enforcement. So whatever that may be, whatever those avenues or those opportunities are to communicate with law enforcement, that's what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

And I like that, you know, I've had one guy I can think of who who does J-Bo, the SWAT guy, he does a private training. He's a retired full-time SWAT guy, bomb tech, canine guy, blah, blah. Has a ton of experience in a big city where he can teach it and his group could teach it. But I have had some people reach out that kind of felt like it was going to be plugging their thing. You know, I was just gonna be talking about why you should use their program. And I don't want this to be a marketing platform. And so that was kind of one of the things, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is it being a nonprofit. Correct. Correct. And so that's that's really important. You're not out here making extra dollars or or making you get the point.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Right. And and you asked earlier about cost. Oh, and there there are some classes that we host that involve a cost. And it's clearly up front. We see that in the flyer, we see that in the the information about the classes that we disseminate, that I disseminate, that my colleagues across the Southeast disseminate on our website under the training tab. You can see it. We try to schedule training out six, eight, nine months in advance because we understand that a lot of agencies, it takes time to get training requests approved and scheduled and that sort of thing. So we we really do a a lot of forward outlook when it comes to scheduling. But with that said, a lot of the training that we host is free. Right? Now, not all of it, and some of that that we host that there are costs involved. It's not a cost, it's not money coming to ROCIC, it's uh money going to whomever is putting on the class because that's their business, their retired whatever from whatever agency, and that now they teach their information because they're subject matter experts. So that makes sense, yeah. And a lot a lot of the training that we do is also online. We we host a lot of online training, which is free. And we host a lot of training or again share or perpetuate training that other law enforcement uh entities are providing, it's also free. Yeah, FBI C just, they're index training, they are frequently scheduling training for index and it's free, and they're all webinars, and we we just we get that information, they share it with us, they're like, hey, we're hosting a webinar. Can you uh share this information with your folks across the ROCIC area of responsibility? And we're like, absolutely. So we we're yeah, does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

It does. And you know, when I was a patrol sergeant way back quite a while ago now, been like a decade, I would push training on my shift, and I didn't really care if you want to go to training. What do you want to do with your career? Because if you want to be on a SWAT team, would it hurt to be able to honestly say, I understand Graham vs. Connor and the what's important in a use of force? Because if you're on SWAT, you might shoot somebody and you're gonna have use of force incidents. So being able to tell the commander, most of them have you have an interview or, hey, yeah, I've been to four shooting classes in the last two years. And if you're not into webinars, I that's not me. I don't want to sit there and listen to a webinar personally, but there are things I want with my career. So if I want to be a homicide detective and I can say, hey, I attended, you know, interview interrogations, but you can't get away from work. So you do it online. I I had luck getting, you know, to different specialized units that I wanted, but I also showed up with a resume in my hand and said, Hey, I went to this amount of classes this year. It makes you'll learn, but in addition to that is that you look motivated and you can show you want to continue to learn. You're humble enough to not, you don't know everything.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Right. And and again, my prior existence in law enforcement, my my prior shop, I oversaw the training division. So I had folks that work with me. We had a bunch of motivated people, had a cadre of instructors. So again, classroom stuff, new office orientation training, field training, firearms tactics, everything. We we did it all. So I'm extremely motivated, uh, extremely interested in training. I have seen it throughout my career and certainly the careers of law enforcement personnel that I've worked with, uh, directly and or indirectly, that it has helped propel them and just made them more professional and better at their job, which should ultimately be our goal.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

You get better. And man, when I decided I wanted to go into supervision and be a sergeant, I took a couple supervision classes and I just put them quietly at the bottom of my resume. I didn't have a chance to self-barag, but they saw it. You know, hey, went to these leadership in crisis and leadership in police organizations, LPOs, a three-week class. Like that's a really long class, but yeah, just help your own career. I've pushed this a lot. If you're, especially if you're on patrol, take a variety of stuff and, you know, kind of in the direction you want to go. And if you're going to, they shouldn't nix you on like two classes a year. If you're trying to go to one a month and miss a week's work, you might get some shit from your age.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

That's a little different.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Your supervisor might be on you. I mean, if you can go, good on you. But you should be able to do two a year, especially if they're free or low cost. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

And and and we're we're cognizant of that. And we because the law enforcement coordinators, all of us are retired law enforcement or have had lengthy careers, and most all of us were in executive command positions. Some very important folks that I work with that had really uh robust and important jobs with their agencies, know these things and they can share that. So when I spend time visiting the law enforcement agencies that I interact with, that's certainly one of the conversations that I have with them. I'm like, hey, what kind of training are you all giving your folks? Where are you sending them? What do you think about this? And then we take that feedback and mold and modify what we provide as well. Beyond the fact that we host training at the center, that we co-host training at different places across the southeast, we also put on two significant conferences a year. So we have a spring conference that is focused on investigating gangs and narcotics, and then our fall conference. I think I've been to that. Is that in Gatlinburg? Well, it it moves. Okay. It moves. So the the spring conference is gangs and narcotics, the fall conference is homicide and violent crimes. So those are the areas of focus. And we move the conference from state to state every year. Right? So this spring, the Gangs and Narcotics Conference was in Nashville. But our fall conference, which is coming up at the end of September, the homicide conference, is in Lexington, Kentucky. Okay. So we we we share the love, so to speak, with all of the states that we are within our area of responsibility. So everyone gets a fair shot.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Yeah. So and I mean again, you were speaking to the command staff and you have former command staff on staff, because that's that's always a question is what does the agency get back from this detective missing a week's work, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

And I would argue meeting people at not only getting knowledge, but you meet people, you know, if you're from Memphis or Knoxville or Chattanooga and you go to Nashville for a gang conference, it's this gang-wise, it's the same region of the country. Absolutely. There's going to be similarities. Absolutely. And you're meeting a gang guy from, you know, you're from Memphis, you're meeting a Nashville guy. And guess what? Your Memphis banger is going to Nashville, or if you're in Phoenix, they're out going to Tucson doing some jerk.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Well, and and and because we spend such a uh such a significant amount of time researching and looking for presenters, especially at our conferences, we're bringing in, again, subject matter experts that are vetted and highly recommended. So we're we're getting that feedback from our law enforcement colleagues that we work with and have known for years and years and years, and they're recommending, hey, reach out to this person, reach out to this person, bring them into your conference. So we reach out to them. Hey, would you be willing to present at this conference? And we've had some phenomenal speakers and presenters. And so now the attendees at our conference are hearing from a subject matter expert on a particular thing, whether it be outlaw motorcycle gangs or emerging drug trends or you know, conducting investigations into firearms with narcotics-related classes. I mean, it gets very granular, but now they have a point of contact, i.e., the instructor, to reach out to with questions, and that frequently happens. We get a lot of feedback about that. Plus, they've got everybody that's sitting around them. And it's it's inevitable, we always say this, that you need to interface and network with the people that you're at the conference with because it's only a matter of time before you need something from Biloxi, Mississippi, or you need something from Frankfurt, Kentucky. I mean, and you're gonna need to know or even just Mississippi in general.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

You're a Tennessee investigator and you're like, man, I think this guy's hanging out. Hey, can you run him through whatever databases y'all got? You remember me from the gang conference? We played some cornhole after the thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and that's one of the sort of hidden strengths that ROCIC has and that the law enforcement coordinators have is the the ability to network with people, make connections, bring people together, be a great point of contact. We get those sorts of things all the time. And that's where I really, really enjoy the job that I do and the fact that I get to interface with so many law enforcement professionals, local, state, and federal, and and and just connect the dots. That's what I really, really enjoy about this job. And I think is a I call it a force multiplier. And when I go visit agencies and I'm sitting there with in the, you know, the the the detective's bullpen, or I'm sitting there with command staff, or I'm sitting there with a sheriff, I'm like, look, this is what we can bring to the table, and we do it just for y'all. We're doing it for y'all to bolster your ability to solve crimes.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

So what I'm getting on the training aspect is command staff and organizations, if you're not this is what I'm taking away. I'm just making stuff up here. If your organization or one of your teams is lacking, I'm gonna say take accountability and get them to free or cheap training, sure, which can be imported or you can do it in the region, wherever you are in the country. And individuals, if your career sucks, if you're unhappy, if you're stagnant and just sitting still, could be in a little baby, go to some training. And that way you're more marketable when you go to an interview and in one of these competitive positions where, you know, 40, 50 people put in and five get interviews, and your resume looks better. And you can talk knowledgeably about the subject and say, I mean, you got to drop it in there. Hey, you know, when I was at narcotics class earlier this year with Rokik, because I know you love when I say that, at the Rokick class, I'd learn, you know, I took confidential informant management. I'm not saying I know how to do it and I've done it a lot because I'm on patrol, but I am trying to learn about it. So organizations that can help, individuals that can help. And if those two things come together and they're both happy, the grass is green, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Well, and let me let me give you another little insight that you probably are already aware of. Again, speaking from my past experience, sometimes it's important to take people out of their comfort zone and to say, hey, Mr. Master Patrol Officer or whomever, I think that you would be really, really good if you started training up and getting some experience in financial crimes. And they're like, oh man, no, I don't, I don't like that. I'm not interested in financial crimes. Well, I think you have the aptitude for it, I think you have the ability for it, and I think that you should probably pursue it. And I really want you to look at these classes. Well, my experience has been that when you push people and you mentor them and lead them and guide them into those roles, they actually flourish. And the rare times that they don't, at least they've got that in their hip pocket.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Not everybody's gonna be, you know, spray painted, black, put velcro on it, tactical die or gal. I mean, I think everybody thinks they want to be that, but then they realize very quickly maybe my talents, skills, and abilities are better utilized doing child exploitation investigations or domestic violence or crime scene processing. And and and again, that's what I frequently mentor young officers to do. Find a niche that you're interested in and be the best at it that you possibly can.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Preaching in the choir. I used to tell I'd train guys at narcotics, and I'd go, hey, if you because they'd kick people out in a heartbeat. If you weren't producing, it was kind of crazy the way they did it. Um, I don't fault them because they had the ability to, so why wouldn't you? But they kind of and then also stop ranting and derailing. They turned patrol into Like a dumping ground there a little bit, where there was this underlying threat of you'll be kicked off this unit back to patrol when patrol is the face of the department. It's the backbone of an agent. It's the backbone. You're uh you're working the night shifts. So why are we putting our best and brightest on these specialized units with the threat of we'll send you back? Right. It just That's counterproductive. It doesn't seem to make sense. But I was told them if you find a niche, you know, we'll take narcotics. If you're so good with the electronic surveillance, with the bugs, with the cameras, all this stuff, if it's up to like, hey, this person kind of sucks, but nobody else is really good with this stuff. Or I was, I mean, I'll call myself like an undercover, they just used me for it. I'm not going to talk vulgar. Something was on the tip of my tongue. But it was kind of my thing. I would have been hard to kick out because when somebody wanted to quickly work a case, they'd be like, oh, let's put Leo on the bike and just ride him down the street and see if they sell to him. So that's kind of my niche. And so just it protects you and your career. I mean, it's great to be well-rounded, obviously, but if you get really good at something and you've been to a bunch of classes and you have the experience to back that up and actually use it, you become a lot harder to get rid of. So the other side, the intel side of what y'all do.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

So if I were to kind of break down a 10,000-foot view of what ROCIC can provide, the criminal criminal intelligence section is one main pillar. Our analytical section, with all the analysts that can process information that these investigators provide, that's another pillar. Training is certainly a pillar. Our technical services and support is another pillar, right? Our publication section is another pillar. So if you need research, if you need to look into something, if you need a white paper about a particular law enforcement specific thing that you don't know anything about, that's the place to go. And then without forgetting all the law enforcement coordinators across our area of responsibility, there's certainly another pillar. So we we have all these things to support investigators, to support law enforcement, and again to help uh facilitate their investigations to help solve crime and so why don't we do this?

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Why don't we leave it as a cliffhanger? Sure. And knock out for the next episode and go into the other leg of what you guys do. Sure, absolutely. Sound good. Thank you so much for being on. You're welcome. And look forward to the next one releasing where we go into other services you provide again for the organizations, what the cost may be for that, and what they get for that cost. Because I've heard you say every dollar works, and let's go into that. Yeah.