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Dan Kegley/Smyth County investigator Chip Shuler, right, and Sheriff David Bradley display the certificate that shows Shuler completed last week the rigorous FBI National Academy for law enforcement officers.

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Shuler gains invaluable training at FBI National Academy

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

Fewer than one percent of the applicants to the FBI National Academy on the Quantico Marine Corps base are admitted to the program, and not all get in on their first try. Entrance is difficult in the by-invitation-only nomination process that sets a high bar for applicants.
Chip Shuler, an investigator with the Smyth County Sheriff’s Office, is back home after 10 tough weeks in the academy, beating the odds of acceptance, let alone on the first attempt, and becoming the first from Smyth County Sheriff’s Office to attend the academy.
An FBI agent in the area invited Shuler to apply, and Shuler did so in April 2007. Ten days shy of a year later, a letter of acceptance arrived, Shuler said.
It’s hard to say which is the most valuable outcome of completion of the academy, the knowledge gained or the networking with law enforcement officers from across the United States and around the world.  It was the latter that Shuler spoke most about Friday, a week after his training ended.
“The networking was invaluable,” he said. “Somebody was there from every state except Vermont. Twenty-four were international, and three military organizations were there.”
He has a directory of participants, with their contact information, as well as personal familiarity with the teaching staff he said “were some of the best I ever sat in a classroom with. I now have people I can call, a face to go with the name.”
An ever expanding network is also the benefit to the FBI that covers all costs of the academy for participants, even their meals.
“It gives the FBI a contact here. It’s also a network for them,” Shuler said.
There is also a kind of reverse training opportunity for the FBI during the academy. Every two weeks a class of newly minted FBI agents finish their 20 weeks of schooling there. Most of them have no prior law enforcement training and they join the officers from the states to which the agents are assigned to “pick their brains” about how the veterans work cases, Shuler said.
The FBI Academy hosts four classes of 250 officers a year “to support, promote, and enhance the personal and professional development of law enforcement leaders by preparing them for complex, dynamic, and contemporary challenges through innovative techniques, facilitating excellence in education and research, and forging partnerships throughout the world”—the academy’s stated mission.
Classroom sessions at the academy focused on administration, Shuler said, and concerned constitutional law, labor law, and legal issues.
One course was Drugs, Society, and Contemporary Issues in Law Enforcement that examined inclusion of treatment along with law enforcement that alone “is obviously not working real well now,” he said.
Another was Applied Behavioral Science for Law Enforcement Operations that took participants into the psychology of the criminal mind, Shuler said. There was a Seminar in Investigative Interviewing, and a course on Stress Management in Law Enforcement.
All of those, Shuler said, gave him “fresh ideas” and new techniques to bring into crime investigations.
“The main reason I did this is to expand my mind and my thinking to do a better job than I am now,” Shuler said.
Shuler is proud of something he did not bring back from the academy – about 45 pounds, the result of trimming down to meet a weight requirement for applicants and of the required three-day-a-week fitness course the academy participants likened to “high school PE,” Shuler said. The participants by the end of their session could run the Yellow Brick Road, completing the Marines’ obstacle course that earned them a yellow brick.
“I’m as proud of that as I am this,” he said, holding his certificate that proves his successful completion of the course that also left him with 17 hours of credit at the University of Virginia that accredits the FBI courses at Quantico.
Shuler said the hardest part was being away from his family for 10 weeks, although he made the six-hour trip home on weekends. He suitemate was 26 hours from home in Indonesia, and had a tougher time with his separation from family.
“I could have teared up at night listening to him talk to his kids on the phone,” Shuler said.
After two and half months, Sheriff Bradley was glad to have Shuler, a 25-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, back to stay and proud to add his level of training to that of his other investigators.
“I appreciate the sheriff allowing me to go,” Shuler said. “I appreciate everybody picking up my part while I was gone. They stepped up to the plate.“