Just know that a few of the organizations are not defense work friendly (still in this day and age) so if you decide to go down that route understand that while the police officers themselves are mostly very nice, organizations don't like the idea of defending criminals.
Sweet.. I got mentioned on Forensic 4cast!
I think there's a lot of great advice dispensed on this thread and on the podcast, but I don't think I phrased my original question in quite the way I wanted it to be interpreted. I certainly didn't mean to somehow dismiss the street patrol experience put in by the members here or in any police CF crime lab.
This past fall I had a class taught by forensic investigator that works for a state police agency. Although he was a private citizen, we did have guest lecturers that worked in labs that simply didn't consider civilians. The sole CF investigator for a particular large-ish city told us he was on the police force for (to the best of my recollection) 15 years. When that position in his city opened up, he didn't even know what computer forensics was. He put in a year of training before he was a full-fledged CF investigator.
I fully expect there to be a probationary period where new hires are expected to do grunt work and mundane task from day to day for a while. I'm going to assume this is true for a law firm that does e-discovery or any police agency. And I'm definitely willing to scrub hard drives or just sit and image devices for days on end if that's what the lab needs done.
But what I'm seeing is that people working in various CF positions got there with diverse backgrounds. It's true that right now police tend to hire within their ranks; but this isn't necessarily going to be true forever. There were a few positions locally (from one agency) that citizens were eligible to apply for. Recently on HTCIA there was a post for what looked like an entry-level, on-the-job-trained positions, in Texas I think, that were also open to civilians. I hope I'm not coming off abrasively, but I hope the typical track to a LE CF job doesn't continue to include walking the beat and responding to domestics.
On a somewhat unrelated note Eric, I think it was you that mentioned including a sample report of a practice image on a resume. I'm so glad you mentioned that because I recently wrote a "legal memo" for an e-discovery assignment I was especially proud of that I'll definitely hang on to.
Duly noted. As much as I believe everyone is entitled to competent legal representation, getting involved with defense work does not really appeal to me.
I should have clarified "private practice" by saying I would be more interested in civil cases and e-discovery work.
Thanks again for all the links and input. I'm still sorting through them!