I would NEVER say that investigation and being sworn LE go hand in hand. Just as being a sworn LE doesn't make you an investigator.
You are correct, but it boils down to being an investigator or not being one.
While I agree with what you are saying here I have to strongly disagree with your perception that you must be a sworn officer to have the investigator skills. Having spent 6 years and 9 months working in an LE lab with 20 odd staff, with sworn and unsworn staff working side by side I saw no evidence to support your stance. Yes each group brought a different skill set to the team, and provided both groups were provided with appropriate training and mentoring there was no difference between them. On the whole unsworn staff with a degree in computer science, or engineering were able to get up to speed faster than sworn officers with little or no computer experience, this is not to say that once they were up to speed the sworn officers were not able to contribute just as much as the unsworn ones. The big problem with sworn staff was that they had a turnover of around 2.5 to 3 years. The point at which they become really valuable is around 2 years, so you spend 2 years training them to get 1 year of really good value from them. On the other hand unsworn staff stayed for around 5 or more years. In fact the attrition rate of staff due to stress of exposure to CP was much higher amoung the sworn staff than the unsworn.
We had problems with sworn staff and we had problems with unsworn staff. However overall we had a high level of sucess with both groups. To simplify any problems to 'he is not a cop therefore he is no good' is displaying a level of ignorance that I find quite astonishing.
I think your perception is the result of either poor selection processes or poor training practices.
A couple of key points need to be recognised. Firstly you must employ people with the right level of motivation, this does appear to be getting harder with the younger generations (I hate to say that as it makes me sound much older than I am). However there appears to be a much larger expectation of rapid promotion and over expectation of high pay amoung recent graduates. Secondly you also must use effective selection processes, a interview and review of a cv will not cut it. I have seen people perform extremely well in an interview and look exteremely good on paper who cannot figure out how to open a PC case. This is why practical assessment is the only way to go.
An investigator is having a certain way of thinking, not whether you have a badge or not.
I would NEVER say that investigation and being sworn LE go hand in hand. Just as being a sworn LE doesn't make you an investigator.
An investigator is having a certain way of thinking, not whether you have a badge or not.
My appologies, I was reading more into your comments than was there. Please excuse me while I go and eat my words…..
AMEN AMEN tap. tap. tap. here here…
Ill go one step further. A student who posts to get answers will continue that way of thinking into the real world and be the person posting for answers to real world cases.
We are all stumped at times on things, the difference is the amount of time and effort you put out to find the answer to your question. We see the easiest route "Do my homework anyone" at least he's honest and to the point.
As to the teaching aspect. I applied to teach part time at a few different universities and they asked if I had Phd or Masters, and that they only hired those for that position (an AS or BS just wasn't good enough). Some of the best investigators I have ever met had high school and that is it. They have knowledge which I would love to have, but alas they can't pass on what they know because you need a masters or phd. While someone is getting a phd (And some even coming to forums to ask how to do a dissertation on investigation WOW just the thought right.) others are actually investigating and learning real world applicable info and techniques.
I think we would all mostly agree that even taking classes doesn't provide you the skill you need, just a piece of paper and something on your CV. Practice what you learn, you have to practice investigation just like you practice programming code, or any hobby you have.
An investigator is having a certain way of thinking, not whether you have a badge or not.
To be honest, and no offense intended, there is no (and there will never be) a simple/single solution to this issue.
First of all, let's consider the fact that there will always (and in all disciplines in life) be people (students or professionals or "experts") who will seek the easy way out and start annoying people with questions they could and should have researched themselves.
With regards to students, specifically, then
Since a lot of posters complained about the situation in the UK, and since the only educational (lower & higher) systems I know and can write about/comment on are the Greek and the UK ones, I would to a large extent agree with Fab4 and azrael's assessment of the situation, but not completely.
From a lecturer's perspective
Students, by and large, are coming out of lower-education with insufficient knowledge to even begin to properly function as members of normal society, never mind being able to cope within an academic environment. Even worse is the fact (and it is a fact) that students coming into university _expect_ to be spoon-fed all they need to know, just as they did in lower education.
Therefore one year of the 3-year course is lost as a result of a. lecturers trying to re-program them out of that habit, teach them the "advanced" version of the lower-education material and bring them all to "a certain" level, and b. the promotion of university life as an all-you-can-drink-for-£1-7-days-a-week buffet.
Teach a 3-year-course in 2 years with a specific set of teaching hours per week + official & unofficial overtime on your part without going mad, I dare you. And, I double-dare you to do the above in today's new and much-lauded "we must be facilitators, not educators" style. And I triple-dare you to do the above effectively and in an in-depth manner when important pre-requisite modules have either been dropped from the degree, or merged into other modules and been simplified, or when your program is an access-course thing (where you get people from all sorts of disciplines totally unrelated to the field) and _all_ of that in a set (& small) number of in-class contact hours. And I quad-dare you to, after all this, dare to ask the students to do some preparatory work for the next lecture (eg. read Chapter 5 and attempt the exercises at the end of it) only to be, at best, roundly ignored by most of the class, or at worst get a letter from your module/programme leader/school head reprimanding you because the student complained through the student's union.
By the way, how many of you who complained about lecturers being under-qualified have had a look at the course material for the PGCE diploma and/or the "lecturer training" in-house course material?
From a student's perspective
Students are supposed to be taught how to search for information during the induction week (+, depending on the uni in a separate module). They are, furthermore, supposed to be taught "research skills" as a module (usually in the 1st year). In the Real World ™, however, they get a "follow this 10-page guide" by an extremely overworked library services member of staff and a "come find us (if you can) if you need any help or have any questions". And I won't even begin to comment on what goes on in the Research Skills module.
Thus, we get to the final year of a BSc and the student is asked to "search for a dissertation topic by themselves". And the student goes to the lecturer responsible for the disseration module and the conversation goes
S Could you please help me find a research topic?
L I am not allowed/cannot/will not tell you, you must find it for yourself!
S How? Where can I search?
L You should have gained the skills in the induction and/or research skills module.
S No, I have not been taught that sort of things.
L You should have been, and its not my problem.
Now, I'll be fair, it doesn't happen exactly like this with every student and in every university. Some of the students are both devoted to their subject and studious, and have picked up the skills and the tricks over time (and with much effort, visits to the library, googling etc).
And some of the universities are actually offering VERY good quality of assistance in this subject. But they are quite rare.
What you see in the forum as "students asking us to do their work for them", is partly the net result of all the above.
I don't blame them. I don't complain about their questions. And when students come to me, unofficially, to ask for help with things like that, I always try to help them.
As a general principle, I do not condone students posting the full title of their essay question. I can in some cases excuse them, mind, depending on the situation. Especially if they've been in one of those fast-track 8-non-stop-hours-lectures-a-day-for-a-week sort of post-graduate courses, after which (as I myself found out when I took some such modules as part of my 1st & 2nd years of the PhD) they're so overloaded that either their mind turns to tapioca and segfaults or completely shuts down and refuses to reboot.
As a result, I may tell someone off, in a polite or polite-but-pleasantly-sarcastic way as befitting the specific situation, but in no way do I think its proper, or professional, or even good manners, at the end of the day, to suggest that these students are either lazy, as a rule, or will go on to be unsuccessful in their future careers and doom themselves and other people in an eternity of pain and suffering.
Anyway, that's the situation from the p.o.v. of someone who's both an academic and a student at the same time. Apologies for the size of the posting.
Here is my stupid ole IMHO statement, but if a student is asking for help searching on a topic having anything to do with investigating and can't find it on their own, then maybe they aren't quite ready for the field.
George (aka DarkSYN), I couldn't agree more!
Here is my stupid ole IMHO statement, but if a student is asking for help searching on a topic having anything to do with investigating and can't find it on their own, then maybe they aren't quite ready for the field.
You are assuming they have had sufficient and adequate training in research skills, or a previous real-world experience that has developed those skills through osmosis. Without either (or both) of these events occuring, how can we reasonably expect them to investigate anything?
No-one is born to do a specific job, or born with specific skills, they are learned through direct or indirect experiences. How, for example would you feel if Jamie decided (rather randomly) that everyone had to post here on FF in a language other than English. I am sure George (aka DarkSYN) would be fine provided that the language chosen was Greek, but for the rest of us who don't speak Greek (or whichever language was chosen), without training this would be a problem, and it would be unreasonable for those who do speak that language to expect others to do so without proper instruction.
You may think that this is bordering on an absurd comparison, but the analogy is valid. How can we expect people who have not had full or proper training to possess precisely the skills and mindset that they are trying to develop. If they already had those skills they wouldn't be students, they would be practitioners already!
What gives us the right to demand that others conform to our way of thinking and reasoning, without first giving them the chance to gain the very experience that has made us the ones they come to help for? For the most part (excluding the very few cases of genuine and inexcusable idleness that does manifest from time to time) students come here to learn from people with more experience than them, and to greet them with abruptness and derision does not serve the profession well, nor does it portray the kind of image that we should be portraying about our own professionalism, openness and approachability.
No-one is born to do a specific job, or born with specific skills, they are learned through direct or indirect experiences. How, for example would you feel if Jamie decided (rather randomly) that everyone had to post here on FF in a language other than English. I am sure George (aka DarkSYN) would be fine provided that the language chosen was Greek, but for the rest of us who don't speak Greek (or whichever language was chosen), without training this would be a problem, and it would be unreasonable for those who do speak that language to expect others to do so without proper instruction.
I personally would love it, of course I know that any page I go to on the internet be it Greek, Farsi, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, or Quechua I can get it translated and move on. I like a challenge, can't stand having very basic things which require no thought process.
After a set of 4 years where you go through network security, programming, file systems, software, hardware, etc. I find it incredibly hard to believe that someone can't come up with a topic to do something on. It boils down to how much you want it and how hard you ware willing to work for it.
You can't honestly tell me that throughout the entire uni that they didn't use Google. "dissertation topic ideas" you don't even have to put in the ideas part, Google does it for you. What about brainstorming, we did that at uni, start with a topic and branch out, there is NO possible way if you filled up a poster-board with a brain storm for dissertation ideas that you couldn't end up with something. That was a main requirement in speech class.
What gives us the right to demand that others conform to our way of thinking and reasoning, without first giving them the chance to gain the very experience that has made us the ones they come to help for? For the most part (excluding the very few cases of genuine and inexcusable idleness that does manifest from time to time) students come here to learn from people with more experience than them, and to greet them with abruptness and derision does not serve the profession well, nor does it portray the kind of image that we should be portraying about our own professionalism, openness and approachability.
Right. D
But as a side note, in my personal experience I have learned much more listening (or reading) what experts and more generally older people had to say BEFORE asking them silly questions.
Most of the posts that provoke the resentment of some members is of the kind (in brackets italic what is NOT written but clearly understated)
(I have no time to read previous topics on this board, let alone searching it with the built-in search engine or with google, my pals are waiting me as we are late for our usual afternoon pub happy hour, so … )
How can I frimble a grotton , but without brigling any fedgy crompt?
Please keep it simple as I am only a student.
Which may be allright if the question comes (without the part in brackets) from your mom or dad, but is a bit less so if it comes from a teen or early twenties lad that manages to find and download ANY possible piece of music or movie from ANY possible server on the internet, while chatting on MSN, SMSing his/her friends, and looking the right road to the place where the party is on his phone connected to Google Earth.
With all due respect, I don't buy that a student, and particularly a student in computer science doesn't know what Google is and that it can be used for something else besides finding funny videos on youtube.
Kids - and expecially those that study in a technical field - are far less inexperienced that you may think, for the most part they are bright and intelligent D and know perfectly well how to use technology and the internet to find whatever they are interested in and they suddenly become "inept" and "inexperienced" where some tough work (like actually studying) is needed.
With a far more primitive technological experience and lesser means weren't we all like that when 19 or 20? roll
jaclaz
With all due respect, I don't buy that a student, and particularly a student in computer science doesn't know what Google is and that it can be used for something else besides finding funny videos on youtube.
Kids - and expecially those that study in a technical field - are far less inexperienced that you may think, for the most part they are bright and intelligent D and know perfectly well how to use technology and the internet to find whatever they are interested in and they suddenly become "inept" and "inexperienced" where some tough work (like actually studying) is needed.
With a far more primitive technological experience and lesser means weren't we all like that when 19 or 20? roll
jaclaz
I don't disagree with you there! But I do think that it's not that simple, and I say that from my own experience of academia.
One point that gets missed is that universities strongly suggest, or perhaps brainwash students into believing that Wikipedia and Google are NOT acceptable research methods. I was frequently confronted with staff at university who point blank stated that if they suspected that we had used Wikipedia at all for an assignment, then they would fail us outright.
My personal view is that they should in fact instruct students to use Google and Wikipedia as starting points, provided said students check the referencing associated and follow it up with further research, however whilst you quite rightly say that kids are not as inexperienced as we think, they are VERY naive.
There is a wealth of information at students' fingertips via the internet, but quite often there is an old dinosaur stood at a lectern spouting diatribe about the evils of using it! I personally found myself thinking that such lecturers were absolute <insert your preferred colourful metaphor here> who were simply showing their ignorance and clearly did not themselves understand how to use such technology properly, and hence they were against it (or they couldn't be bothered to explain their proper use). However all too many students will take such lecturers' words as Gospel and simply not use it (perhaps that should read take the risk).
There is no implication from such staff that what they really mean is that they should read between the lines and use it only to get going, and to find more established (or outdated depending on your viewpoint) research methods. Couple all of this brainwashing with their naivety and you have a very dangerous cocktail indeed.
What I think we really need is a paradigm shift in how we deliver courses such as CF ones, with a real quantitative effort to promote inquisitive mental processes, rather than the token efforts into research methods we currently see.