detective character career path and multi-jursidictional murder investigations - episode 001

TRANSCRIPT:

I'm Adam Richardson and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

Hey, there. Welcome to the Writer's Detective Bureau. I am Adam Richardson, a veteran police detective and I'm here to help you write better crime fiction. This podcast is essentially going to be a series of Q&A's and then hopefully some interviews and some resources. So, if you'd like to submit your own questions, you're welcome to do so by visiting writersdetective.com/podcast. I obviously can't answer every single question I received but I'll do my best. So, let's get started with the very first question on the very first episode of the Writer's Detective Bureau.

Caro writes and it looks like Caro is short for Caroline, I'm assuming. Caro writes, "What is the typical career progression for a police officer in a large US city like Boston, from Police Academy to beat cop to detective? More specifically, how would a typical police officer be when they join a precinct? How many years will they remain a beat cop before getting a chance to apply to become a detective? What's the typical age for new detectives and once a detective, how many years before they are the primary detective on a case? And how many years would be reasonable before they get promoted to sergeant or lieutenant?"

I will take this in stages. The typical career progression for a police officer would be, as you mentioned, to start at the Police Academy and depending on where you are in the United States, you may attend the Police Academy through a college where you enroll as a private student. And then upon graduation, you seek employment or as in the case, for me, in my own career, I was employed by the police agency first and they paid me to attend the Police Academy.

And while you're in the Police Academy, you're either called a recruit or a cadet but you're still a civilian in most cases. Upon completing the Police Academy, I then or all of the police cadets -your character or the police officer in this question, would be sworn in upon graduation and then they would start field training, so they would be assigned a Field Training Officer.

And then by being assigned to a field training officer or an FTO, they then have a veteran partner to essentially teach them the practical side of

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