Gaining valuable experience and an expanded knowledge of available resources, Alliance Police Department Captain Kirk Felker underwent an intensive three-day training through the FBI Regional Command College, at no cost to the department.
Felker explained that the experience was a positive one, allowing him to learn more about resources that can aid the department in investigations and protecting the community.
“Chief (David) Leavitt received some sort of notification from the Omaha Field Office about trainings that they had available,” said Felker. “He alerted me to this one. He thought it would be a beneficial training for me to go to.”
He said that throughout the training, they focused on things such as crisis management, cryptocurrency and task forces. He said that the resources they offer have been under-utilized by the department, but he hopes to change that.
“It put us in touch with resources that we can use that we haven’t really considered using before, trying to take care of things locally,” Felker said. “I think the main focus of each of those was for them to explain what it is, what they’re doing and how they’re available to us at what level. There’s a lot out there that we’re not utilizing that we should be. At no cost to us. It was nice to interact with folks from other agencies. We had folks from Iowa, and from Nebraska: Sheriffs, Police, State Patrol. It was a pretty good-sized class.”
Felker explained that the first thing he did when he came back from the training was to sign up everybody in the police department for a LEEP account through the FBI.
“It allows them to enter a portal that has all of these services available,” said Felker. “If they need aid on a case with some sort of digital evidence, or something with cryptocurrency, our best resource is to report them to IC3.gov, which is through the FBI, because we don’t have the technology to investigate a lot of the things that happen with cryptocurrency. We’ve already been referring people to that. It’s a direct reporting site.
“If they get knowledge of a transaction, and a transaction ID, they can go through the Blockchain and get, at least, some of their money back,” Felker said. “It has to happen within a certain timeframe for it to be effective, but it was pretty revealing to me to see what they could do with that. The Blockchain has so many branches on it, it’s essentially like laundering cash. They have the technology to go through the Blockchain and trace it to the source. They’ve had pretty good success getting some of their money back.”
Felker said that the number of reports of cryptocurrency scams has risen recently as the technology continues to be adopted.
“We’re seeing it more and more, and it’s unfortunate,” Felker said. “People are losing their life savings over cryptocurrency phishing or spam. There are targeted groups; it’s usually the elderly, and it’s really unfortunate. I know we had one here recently that was substantial. Specific to cryptocurrency, I would encourage folks to stay away from it. It’s one of those things if it looks too good to be true, it is, just the old adage.”
He said that there have even been scams where scammers will impersonate police officers, saying that if they do not pay, the target of the scam will be arrested.
“It’s still happening,” said Felker. “They can make their phone number look like anyone they want it to look like, so it looks legit. Don’t give out any personal information over the phone. Go to source; if you’re considering something, do a little research, and I would do it under the guidance of a professional that deals with that sort of thing. It’s a scary world we live in these days, because people are getting targeted daily and losing a lot of money. Vigilance would be my big world for that.”
Felker said that there are two more trainings that have been identified for officers to attend in the future, with more expected to come through the FBI. He believes they will be a large benefit to the officers.
“The biggest benefit to me was to identify the untapped resources that are available to us,” Felker said. “To collaborate with other leaders and other people was nice, but my big takeaway from it was, ‘Wow, this resource is here, it’s been here and we need to utilize it.”
Felker said he was grateful for the opportunity to undergo the training.
“It just shows that those opportunities are out there for us with training, whether it’s the FBI who is an asset for us, identifying new assets for training, collaboration and that sort of thing would be a big takeaway for that.”