Watching these young men in training, you wondered what it was that moved each of them to choose Federal law enforcement as a career. The work is difficult and demanding, calling for stern self-discipline. The hours are long, irregular and often filled with danger. No agent ever knows when he may be called from his home on an emergency assignment which may last for weeks. The pay, ranging from $5,355 per year for a rookie to a high of $10,255 for a veteran agent (only the supervising agents receive higher pay) is not exactly an economic bonanza for a college graduate. Salary is not the primary inducement; many of the youths have wanted to be in law enforcement since childhood.
One youth told me, “My father was shot and killed by a bootlegger when I was just a boy. I grew up in a tough neighborhood. I’ve always wanted to be in law enforcement to help fight crime.”
“I like the excitement of the work,” another said, “never knowing from one day to the next what the problem will be or how it will be solved.”
“I didn’t have much chance for advancement as a city policeman, but it’s different as a Federal agent.”
“There’s no politics in Federal law enforcement—not like you find in local law enforcement. You don’t have to worry about the politicians.”
A good many of the rookie agents who come to the school studied police administration in college and then worked on city police forces before taking the Civil Service examination required of candidates for Federal law enforcement jobs.
When an applicant passes the examination, his name goes on the Federal Registry, and it is from this registry that most of the new agents are chosen. Regional boards composed of representatives from the various Treasury divisions interview the applicants as openings occur from time to time in the agents’ ranks. Customs may need a Spanish-speaking agent for duty on the Mexican border. Narcotics may be looking for a man of Italian ancestry who speaks Sicilian fluently. Or Revenue may be searching for an investigator with a knowledge of accounting.
If an applicant wins approval on the regional board, his background is investigated and he is given a physical examination. If all goes well, he is sworn into the service of his choice.
The rookie agents spend their first months in service receiving on-the-job training by working with experienced officers. Then they are sent to the Treasury’s Law Enforcement School for six weeks of study in basic courses such as how to make searches and seizures, how to conduct a surveillance, how to plan a raid, how to photograph the scene of a crime, how to take latent fingerprints, how to interview witnesses and interrogate suspects, and how to conduct themselves in a courtroom under cross-examination.
The Treasury school was established permanently in Washington in 1951 and has now graduated more than 15,000 agents. It is headed by Director Patrick O’Carroll, a forty-two-year-old former Narcotics agent who was reared in New York City. O’Carroll was graduated from Fordham University in 1944, where he majored in psychology. Dark-haired, handsome Pat O’Carroll guides a staff of fifty instructors, who give the basic training to rookies and also instruct veteran agents in specialized courses involving administrative duties. At present the school is conducting six 6-week courses a year for rookies, with an average of eighty students in each class. There also are a scattering of foreign students, sent by their governments to study American police methods.