- April 25, 2024
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OCOEE – Earning the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to receive specialized training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, has been a longtime career goal for Ocoee Police Deputy Chief Steve McCosker.
The academy hosts a 10-week program called the FBI National Leadership Academy four times a year and enrolls about 220 upper-level law-enforcement officers from agencies around the country per session. To be eligible, one must meet certain qualifications, be nominated by the head of a police agency, and pass a comprehensive background check that includes FBI visits to the home.
But none of that fazed McCosker, who dreamed of joining the program for years.
“This is something that has been pretty much a career-long dream of mine, because it does set you apart from other people in law enforcement,” McCosker said. “Only 1% of active law-enforcement officers have actually completed this training, partially because it’s a full 10 weeks and you’re away from your family. It’s a dorm setting, so it’s kind of like being in college. I was real excited when I was accepted. I researched this almost seven years ago when I presented it to (Ocoee Police) Chief (Charles) Brown.”
McCosker received his nomination from Brown, also a graduate of the program. He is now completing his ninth week of the highly selective program and aims to graduate March 16 as part of Class 271.
The program, which partners with the University of Virginia to offer 17 college credits upon completion, provides coursework in intelligence theory, terrorism and terrorist mindsets, management science, law, behavioral science, law-enforcement communication and forensic science.
Since joining, McCosker has learned about different facets of law-enforcement leadership — from tactical strategies to media relations and social-media management to how to help law-enforcement officers dealing with experiences that may cause post-traumatic stress disorder, a skill he aims to take back home to the Ocoee Police Department.
“It’s like being in master-level college courses again,” he said. “You have to turn in term papers, give group presentations and individual presentations. But one of the things I’m most excited about is that one of the courses requires you to pick from three different topics for a final paper, and I chose to write an article that I’m told is going to be published in the (FBI-LEEDA’s) Insighter Magazine — a publication by the Law Enforcement Executive Development Association.”
Most of the courses take place in a classroom setting, but students can volunteer to take weekend sightseeing trips. So far, he has taken tours of the Arlington Cemetery, Pentagon, White House and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, but the majority of the program involves seminars with renowned guest speakers in the law-enforcement community.
“We’ve heard from people who dealt with the Ferguson riots, investigators from the Boston bombing and more, so you’re getting knowledge from all these high-level people who’ve actually experienced it. It’s not just classroom theory, it’s more, ‘This is what happened, this is what went right, this is what went wrong and this is what we could do in the future.’”
Despite all the term papers, McCosker said the most challenging part of the program has been the distance from his wife and two children.
But a big challenge he soon will face if he wishes to graduate is the final physical fitness test: The Yellow Brick Road. The program prepares its students for the grueling 6.1-mile obstacle course with weekly physical challenges on Wednesdays.
Developed in 1981, the Yellow Brick Road is also the obstacle course U.S Marines in training are required to complete. It requires its participants to make their way through a wooded trail marked by yellow bricks. The students run through creeks, climb over walls, jump through simulated windows, scale rock faces with ropes and crawl under barbed wire in muddy water, among other such tasks, to complete the obstacle course.
If completed, they receive a yellow brick as a little souvenir of their achievement and earn the privilege of joining the ranks of the FBI National Leadership Academy’s graduate class.
