FBI Special Agents Talk Evidence Collection with Forensics Students

Students in Ms. Jen Ruege’s three sections of Forensics have studied the seven steps (7 Ss) of a crime scene investigation, and just this week they learned about fingerprints and how to analyze them. On Tuesday, during an in-school field trip, they heard from the professionals themselves, FBI Special Agents from the Chicago Field Office.

Jay Bauer, father of Patrick Bauer ’23, is an Intelligence Analyst with the FBI. He brought two lead members of Chicago’s Evidence Response Team, Special Agent Brian Clark, who leads the ERT team and Special Agent Alissa Harmon who leads the Hazardous Evidence Response Team (HERT).

Together, they addressed students in the Academic Commons, providing a PowerPoint presentation that explained the different units within the Evidence Response Team, as well as the two-week training programs at the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA.

In fact, as part of his role, Intelligence Analyst Bauer works with the Behavior Analysis Unit in Quantico, helping connect field agents with all of the resources in the lab at Quantico, particularly for investigating violent crimes.

These Special Agents described their training, which ranges from crime scene investigation and scene documentation, to search techniques and evidence recovery. Advance training includes post-blast investigation, mass disaster scenes, collecting latent prints and crime scene mapping, to name a few.

Special Agent Clark described studying human remains from decomposed bodies and learning to discover clandestine graves, all during training at the Anthropology Research Facility, or “Body Farm” in Knoxville, TN.

In sharing other specialties, Special Agent Clark described the dive team, who carry out underwater evidence collection.

“Being on the dive team sounds pretty cool, right? You get to go on dives in places like Hawaii and Miami, and see cool fish,” he told students. “Well, that is not where people throw evidence. They throw them in swamps or murky water, where you have to use sonar to find them.”

Brooke Cwick ’23 listened intently to Agent Clark’s description of the dive team and the hazards of the job, and she was not dissuaded. 

“That was one of my biggest takeaways,” she said. “I loved hearing about the dive team. That’s what I want to study.”

Special Agent Harmon described some of the work she does with the Hazardous Evidence Response Team, including being called in on biological, radiological and nuclear threats. One specific example she cited was investigating the white powder letters that were laced with anthrax soon after 9/11.

“Our work involves threats from domestic and international terrorists,” Special Agent Harmon said.

Jimmy Miller ’23 said he enjoyed hearing about all of the different units within the Evidence Recovery Team.

“I didn’t know there were FBI agents working in this kind of evidence collection, right here in Chicago,” he said, “and that they worked on such big cases.”

The FBI agents were just the latest professionals to address students in Forensics, and Ms. Ruege said more are planned this semester.

“There was so much to take away from this presentation,” she said. “Mostly, I think the kids saw that the FBI is accessible on so many different levels.”