Winthrop Assistant Chief appointed to FBI National Academy
Winthrop University officials said Tuesday the school’s Assistant Chief of Police Ken Scoggins has received an appointment to the FBI’s National Academy.
Scoggins will leave for the 10-week course in Quantico, Va., in September and will join an elite group of law enforcement officers from around the world who have had an opportunity to achieve this honor.
Participation in the program is by invitation only, and Scoggins will be the second in Winthrop’s Police Department to be invited to the academy. Chief of Police Frank Zebedis graduated from the academy in March 2001.
Appointees are leaders and managers of state and local police, sheriffs’ departments, military police organizations, and federal law enforcement agencies. Participants are drawn from every state in the union, from U.S. territories and from more than 150 international partner nations.
During his training, Scoggins will take college courses in the areas of law, behavioral science, forensic science, understanding terrorism/terrorist mindsets, leadership development, communication and health and fitness. He will participate in a wide range of leadership and specialized training, and will share ideas, techniques and experiences with others.
Scoggins said that the appointment was “one of the highest honors I’ve had in my law enforcement career. It’s a very prestigious milestone, and I’m grateful to be included among some of the very best law enforcement executives.”
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104074962Ex-Agent Accuses FBI Of Retaliation Over Race Suit
by Dina Temple-Raston
May 13, 2009
A former FBI agent at the center of one of the biggest discrimination cases in the agency’s history has filed a new lawsuit, in which he says the FBI continues to exact retribution for a case he settled back in 1990.
Donald Rochon was 37 years old when he filed his landmark discrimination suit against the FBI. Rochon, who is black, was a young agent in Omaha, Neb., when some troubling things started to happen. In one incident, Rochon returned to his desk to find that someone had put a picture of monkey over his son’s face in a family photograph.
Another episode took place shortly after Rochon learned to scuba dive. “Their ideology [was that] blacks couldn’t swim,” he says. “And they put up a photograph of me and another black person swimming in a garbage dump.”
The situation escalated when Rochon and some of his tormentors were transferred to Chicago. He started getting death threats. In one instance, white agents said they would cut off his genitals. Then, about a week later, a death and dismemberment insurance policy appeared on Rochon’s desk.
“That was traced back to an FBI agent,” he says. The agent forged Rochon’s signature on the policy.
The FBI supervisor said it was harmless fun and wrote the incidents off as pranks.
In separate investigations, the Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saw it differently. They found that Rochon was humiliated by agents because he was black. The former special agent in charge of the Omaha office told the EEOC that he considered the pranks to be “healthy” and a sign of “esprit de corps.” He said he was aware of Rochon’s racial harassment complaints, but he didn’t take any formal action.