Internship with the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office and the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center

This past Fall semester I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in two separate internships. My first internship was at the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office Main Jail, where I worked as an intern in the Classification Unit. In this position, I worked closely with the jail’s Criminal Intelligence Specialist, and also completed a variety of tasks individually. My second internship this Fall was at the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) in San Francisco, CA.

My internship at the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office was a continuation of my internship completed over the summer. After the summer, both myself and the Sheriff’s Office staff decided that continuing the internship would be mutually beneficial. Throughout the Fall semester, I completed much the same tasks as I had been working on during the summer. These tasks included but were not limited to the following: opensource intelligence gathering / analysis, tracking of local crime trends / patterns, mail monitoring, ensuring that proper classifications were entered for each inmate in the jail’s database, investigative support as needed, etc.

My internship at the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office proved to be extremely helpful in allowing me an easy training period at the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. The most beneficial aspect to this regard was my knowledge of various laws, codes, and regulations which can only be learned in a law enforcement setting.

I started my internship at the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center in September, 2017. Initially, I found it quite difficult to juggle 19 units, an internship in Salinas, and an internship in San Francisco. While it was tough at first, I was able to work out a time management system that allowed for me to complete my homework / papers, attend classes, and present my best work at my two internships. I was assigned to two teams at the NCRIC – one in strategic intelligence analysis and one in tactical intelligence analysis. Working with these two teams provided me a plethora of experience relevant to the Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies field. In this internship, I have been introduced to, and have learned how to use various government systems, alongside learning to navigate a variety of open-source investigative tools. One such system utilized was ArcGIS. For the project assigned to me using ArcGIS I was able to put to use the skills learned through my 4 unit GIS course at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. The various skills based classes at the Institute proved to be the most useful to me in this internship.

The research and analysis skills gained through my classes were pertinent to success in these two internships. I brought with me an advanced skillset that only a Master’s Degree candidate can possess. I am lucky to have had the opportunity to extend my internship with the NCRIC into this Spring semester, and am looking forward to the new challenges and experiences that this work will bring.

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