Planning a crime isn’t easy. There is plenty to consider. Metro Nashville Police Lieutenant Frank Ragains is an instructor at Volunteer State Community College. He designs mock crime scenes so that students can collect evidence and document the scene with a critical eye. Effective evidence processing is important in a criminal investigation. Mishandled evidence could be lost or found inadmissible in court. Vol State students now have more room, and more time, to investigate mock crime scenes thanks to a new Criminal Justice lab building at the college. “It provides an area where we can create a crime scene and process it over several days,” said Criminal Justice director, Bradley Tracy. “We used to have to pick-up the evidence after each class.”
Vol State launched a Crime Scene Investigation class this semester, along with another specialty- Interview and Interrogation. “We’re building an interview and interrogation room and working on a courtroom setting,” Tracy said. The new lab building will also house the use-of-force simulator that the college has been using for several years. A fully-equipped squad car and drones are just some of the other gear that students use in Criminal Justice classes.
Criminal Justice instructors at Vol State have extensive professional backgrounds. “I was in law enforcement for ten years, mainly at the Gallatin Police Department,” Tracy said. “I then worked to get my law degree and I was an attorney for several years.” And there are other attorneys teaching in the program, including Nashville lawyer Jeff Roberts.
“Bradley and Bill Sorrells (a faculty member who is also assistant chief of the Gallatin Police Department) are both graduates of the Nashville School of Law. I came to Bill’s class last year as a guest speaker,” said Roberts. “I guess that’s when the teaching bug bit me.” The professional connections pay off in other ways for students. Roberts recently held a class session that featured a live Facetime chat with James Freeman, the former FBI agent who led the investigation that caught the Unabomber in the 1990s.
Vol State Criminal Justice classes focus on law enforcement, investigation, criminal law, and corrections. Students can use both the TN Promise tuition-free education program for graduating high school seniors and the TN Reconnect tuition-free education program for adults who haven’t completed a college degree. Students interested in Criminal Justice will need to apply to the college first. That can be done at www.volstate.edu/apply. For more information about the degree paths for Criminal Justice visit the website at www.volstate.edu/criminaljustice.
Pictured: Vol State instructor Frank Ragains demonstrates fingerprinting techniques. Students left to right: Mick Fairchild of Hendersonville; Abby Smith of Smith County; Caitlyn Cook of Portland; and Hannah King of Mt. Juliet.
Pictured: The new lab provides room for students in this CSI class to process mock crime scenes.
