“Can Students Come?”
by Janice Grzankowski
When I thought about going on for doctoral work, I considered whether I wanted to be at UB or go to the University of Rochester. I had found that there was a high scholarly level at UB. Also, I am...
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"Grrr, Social Worker"
by Bernard Tolbert
I used to get criticized when I first came to the FBI for being too much of a social worker. I can remember the grumbling: "Grrr, social worker."
My first arrest was a bank robbery. We weren't sure who it was, but finally I was able to identify the guy who robbed the bank. He agreed to meet me at his mother's house, and he said, "O.K. but I don't want any cops around." He didn't want us to handcuff him in front of his mother.
That sounded reasonable to me. It's probably not too traditional, but O.K., I can live with that. So that was the deal. I remember getting the guys together in the office and saying: "Here's what we're gonna do. This guy's going to meet me at his mother's house, and we'll arrest him. We're not gonna handcuff him in front of his parents, and he doesn't want any police officers." Boy, you should have heard the response. "What do you mean?! We'll slap the cuffs on him and drag him down the stairs." And I said, "No, that's not the deal I made." And that's how we did it.
That's the way I did things. It was kind of different, unconventional. I look back now, 20 years later, now that I've been in for awhile, and I can see how maybe that's not the thing to do. But I think that I had the right idea, and I think that that helped me in my career very much, because a big part of this job is to get people to help us, to give us information that we need about cases. I was very good at developing informants, and I think that's because people trusted me. Again, it goes back to my social work background, which teaches you to listen.
When I left Child and Family Services to go to the FBI, they had a luncheon for me and somebody talked about being concerned about me. They were really worried about me because I was going off to the FBI. But one of the guys, Harold Utts, who used to be one of the supervisors at Child and Family Services, said, "I'm not really worried about Bernie. What I am concerned about is how he's going to change the FBI, what impact he's going to have."