Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 11, 1990 TAG: 9006100020
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"FBI, freeze!"
Heck with that. The felon drops the bag and dives headfirst into a waiting car. The woman at the wheel puts the pedal to the floor.
Up the street, another car, tires squealing, speeds to close off the escape route - too late.
Getaway.
Another blown bust in Hogan's Alley (pop. 200), the most crime-ridden community in Virginia. The good guys are law enforcement trainees. The bad guys are local actors.
But the situations are authentic.
"The original concept was to build a fully developed urban area resembling that found in almost any small town across the United States," explains James R. Pledger, chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's practical applications unit and mayor of Hogan's Alley. "It's as close to real life as you can get without being there. If you're going to make a mistake, this is where you want to make it."
Also authentic is the stress.
"They're overachievers," Pledger says of his charges. "They don't want to embarrass themselves in front of their peers."
Subtext: If you can't make it in Hogan's Alley, you won't make it on the street.
In fiscal 1989, 686 training events took place here; more than 86,000 instructional hours.
"We stay busy," reports Pledger.
The town, located 40 miles south of Washington, D.C., by Marine Corps Base Quantico, is a sleepy enough spot when the shooting stops.
Spread over 20-odd acres of tree-ringed ground, Hogan's Alley boasts a post office, a drug store, a bank, a pawn shop, a billiard parlor, a rooming house, a barber shop and a used car lot. There's a working deli, a laundromat and a motel.
But no litter, absolutely none.
That's a clue.
And there's a single movie theater, called the Biograph, where the marquee advertises Clark Gable and Myrna Loy in "Manhattan Melodrama."
Another clue.
In 1934 bank robber John Dillinger was shot dead in Chicago by federal agents after attending that film at a theater by that name.
Otherwise, Hogan's Alley is an unfunky, unvandalized, immaculate couple of blocks, zip code 22135.
The third clue comes at the corner of Center Street and South Broad:
Welcome to Hogan's Alley
CAUTION: Law enforcement training exercises in progress. Display of weapons, firing of blank ammunition and arrests may occur. If challenged, please follow instructions.
HAVE A NICE DAY
\ Gunplay
Pledger at 42 stands 5-feet-10, weighs 155 pounds. He's bald. His eyes are brown and deceptively soft.
They don't miss much.
"I look at everybody as an individual," he says. "I expect certain things from certain people. I'm not often surprised."
After 20 years with the agency, Pledger knows "the bad ones, the not-so-bad ones and the ones who are bad only when tempted." He worked the Jonestown massacre investigation. He was on the task force of agents assigned to the Watergate case, transcribing Richard M. Nixon's Oval Office tapes.
The former president had an irritating habit of drumming his pencil on the microphone, Pledger confides.
Any other insights?
"A lot of it," he says, "was just idle chitchat."
Circumspect is the word for Pledger, whose manner is bland as a Wheaties breakfast; off-duty, the father of two is a soccer coach in nearby suburban Woodbridge.
A typical Pledger war story is the time the raging car thief rammed through the roadblock in Washington.
The special agent drew down on him, had the fugitive cold in his sights, and said:
"Nah."
Pledger let him go.
"Car theft wasn't serious enough to justify shooting him," shrugs the chief. Pledger grins. "I knew we'd get him later.
"And we did."
Such reticence extends to Pledger's instructional philosophy at Hogan's Alley. Make it hard to hurt you. Don't hurt the subject unless you have to.
See if the door's unlocked, rookie, before you kick it down.
"In a good operation," affirms the chief, "you don't shoot. Every once in a while, we get somebody who wants to be Rambo. We counsel them that's not acceptable."
Nor is complacency.
Pledger's militarily neat office, through what looks like a motel room door at the Dogwood Inn, carries graduating class pictures and, beside the secretary's desk, a sign: Never assume.
In Richmond a special agent went to pick up a small-time embezzler, a bank clerk with a Caspar Milquetoast personality who had confessed his crime. The clerk opened his door to the agent's knock. And shot him, point blank, in the throat.
Four years ago two agents were killed and five wounded in a Miami shootout. Hogan's Alley was already in the works. The co-location of the Drug Enforcement Agency's had set its training office at the FBI Academy in 1985, creating a need for new space.
The $1.5 million mock town grew out of the old "Hogan's Alley" firing range of "FBI Story" film fame, featuring pop-up plug-uglies for roving marksmen. (The name came from a 19th century comic strip about Irish hooligans.) Students had to figure out shoot/don't shoot situations fast.
So began the Practical Problem Training Complex, conceived to provide a realistic environment for surveillance techniques, the mechanics of arrest, crime scene investigation and photography.
Action scenarios began on this ground in 1987. Experimental equipment is tested here as well, including a remote control robot for hostage situations that contains camera eyes, a microphone mouth and a shotgun mounted on one arm. It even negotiates stairs.
The furnishings and automobiles that fill out the elaborate indoor/outdoor set come largely from property confiscated in FBI and DEA investigations.
"Operational staff and support employees work in the buildings," points out Pledger. "So we have cars on the street and people coming and going, as in any urban area. The town's alive."
And the trainees are learning to stay that way.
\ Edge city
At 7 a.m. there is still a sliver of moon left in the sky, but 32 students in coats, ties and soft body armor are already lining up for their weapons and walkie-talkies. Seven are women, two are black. The average age is 29.
"They're second-career people who want to make a difference," says Pledger. "Stockbrokers, pharmacists, military officers. Over half of them will be taking a pay cut to get in."
Special agents start at $34,000, can earn $60,000; the administrative ceiling is $78,500.
Why do they want this work?
Leslie Gardner, 26, a former IRS fitness counselor from Austin, Texas: "It's the challenge. As I've gotten older, I've seen some of the crime and corruption out there. I want to contribute something to society."
Arthur Everett, 34, a former community college instructor from Kalamazoo, Mich.: "It meets my needs. I have a sense of adventure. The FBI offers something different every day."
Does it ever. Pledger points his tense crew to the door. "Let's go and put 'em in jail," he says.
Across town at the pool hall, an assortment of 21 scruffy role players are loading up with false drugs, funny money and blank pistols. They are amateurs from the area, in the $8-an-hour part-time employ of Day by Day Associates of Montclair. While the trainees are wire-taut earnest, the actors are wryly relaxed.
Why do they want this work?
Pepper McGowan, 35, a housewife from Quantico: "It is such a hoot. I love being somebody else. I don't love being frisked, mind you."
Fred Lawrence, 71, a retired food broker from Stafford: "Oh, hey, I'm an old guy getting the kicks I can. I'm given a gun and told, if they get careless, take 'em out. Where else can you shoot an FBI agent and go home to bed and sleep?"
Six teams will go through three scenarios in four hours. They will be closely watched and critiqued. They will sweat until it drips cold from their chins.
"Most of the job is talking to people and getting them to tell us things," says Pledger. "We collect evidence, arrest people and take them to court. At Hogan's Alley, we try to throw all the little things in."
Including the red tape around a bank robbery.
"Trainees must document their actions with appropriate paperwork, as if this were a real case," says the chief, "and must live with their mistakes on the witness stand in a moot court. Experienced assistant U.S. attorneys act as defense counsel in a suppression hearing held one week later, to review evidence obtained during the practical exercise. "Under intense questioning, each trainee testifies to his or her part of the investigation."
\ The score
Culled, screened and screened again, the class of 32 will lose three by the end of its 14-week cycle, say FBI statistics. After 500 hours of classes, fitness drills, firearms instruction and six practicals, the graduates will be assigned duty in smaller cities to start. Pledger began in Little Rock, Ark.
He's proud of his record.
"I had the gun out a lot of times," admits the chief, "but I never had to pull the trigger."
And he's proud of his town.
"I'd like to put in a municipal building," muses Pledger, "with flags and glass doors and a courtroom. Behind it, a three-story apartment building with stairways. And a farm house."
And an airport . . .
A picture of the FBI Academy appears on the back of the funny money. Mayor Pledger's face appears on the front. Reads the label: Not negotiable.
After all, it isn't exactly life and death.
But that's a compelling argument for the existence of Hogan's Alley, Va.:
It will be.
by CNB