Police chief takes advantage of a ‘once-in-a-lifetime experience'

Moscow Police Department Chief James Fry waited six years before his name was called to participate in a 10-week training course at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va.

About a year ago, Fry, 49, was told he was scheduled to join the first session of 2019. The opportunity is presented to only 1 percent of law enforcement personnel in the U.S., he said.

The 24-year MPD veteran graduated from the elite academy March 15.

“I had went into this with the attitude I was going to take in everything I could take in,” Fry said. “I was going to embrace everything I could embrace because when you’re on a list for that long for something, it’s a big deal.”

He said the Montana-Idaho Chapter of the FBI National Academy Associates normally sends one high-ranking Idaho law enforcement member to each of the four sessions every year.

The last Moscow police employee to graduate from the academy was former Chief David Duke in 2002. MPD Capt. Roger Lanier graduated from the academy around the same time as Duke, but served with a different agency at that point.

Fry said he spent about 75 hours per week either in the classroom, studying, writing papers, working on assignments or exercising. Between the dorm-style living and constant academic work, it was like college all over again.

He took 17 graduate level credits, with classes ranging from leadership to contemporary issues in law enforcement to behavioral analysis.

He also took a physical fitness course, in which he learned different workouts and nutrition.

While countless hours were spent in the classroom and library, the session was just as demanding physically. Fry said he worked out about four days a week — sometimes twice a day.

Perhaps the most difficult physical fitness test Fry faced was Yellow Brick Road — a grueling 6.1-mile run on a hilly, wooded trail built by Marines, according to the FBI National Academy website.

For half of the run, Fry climbed over walls, ran through creeks, crawled under barbed wire in muddy water and overcame other obstacles.

Those who successfully complete the challenge are given a yellow brick with their FBI section number on it. Fry’s brick is now displayed in his office.

“You wouldn’t think that yellow brick would mean a lot to you,” he said. “But the yellow brick means a ton to you because it’s an agonizing run.”

Fry said he and some of his classmates had some time to put down the books and dumbbells to visit nearby historical sites like Gettysburg, Pa., the Smithsonian, the White House and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The latter, which he visited twice, was his favorite.

He said he developed friendships and professional contacts with some of his roughly 250 classmates, who came from all over the country — and the globe, as 27 international trainees participated.

“It’s hard to put in words the camaraderie that you build with this group,” he said.

Fry said the training session was one of the best he has been a part of.

“You get out of it what you put into (it), and I put as much into it as I could because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he said. “I’ll never have the opportunity to have that kind of coursework, have that kind of camaraderie around individuals and have the ability to literally focus on me and my improvement.”

Garrett Cabeza can be reached at (208) 883-4631, or by email to gcabeza@dnews.com.