SALISBURY, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — It’s days like these that Livingstone College’s criminal justice and sociology departments say make college exciting.

North Carolina FBI agents came to the Salisbury campus looking for potential recruits on Tuesday.

“No matter what your background is, we want smart, we want ambitious, we want critical thinking because violations have changed,” FBI special agent Darren Jefferies said. “The world is changing.”

Agents know talking about the FBI is not enough. So, students got to look at forensics, fingerprinting, and bullet trajectory. Some say the collegiate academy helps them become laser-focused on a career path.

“I just learned things about foot casting,” added an excited Ne’Khia Ray, a sophomore. “I just learned how to collect blood samples, and those are all things that are useful in the career field I am going into, which is law.”

Some say this is the good side of law enforcement, but many know of the recent troubles everyone has seen — those involved police agencies with the deaths of George Floyd and, now in Memphis, Tyre Nichols. 

Agents and future agents say they need to be the change for the community.

“There’s a need with all the negativity in the media right now with police officers. They really need a lot of us in law enforcement to kind of be that gap between what people think law enforcement is and what law enforcement truly is,” Livingstone senior Cedric Williams added.

Jefferies shared why he got involved with the national law enforcement agency.

“One of the reasons I joined the FBI is because I had that same kind of parallels growing up as far as trust with the FBI and law enforcement,” said Jefferies. “But what I did is I didn’t want to play on the sidelines.”

Students and agents say this collegiate academy is a great start to filling that need. To learn more about the FBI’s diversity and inclusion initiatives, click here.