Hello! Welcome to the Career for Kids podcast for kids learn careers. This is Maxwell Valencia.
And this is Henry Morisson. And today we have Jillian Cabana from the police department.
Hello Miss Cabana. Thank you for spending your time to be on Career for Kids. We hope we
have a great interview. Now let's get started.
Thanks for having me guys. Tell us what you currently do.
So I am currently the detective bureau commander for the Westport Police Department. So I oversee
six detectives, a detective sergeant and kind of falling under him. He oversees the school
security officer and well five school security officers in the SRO. So I also oversee that
division as well.
That's pretty cool. So tell us a bit more about your career and how you got to this
position.
So right now with my current duty, they don't investigate cases like I used to background
as a detective, but I kind of manage what the detectives do. I read every case that
comes into the detective bureau, actually every case that comes into the police department
and I decide whether or not there's enough solvability factors for detectives to follow
up on to see if there's any leads that could be viable. And I sign it to them and I approve
all their reports, search warrants and arrest warrants. But I started out as a regular patrol
officer driving around in a black and white car as you see all over town. And then I got
promoted to detective a few years later, sergeant a few years after that, lieutenant after that.
And I've been a lieutenant now for almost 10 years here.
Wow.
10. I've been here 18 years next month. Been a long time.
Do you enjoy it?
I love it.
I like it.
So you know, every day is a little bit different. You never know what you're walking into. Some
days are kind of slow and you're waiting to get information back from banks or stuff.
And people are waiting to hear, you know, something for a break on a case. And then
other days something big happens in town and it's all hands on deck and our whole detective
bureau is busy and you know, we could have a crime scene, we could have a bad accident.
So it goes from zero to 60 very fast in the police department.
I know. And what part of your job do you enjoy the most and dislike the most?
In particular, my job, I love the team that I get to work with in the detective bureau.
They are like experts in their field. They are so advanced. They're really top notch.
Westport's very lucky to have them. I dislike the fact that I'm essentially on call 24 hours
a day unless I'm traveling. So my phone rings in the middle of the night.
So you don't get to sleep.
Yeah, weekends, birthdays, holidays. If it rings, I have to pick up. Usually I just have
to call a detective to come in. But sometimes if it's a major case, I also have to come
in too.
Yeah, definitely got it. Sometimes it can be difficult just taking away. Like I can
see that they can take away time from other things. But I mean, if you're doing what you
love, I mean, but it still can get in the way, you know, to a certain extent where you
just, you know, so what's just the dream job you imagine yourself doing when you were a
kid?
Yes and no. So I'm going to date myself a little bit. But when I was in high school,
that was when the original CSI show came out. And I wanted to be a crime scene person. I
wanted to go to school for forensic science and be a crime scene tech. And I did. But
then I learned very quickly that if you want to do crime scenes in Connecticut, unless
you really have to be a police officer first and then a detective. So unless you go to
a major metropolitan area, they don't really have civilians that do that. You have to be
a police officer first. So I went to the police. I got hired by Westport 10 days before I graduated
college and went to the police academy. And I've been doing it ever since. And I loved
being a detective. It was awesome. But I also really liked being a cop out on the street.
So like when you're young, it doesn't have to be someone related to the police. But who
were your main idols?
Probably my grandmother. She had eight kids. And somehow, like I only have two kids and
have this job and I can barely hold it together. She had eight kids. She always had two jobs
and somehow she made it work and made it look easy. Yeah. So probably my grandmother and
my friends. Detective, he recently retired but now he works at the Connecticut Forensic
Lab. Detective John Burnetti from West Haven. I interned with him when I was in college
and he just gave me a love for detective work and he was amazing.
So why did you pay this check? What made you do this? I mean, other than like CSI.
CSI made this have interesting. I've always loved science. But also I was torn between
being a chef or being a cop. And I don't know, I just kind of fell into this and it worked
out.
So from out of your entire career, what was the biggest highlight?
Biggest highlight? I don't know. What is the age of your usual viewers here?
I like pretty much everything. But go ahead, if there's something too graphic, I'll add
it to that.
Probably over 10 years ago now, we had a really serious case in Westport. We had a murder
at a jewelry store and the complete stranger murder. It wasn't, you know, a lot of times
it's people are killed by people that they know and that are close to them. This was
not the case. It was a stranger from states away that came to town, stole a bunch of diamonds.
And we, it was the first case I worked with a lot of different agencies at the same time.
So state police came down and assisted. And when we have anything like that, they'll process
the crime scene, but we work the investigation. But with this case, the tips were coming in
left and right that they gave us detectives for weeks to help answer the phones and run
down leads. And we got a break with a phone number and ended up identifying this man.
And we found out that he had been going to a lot of different jewelry stores prior. And
you know, a lot of times he didn't get what he wanted. So no one was hurt. But unfortunately
Westport it was, it was just, he fled the country to a different country. It was, it
was the stuff that you kind of watch movies and read about. So it was just very interesting
to see something.
So I'm using a question.
Yeah. So what are the biggest challenges that you think can be solved by our generation
that he wants to solve for you?
Biggest challenges? Well, I think that your generation was a little bit smarter with cell
phone usage and the things that you guys do with them. There'd be a lot less cases in
Westport that we deal with. So
Like what are some, like, can you give us some examples?
Bullying through the cell phones, you know, kind of harassment, threatening people. Like
you might not mean it, but the people that get the text message or picture or whatever
don't know that. And then they show it to somebody else. So
Hard to understand that stuff.
Yeah, there's no context with it. So that makes a lot of work, especially for our detective
bureau, you know, and sending inappropriate pictures and things like that. So we see a
lot of that. So just being smarter about how you use your devices and really understanding
that once something's out there on the internet or around school, around Snapchat, it never
really goes away.
Like you can socialize because socializing in person.
This is nice to actually being in a room with you guys and not doing this over Zoom or something.
Yeah, sometimes we do it over Zoom. I say about half of our episodes we've done over
Zoom and we're trying to continue more and more doing it in person because one, it's more fun.
Two, you actually get to know the person much better.
Uh huh.
So yeah, Maxwell's another push.
So if someone wants to follow in your footsteps in your careers, what would you tell them?
I would say definitely go to college. Either way, so to be a cop on Westport, you either
have to go to the military first or you have to at least get 60 college credits, which
is an associate's degree. But you know, myself, most people here have bachelor's degrees or
military experience. I have a master's and a graduate certificate and something else,
but I would say it doesn't have to be for criminal justice. So diversify a little bit.
You might try and be a police officer and decide this isn't for me. At least you have
education in a different field. So you have other options. And also being a police officer,
you can retire in 20 years. So if you get hired like I did at 21, you still can have
a whole nother career after doing something completely different. So I say definitely,
you know, get an education first, get good grades and stay out of trouble because if
you get a lot of trouble too, you can't really be a police officer either. So I have a question
for you. Is this like the interview room? This is the interview room. So this is where
you like interviews and suspects and victims and witnesses. You know, it's important to
interview everybody, especially witnesses. We interview them separately too for a number
of reasons, but this is where we do that. Sometimes it's out in a car, sometimes it's
at people's houses. But if we can, we prefer to interview people in the interview room.
So what is your main life advice overall for kids listening to this podcast? Try and find
a good work life balance. Work is important. It's important to do what you love and have
a career you find fulfilling. But the most important people in your life aren't within
the school walls or at home. So don't miss out on that. I can understand why. Thank you
so much Ms. Cabana for the longest interview. I'm sure many more kids will be inspired by
this interview. Thank you guys. To whoever's listening, thanks for listening to the careers
for kids podcast. We hope you enjoyed the episode and we'll see you in the next one.
Bye.