Carlos is a Police Officer with the rank of Senior Corporal whose primary duty is as a Field Training Officer (FTO), with the Dallas Police Department. He holds an Advanced Peace Officer Certification from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Education. He also holds a Basic and Advanced Gang Recognition and Identification certificate from the National Interagency Counter Drug Institute (NICI San Luis Obispo, CA). The International Association of Police Chiefs has certified Carlos as a Drug recognition Expert. Mr. Cruz is a former U. S. Marine and retired Coast Guardsman with more than 22 years of law enforcement experience at both the federal and local level. While working in Puerto Rico, he created and directed the “Think About It”   Drug and Gang Prevention Program.

During his time in the military he was trained as a telecommunications specialist. Due to his fluency in Spanish, he was selected to be an Intel-analyst specializing in hispanic narcotics trafficking. While serving in this capacity, Carlos was selected by the National Security Agency to train other linguists in the intricacies of code-breaking, drug lingo, different accents, and location identification via direction finding; he was made an Adjunct Faculty member by the National Security Agency (NSA). While on this duty, Carlos began laying the ground work for what would be his prevention project in trying to find an effective way of reducing drug use and demand.