Bob Snook retired from the California Highway Patrol in June of 2009 following a distinguished 30-year career in law enforcement. At the time of his retirement, Bob was the Sergeant / Team Leader of the CHP’s Valley Division Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team (MAIT).
Bob joined the California Highway Patrol in March of 1979. Following his successful graduation from the CHP Academy in August of that year, he was promoted to the rank of Traffic Officer and assigned to the Santa Fe Springs CHP office in Southern California. From his first days on the beat, Bob showed an aptitude for investigating traffic collisions. Figuring out the how and the why of a collision has always fascinated Bob. His growing expertise in collision investigation caught the attention of his supervisors where, with less than two years on the job, he was selected to be a member of the Major Collision Investigation unit at the CHP Redwood City area office.
Bob was selected to join the CHP’s elite MAIT program as an Associate team member in 1984 because of his recognized ability to investigate and reconstruct traffic collisions. Bob held the position of MAIT Associate for nine years while he continued to perform his primary duty of road patrol officer. During this time period he attended and graduated from every CHP traffic collision related course of study up to and including Traffic Accident Reconstruction. Samples of Bob’s collision investigation reports were used as examples in the CHP’s Collision Investigation Manual, a manual used by nearly all law enforcement agencies in California. In addition to his MAIT duties, Bob was selected to be one of the first investigators assigned to the CHP’s newly formed Officer Involved Shooting Team in 1988.
In 1993 Bob applied for and was awarded a full-time investigator position on the Valley Division MAIT unit based in Sacramento. As part of this premier team he was the lead investigator on hundreds of collision cases throughout Northern and Central California. In addition to his investigative duties, Bob was also the unit’s evidence technician, training officer, and in 1994, was given the added responsibility of being the Assistant Team Leader.
Bob promoted to the rank of Sergeant in 1999 and was chosen to supervise the Valley Division MAIT unit. In that capacity he oversaw a highly skilled team of six full-time investigators and numerous on-call Associate investigators. He has attended thousands of hours of collision related training and participated in or proctored numerous controlled tests. Bob was the senior MAIT Sergeant for the CHP at the time of his retirement in 2009.
During his CHP career Bob was an instructor in the Intermediate Accident Investigation, Advanced Accident Investigation and Traffic Accident Reconstruction courses at the CHP Academies in West Sacramento and Riverside. He has also taught the Intermediate Accident Investigation – Speed from Skid Marks for the Criminal Training Institute in Modesto and the Advanced Accident Investigation course for the Riverside County Sheriffs Department at the Ben Clark Training Center. Bob currently teaches for the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) as an Adjunct Instructor in the Accident Investigation courses for the Northern California Regional Public Safety Training Center, the Sacramento Regional Public Safety Training Center, and the South Bay Regional Public Safety Training Center, as well as in the Officer Involved Shooting Investigation/Use of Force course for the Robert Presley Institute of Criminal Investigations. Over the years, Bob has also provided hundreds of hours of collision related training to a variety of organizations including allied law enforcement agencies, Deputy District Attorneys, fraud investigators, high schools, MADD, Deputy Coroners, and various law groups, just to name a few.
Bob is a certified Accident Reconstructionist who has testified as an expert in all facets of collision and crime scene reconstruction, staged collisions, and officer involved shootings in numerous California Municipal and Superior Courts, US Federal Courts, and the US Navy and Marine Corps Trial Judiciary.
