Earlier this month, the FBI announced that it's once again putting extra agents into the field to tackle a backlog of cold cases on tribal lands. This joint effort has been happening in tandem with the Bureau of Indian Affairs for years now.
Under Operation Not Forgotten, more personnel will be filtering through nearly a dozen FBI field offices with close ties to Indian Country. When asked, the FBI National Press Office would not specify how many agency staff are "surging," writing "we do not have an estimate" in response to KJZZ.
Last year, this very agency sought downsizing its own federal workforce by about 5,800 staffers. If finalized, that proposal would've marked a roughly 15% cut from its roughly 37,000 FBI employees nationwide.
Still, agents are being sent to cities like Phoenix; Las Vegas; Billings, Montana; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Denver. They'll be rotating on temporary duty assignments until the end of this fiscal year in September.
"A lot of our state is tribal territory," said Kevin Smith, who is the public affairs officer and congressional affairs liaison for the FBI Phoenix Field Office. "Right now, we're set for 14 agents. That will just be an opportunity for us — throughout the summer — to augment the operation we've still got going every day."
Not all of them will stay in the Valley.
In fact, most agents will then be scattered across satellite agencies the FBI Phoenix Field Office oversees throughout the Grand Canyon State and beyond. Those include Tucson, Flagstaff, Lake Havasu, Pinetop and even Gallup, New Mexico.
Since the start of this fiscal year, the FBI has been responsible for handling roughly 4,100 active Indigenous criminal cases nationwide. Smith says Arizona's share of investigations tallies into the "hundreds."
His estimate also covers a couple of unsolved, high-profile cases involving the deaths of three young Native girls in Arizona: Challistia "Tia" Colelay, Maleeka "Mollie" Boone and Emily Pike.
"Every case is unique," said Smith. "And every case takes the time that it takes. Perhaps some of this support will help us move cases along quicker. Or it might help us develop leads and help investigators get to where they need to go a little bit faster."
Past deployments of federal investigators — part of Operation Not Forgotten — have supported more than 700 cases that resulted in arrests, indictments as well as the recovery of child victims.
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