FBI to bolster efforts in Utah, elsewhere to resolve violent crimes involving Indigenous people

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WASHINGTON — The FBI will temporarily bolster personnel in Salt Lake City and nine other U.S. cities as part of a heightened push to investigate the backlog of unresolved violent crimes involving indigenous communities.

"Crime rates in American Indian and Alaska Native communities are unacceptably high," U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. "By surging FBI resources and collaborating closely with U.S. attorneys and tribal law enforcement to prosecute cases, the Department of Justice will help deliver the accountability that these communities deserve."

Operation Not Forgotten, as the initiative is called, starts this week and will be spread over six months, with 60 FBI employees serving rotating 90-day temporary assignments in FBI field offices in Salt Lake City and nine other cities. The other cities include Albuquerque, New Mexico; Denver, Colorado; Detroit, Michigan; Jackson, Mississippi; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Phoenix, Arizona; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington.

Native American communities across the United States experience disproportionate numbers of murder and missing-person cases, which has been a focus of federal attention and attention within Utah, among other places. A special task force in Utah issued a report in 2023 highlighting the issue in the state. While American Indian and Alaska Native people account for around 1.6% of Utah's population, they account for more than 5% of murder victims in the state, according to the report, a trend echoed on a national level.

FBI personnel will work with representatives from the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Missing and Murdered Unit using "the latest forensic evidence processing tools to solve cases and hold perpetrators accountable," according to the statement released Wednesday. Likewise, federal officials say they will aggressively pursue any referrals from the effort.

"The FBI will manhunt violent criminals on all lands and Operation Not Forgotten ensures a surge in resources to locate violent offenders on tribal lands and find those who have gone missing," said FBI Director Kash Patel. The FBI Indian Country program had around 4,300 open cases as of the start of fiscal year 2025, including 900 death investigations.

Parallel to the FBI effort, the Bureau of Indian Affairs in February announced an initiative to help solve cases involving missing and unidentified people in the American Indian and Alaskan Native communities. Operation Spirit Return focuses on identifying unknown human remains and reuniting them with family members.

The effort "will help return missing relatives to their families, so that they can be comforted knowing their loved ones have come home," Bryan Mercier, director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said in announcing the effort.

Utah leaders created the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Relatives Task Force in 2020 to address the issue. Its activities formally ended last November. Lawmakers considered legislation in the 2025 session to extend the life of the task force through mid-2027, but it didn't pass.

https://www.ksl.com/article/51287698/fb ... ous-people