Last week, Attorney General William Barr announced the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Initiative, a national strategy to help address the disproportionally high levels of violence that American Indian and Alaska Native people suffer.
“The FBI recognizes the violence that tribal communities face and is fully committed to working with our federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement partners to provide support to those impacted by these crimes,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “We are dedicated to delivering justice and to the FBI’s mission to protect all the people we serve. We reaffirm our focus on allocating resources to serve Native American needs.”
Currently, the FBI has federal law enforcement responsibilities on nearly 200 Indian reserves. But, the agency only investigates the most serious crimes—75 percent of the crimes involve death investigations, physical or sexual abuse of a child, violent felony assaults and rape. Located within the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, the Indian Country Crimes Unit (ICCU) is responsible for developing and implementing strategies, programs, training and policies to address identified crime problems in Indian Country for which the FBI has responsibility.
The newly launched strategy as announced by Barr expands upon these response efforts. First, the Department of Justice is investing an initial $1.5 million to hire 11 MMIP coordinators to serve with U.S. Attorney’s offices in 11 states, as well as others that request assistance. The coordinators will work closely with federal, tribal, state, and local agencies to develop common protocols and procedure for responding to reports of missing or murdered indigenous people.
The FBI’s Rapid Deployment Teams will also now be available at the request of tribal, state or local law enforcement. Protocols will be developed for specific circumstances, but currently, FBI teams that can be activated to assist with cases include: Child Abduction Rapid Deployment, Evidence Response, Cyber Agents and more.
By the end of this year, as agreed upon in August by the Subcommittee on Native American Issues, the Tribal Access Program (TAP) will expand to include more than 70 tribes with over 300 Tribal agencies participating. TAP provides federally recognized tribes the ability to access and exchange data with national crime information databases for both civil and criminal purposes, and provides training as well as software and biometric/biographic kiosk workstations to process finger and palm prints. TAP also gives Tribes the ability to take mugshots and submit information to FBI Criminal Justice Information Service.
The MMIP Initiative takes data analysis even further, with the FBI committed to performing in-depth analysis of federally supported databases and analyzing data collection practices to identify opportunities to improve missing persons data.
“For too long, violence against Indian people, particularly Indian women, has been invisible. In my own family, the murder of my grandmother was never properly investigated,” said Swinomish Indian Tribal Community Chairman Brian Cladoosby. “I am grateful to Attorney General Barr and the Department of Justice for taking action to address this injustice. I look forward to working with them to make Indian Country safe for all Indian families.”
Photo: U.S. Attorneys met with Pueblo of Acoma and toured Sky City, the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in North America. Courtesy of FBI.