Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News (b)
The exponential growth was the result of the sudden expansion of FBI’s federal criminal jurisdiction since the court ruling on July 9, 2020, which reaffirmed the existence of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Reservation. The landmark ruling, which determined that the U.S. government never disestablished the American Indian reservations there in the early days of Oklahoma’s statehood, reverted nearly 45% of the state back to Native American reservation land. That, in turn, transitioned criminal jurisdiction from the state back to the FBI.
The FBI investigates the most serious crimes in Indian Country, including murders, rapes, and child sexual abuse. In most of eastern Oklahoma, criminal cases that were handled by state and local authorities are now under federal jurisdiction—including closed cases that are being re-opened because of new questions about their jurisdiction. The expanded federal role has made the Oklahoma City Field Office one of the FBI’s busiest.
“The case volume that we are experiencing is unprecedented,” said Melissa Godbold, special agent in charge of the FBI Oklahoma City Field Office, which has borrowed special agents, intelligence analysts, victim specialists, and other professional staff from across the Bureau. Dozens of agents are on 90-day rotations to the region, working to ease the crush of cases and make sure criminals don’t slip through cracks during the transition. Victim specialists from around the country are on two-week deployments to Oklahoma City to ensure victims from cases old and new are tended to and provided resources the federal government is obliged to deliver.
‘It’s Our Every Day’
“The challenge for us is that we must provide this basic level of policing in the eastern half of Oklahoma, but we also have to ensure we are still doing all the things the American public expects the FBI to do,” said Godbold. “We’re investigating terrorism crimes, we’re going after spies, we’re making sure public corruption doesn’t go unpunished. So, it’s getting the base level of policing covered along with the top level of policing and making sure all of that happens at the same time.”