‘I Like Helping People’
Longtime Indian country special agent reflects on an essential FBI mission
Sam Davenport can't put an exact figure on the number of times he’s been called out in the middle of the night to crime scenes that are hours away and indiscernible on most maps. But the special agent, now in his 16th year in a remote Arizona outpost serving mostly Native American communities, says there’s no place he’d rather be.
Davenport is among more than 150 special agents across the country assigned to work on nearly 200 Native American reservations where the FBI is the lead investigative agency for significant crimes like homicides, kidnappings, and sexual assaults. The days are unpredictable, the terrain is challenging, and the majority of cases tend to be violent and heartbreaking.
But for Davenport and others who have repeatedly extended their assignments in some of the nation’s most remote corners, the challenges are part of the job’s appeal.
Sam Davenport is the supervisory special agent of the Pinetop-Lakeside Resident Agency of the FBI's Phoenix Division.
"I love working Indian country. I like catching bad guys. I like the chase. I like helping people. That keeps me going."
Sam Davenport, supervisory special agent, Pinetop-Lakeside Resident Agency, FBI Phoenix
“I love working Indian country,” said Davenport, using the federal government’s designation for Native American lands. “I like catching bad guys. I like the chase. I like helping people. That keeps me going.”
For more than a century, the FBI has had jurisdiction when major crimes are committed against members of federally recognized tribes on reservations. The FBI works alongside the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and local law enforcement partners working on the reservations.
Davenport supervises a small team of agents and staff in the Pinetop-Lakeside Resident Agency, a satellite office of the Phoenix Division. He said strong working relationships are essential given the remoteness of the work. In Arizona, for example, nearly 25% of the state is designated Indian Country; the Navajo Nation alone occupies more than 15,800 square miles in northern Arizona. Davenport’s office covers the Fort Apache, San Carlos Apache, and Tonto Apache reservations in eastern Arizona.
“It’s a big asset to have tribal police and the Bureau of Indian Affairs working with us,” said Davenport. “There are a lot of things on the reservation that … if you didn't grow up there, you don't know.” Tribal police and prosecutors, along with local BIA agents, intimately understand the geography, customs, and people on the reservation.
“They are the eyes and ears,” said Davenport, who grew up about an hour away from the Pinetop-Lakeside office. “I will never know as much about the reservation as tribal police. They live there. They grew up there. They know everybody. They're a huge asset for us.”
BIA agent Auggie Belvado, an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, said the relationship is symbiotic. He has worked with Davenport and the Bureau’s agents for 16 years and says the different agencies bring unique strengths to bear.
The FBI's Pinetop-Lakeside Resident Agency covers the Fort Apache and San Carlos Indian Reservations in eastern Arizona.
Listen: In His Own Words
On this My Mission episode of Inside the FBI, Special Agent Sam Davenport reflects on his work in Indian country, the importance of strong relationships, and carrying out the Bureau's mission. Transcript
“We’re kind of like old-school detectives,” said Belvado, who works on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, home to about 16,000 White Mountain Apache Tribe members. “We go out and we locate people, we interview them. The FBI has more assets. And when we blend that together, it benefits the victims. And that’s what our primary mission is.”
In the 12 months that ended last September, the Phoenix Division opened more than 375 new investigations in Indian country, including 83 homicides and 89 sexual abuse cases, most of them involving children. Still more investigations—88 physical assaults, 16 child physical assaults, and 18 domestic violence—were opened by FBI Phoenix during the same period, mostly by just five of the division’s remote FBI offices that primarily serve reservations.
Special Agent Sam Davenport and his agents meet regularly with tribal prosecutors on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona. Major crimes on reservations like homicide and sexual assaults generally fall under federal jurisdiction, and often result in more lengthy prison sentences.
It's not unusual for case agents who work Indian country investigations to juggle 30 cases at a time and for tribal police and BIA agents to handle still more. Call-outs are so frequent that Davenport and Belvado recently established an on-call system to better share the case load.
“We’re pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder with them,” Belvado said. “It’s been that way ever since I’ve been here.”
For about 30 years, the FBI and tribal, federal, state, and local agencies have worked together on Safe Trails Task Forces. The Phoenix Division’s three task forces in Arizona in fiscal year 2023 accounted for 155 arrests and 120 convictions.
“Our badges look different, but we’re all here for the same purpose, and that’s to make the communities safer,” Davenport said. “Especially up here, where every law enforcement agency is small and understaffed, we need to help each other.”
Special Agent Sam Davenport meets with BIA Agent Auggie Belvado at BIA office on Fort Apache Indian Reservation.
"We’re kind of like old-school detectives. We go out and we locate people, we interview them. The FBI has more assets. And when we blend that together, it benefits the victims. And that’s what our primary mission is."
Auggie Belvado, agent, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fort Apache Indian Reservation
For Davenport, arriving in the wooded highlands of Arizona 16 years ago was like a dream come true. He grew up in nearby Holcomb; in high school, he played football and wrestled with Native American classmates. He went to Mesa Community College in Phoenix and then Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, where he studied law.
After a few years as a lawyer, he yearned for more adventure and joined the FBI in 1999. His first assignment was in the Dallas Field Office, where he worked on civil rights and public corruption cases when he wasn’t deployed on SWAT operations. He was then assigned to the resident agency in Pinetop-Lakeside where he was, for a brief period, the only special agent.
Davenport, who is retiring later this year, actively recruits others to experience working on Indian country cases. For many agents, it’s as close as you can get to frontline law enforcement—responding to active crime scenes, interviewing witness and victims and working closely with partners from other law enforcement agencies to build cases. Actively working those cases, Davenport says, helps illuminate why Indian country is as deserving of resources as anywhere else.
“Why should the reservation be overlooked simply because they’re a reservation, or because they don't have all the amenities that Chicago or L.A. have?” Davenport said. “They're still people, and they still deserve that same justice that everybody else does.”
Davenport says he’s worked hundreds of cases. But those involving children and the elderly stick with him the most.
In 2010, he began investigating a sexual predator who abused at least nine girls and teens dating back to 1992. At the trial in 2012, a procession of young victims testified about how the subject abused them. The member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe was convicted and sentenced in 2013 to life in prison.
Special Agent Davenport holds copies of letters he received from children who were victims in a case he investigated.
Today, Davenport sees victims from the case in the community, and they occasionally greet him and give him a hug. The case—and others like it—crystallized for Davenport that he’s where he was meant to be.
“I wanted to do something with my life,” Davenport said. “I wanted it to mean something. And this is a place you can do it. Am I going to save the world? No. But you get to make a difference in at least somebody’s life, whether it’s the 12-year-old girl that was sexually assaulted and nobody believed her. You come in and you start your investigation, and you end up putting away a subject for 20 years to life, then see her go on and make positive changes in her life. You made a difference. For me, that was the greatest reward of everything.”
