Lenny Johns, Special Agent, Santa Fe Resident Agency

Video Transcript

Indian Country in New Mexico is very unique in that it is very diverse. We have 22 Native American pueblos or reservations in the state of New Mexico. And a large portion of the land mass in our state is Indian Country with a unique jurisdictional relationship for the FBI.

Something that makes Indian Country a unique assignment for our agents is it is a very reactive crime. Typically we like to work threat-driven, intelligence-based investigations. And although we’re doing more and more of that in Indian Country today, Indian Country is very reactive to us.

I particularly like it for our new agent force because they just get a ton of experience right away that they can absolutely apply in other programs later in their career. That experience includes deploying sometimes by themselves out to a remote site within a pueblo or reservation and dealing cross-culturally with folks that might have a different background than they do and successfully navigating that environment to conduct interviews, to follow up on leads, to collect up evidence form a crime scene and build a very prosecutable case for the United States Attorney’s Office.