Director Christopher Wray reaffirmed the FBI’s commitment to work collaboratively with its law enforcement partners and insisted the close relationships “in these challenging times” are essential to fighting crime and protecting the American people against an array of threats.
Speaking Saturday at the annual International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference in San Diego, Wray underscored the importance of leveraging collective resources and strengths to better protect our communities.
Wray praised a “spirit of cooperation” and a shared mission with the IACP that remains close today, going back to the Bureau’s creation 115 years ago.
With the world’s attention drawn to the crisis unfolding in the Middle East, he also offered condolences to the people of Israel and the innocent lives lost at the hands of Hamas.
Wray described the targeting of a community because of its faith as “totally unacceptable” and said the FBI remains committed to continue confronting such threats, both in the United States and overseas.
“In this heightened environment, there’s no question we’re seeing an increase in reported threats,” he said, urging partners to stay vigilant and continue sharing any intelligence or observations.
Wray headed an FBI team of approximately 75 executives and other employees at the four-day IACP conference, many of them participating in sessions focusing on mass violence and school shooting threats, today’s crisis negotiators, and gang-involved child sex trafficking, among other topics.
Surging resources, Wray explained, have been critical in tackling violent crime, and he cited several examples of successful partnerships, ranging from the deployment of FBI agents to Tucson to reduce a backlog of old state warrants and take criminals off the street to a violent gang crackdown in Houston.
Working together with state, local, and federal authorities in Houston, the FBI participated in a violent crime initiative that led to arrests and indictments against members of the 100% Third Ward Gang that operates in and around the city.
“By February,” Wray said, “the Houston Police Department reported a drop of more than 10% in overall crime in just five months.”
Working together has been just as critical outside of large cities. In September, Wray said the FBI began surging resources to tribal areas to focus on crimes affecting Native American women and children.
In Charleston, West Virginia, he said authorities seized more than 100 kilograms of methamphetamine and other dangerous drugs and made close to 50 arrests in one of the largest illegal narcotics investigations in state history.
Wray also recognized the work of an FBI-led task force operating out of Brunswick, Georgia, for arresting dozens of gang members and seizing a number of illegal guns and drugs in January.
