He was rambunctious, but also very loving.
He always protective,
very, very protective of our siblings.
He didn't let more than a couple of days where he didn't call me.
So, you know, after week after month.
And so I felt like something was wrong.
I didn't know where my brother was.
What happened to my brother?
I just
I miss him.
We're at the former Salt River High School
for the Missing Persons Identification Project.
This event brings together everybody in one place
to provide the families of the missing, to have a one stop shop,
to be able to create a police report, be able to provide a DNA sample,
and to finally get resources also for their family members and themselves.
Outreach and community partnerships is really key,
and that's kind of been the focus of FBI Phoenix over the last year or so.
We're really trying to lean into these communities
to let them know that we're here for them and really peel back the curtain
and let them know how we investigate these crimes
and let them know kind of the average time on these is
is significant, but it is such so that we have successful prosecution.
The focus is to invite the families and we already have a list of people
that are reported as missing.
So what we do is they'll come in, we’ll greet them,
we'll do an intake form with them.
And in that intake form, we're trying to capture the information in one spot.
That form is provided to each of the agencies
and will go to each of those agencies one at a time to see what information they
can provide with those family members, one on one.
A victim specialist will be with them and walking with them from each station.
After the station is complete, they'll go to the resources
that are in that community to either get counseling services,
fill out crime victim compensation applications that they haven't done that.
And also to see if there are any civil issues
that they'd like to do or civil options that they'd like to address, too.
There is an appetite for interaction with federal agencies.
People want to to have that interaction.
They want to have those relationships.
They want to be able to use those agencies as resources
for information, resources for things that they need in their family.
And so by bringing this event into the community
and by bringing all of our partners together into the community,
it's much more accessible and they feel more at home
accessing the information that they should have access to anyway.
I, I was looking forward to day for a while.
They called me and they told me about this event that was happening,
and I was looking really forward to it because I felt like
I felt like someone was going to actually care now.
Because even though we reported it to police,
I didn't feel like they cared
enough and like they really weren't trying.
So today made me feel like there was something, you know, like something that
something was going to happen.
While we're not directly involved in missing person cases in the FBI,
that's not something that they investigate.
But oftentimes what we do is we do major crimes
or violent crimes that do happen in these communities.
What ends up happening is that we do hear from these families.
It's like, why aren't you investigating this missing person?
This has happened to my family member here and you're here for this.
But why aren't you investigating when they're missing?
Why isn't that happening?
So the FBI has recognized that this isn't happening.
And so part of my piece is to show that how can we do this?
How can we do a collaboration and close that gap in information?
So the big thing is that we can get them connected into those resources by doing these events.