Federal officials are touting the results of a surge of FBI agents to the St. Louis region since August.
FBI Director Kash Patel and Co-Deputy Director Andrew Bailey were in town Friday to brief local and state law enforcement and elected officials on the results of that surge. The field office is responsible for a wide swath of eastern Missouri.
According to data the bureau provided, field agents arrested 276 people, seized more than 100 weapons, as well as nearly 260 kilos of methamphetamine and almost three of fentanyl. A spokeswoman with the FBI in St. Louis said nearly all of those individuals are facing either state or federal charges.
But the success was not just limited to those three months, said Bailey, a former Missouri Attorney General.
“If you look back across the last fiscal year, FBI St. Louis has made 545 arrests in its violent crime programs,” a 71% increase from the previous year, he said.
“St. Louis is performing at a very high level, and with additional focus and resources will be able to continue that mission,” he added.
The operation’s success was the result of cooperation, said U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt. R-Missouri.
“From the local perspective, this is a everyone is coming together for this, for this particular cause, to take on crime,” he said. “But I think the important thing to highlight is the additional resources that we have for good.”
Bailey would not say how many agents are now assigned to the St. Louis field office permanently, but said the increase was a double-digit percent.
Violent crime in St. Louis and across the country was dropping even before the influx of agents.
