Readout of Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco’s Trip to Oklahoma

Yesterday, Deputy Attorney General (Deputy AG) Lisa O. Monaco visited Oklahoma to highlight the Justice Department’s work to increase public safety and reduce violent crime.

The Deputy AG provided the keynote address at the opening session of the 2022 National Public Safety Partnership (PSP) Violent Crime Reduction Summit. PSP provides a framework for cities to benefit from federal resources and programming to target public safety challenges, with 23 active sites across the nation. Yesterday, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Summit brought together, in-person, approximately 500 federal, state and local law enforcement leaders to share strategies and best practices for keeping communities safe.

In her remarks the Deputy AG highlighted how, across the country, PSP sites are implementing new strategies, engaging with communities, opening lines of communication and fostering partnerships. In the Deputy AG’s words, “the presence of so many law enforcement and community leaders from across the nation speaks volumes about the commitment we all share to uniting our experience and our expertise to join forces and keep our communities safe.”

The Deputy AG stressed the need for significant additional resources to reduce violent crime, and described the Justice Department’s fight for resources through the President’s budget for 2023, which includes a request for almost $11.2 billion for the Department to tackle violent crime.

The Deputy AG also announced a new policy to increase use of the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN) — a unique resource of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that provides timely intelligence from ballistics evidence. Moving forward, all firearms and fired cartridge casings recovered in connection with every Department criminal investigation, including Department-funded task force operations, must be swiftly entered into NIBIN and analyzed.

On her trip, the Deputy AG visited the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Northern and Eastern Districts of Oklahoma, where she met U.S. Attorneys Clinton Johnson and Christopher Wilson, as well as their leadership teams, prosecutors and professional staff to thank them for their hard work and commitment to justice. She also met with the heads of federal law enforcement partners, as well as the Attorneys General of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the Cherokee Nation and discussed collaborative efforts to address violent crime and public safety challenges in the wake of McGirt v. Oklahoma.