The FBI Kansas City Field Office has more than a hundred agents (the actual number is classified) but chances are you’ve never seen one. Unlike the police, they aren’t driving around in marked vehicles with lights on top. But they are there working on cases and assisting local police.
“We depend on them, and they depend on us to make America safe. There is no question of that,” Johnson County Sheriff Byron Roberson said.
As sweeping layoffs are announced at federal agencies under the new Trump administration, former FBI agents and top law enforcement officials worry about what will happen to the 56 field offices around the country, including Kansas City’s.
The Bureau has already fired or forced six top officials to retire. The administration has also gone on a binge firing federal probationary employees — something that would have a huge impact on the FBI. The F.B.I. Agents Association says 10% of the workforce is still in their probationary period.
Department of Justice leadership also demanded a list of all employees
who participated in January 6th investigations, prompting fear that those FBI employees would be targeted for firing. That would certainly include veteran agents assigned to Kansas City.
“My concern is, if we lose the institutional knowledge that those individuals have in their jobs through this process of eliminating federal employees, it's only going to make us less safe,” said former Kansas U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom.
Why have FBI field offices?
The FBI Kansas City Field Office has investigators spread across Kansas and western Missouri in eight offices called resident agencies. These small offices — often just two agents — work especially closely with local law enforcement.
Grissom was appointed U.S. Attorney by President Barack Obama and served from 2010 to 2016. He is now in private practice. He says even losing a few agents could be a big problem. An agent may be working 15 to 20 cases at a time. Many of those investigations involve intense coordination between FBI agents and local law enforcement.
“(Local agencies) are the eyes and ears on the ground,” Grissom told KCUR.
That includes counterterrorism, even in Kansas and Missouri.
“The counterterrorism problem is not just a national problem, but it's also a local problem,” said retired FBI agent Greg Vecchi, who now runs a security consulting firm in Olathe.
The local field office runs several task forces that include local and state law enforcement. The most important, Vecchi said, is the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
“The FBI has got to be able to have relationships with the various jurisdictions when and where the actual attacks are planned,” he said.
That was the case in 2018 when resident agents in Garden City, Kansas, worked with police and sheriff’s deputies to stop a plot to bomb a mosque and apartment complex to kill Somali immigrants.
“During my time as the U.S. attorney, we had two acts, I should say, potential acts of terrorism that the FBI was intimately involved in,” Grissom said. One stopped a suicide car bombing at the Wichita airport in December 2013 the other stopped another suicide car bombing in 2015 targeting Fort Riley, home to the Army’s 1st Infantry Division.
In addition, the Kansas City office runs the Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force and the Safe Streets Task Force, which targets gangs and drug cartels.
The office also provides training to local police and sheriff’s departments. Vecchi said when he ran the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, his agents would often train local police on interrogation.
“That is a huge benefit to law enforcement,” he said. The office also offers training to local SWAT teams.
All of that, plus access to the FBI’s Washington lab and the Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory in Kansas City all comes at no additional cost to local governments or police departments.
Vecchi believes if local field agents are fired, those working in administration will be reassigned to the street. But if the cuts go deeper, that’s a huge problem. If there are mass layoffs or firings, Vecchi said, “It's going to absolutely cripple” training and investigating counterterrorism.
Roberson, who was police chief in Prairie Village before being elected sheriff, said any cuts at the Kansas City Field Office will damage local law enforcement.
“There is great leadership that could be lost in that organization that you can't just go out and reinvent and just pick that up off the street,” Roberson said.
The ATF also at risk
Patel is also now in line to take over another agency in jeopardy — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, according to the Associated Press.
Missouri Rep. Eric Burlison from Springfield has filed a bill to abolish the agency. On social media, Burlison has said the ATF "consistently violates Second Amendment rights" and claims its functions are duplicative.
“The state of Missouri has all of the agencies that we need to regulate everything that the ATF does,” he told MissouriNet in December.
Rep. Mark Alford, who represents much of suburban Kansas City and mid-Missouri, has joined as a co-sponsor.
"Proud to be a cosponsor of Rep. Eric Burlison's bill, H.R. 221 — ABOLISH THE ATF!" he wrote on Facebook.
The ATF investigates gun crimes and regulates federal firearms dealers. It also looks into arsons, including an arson at the Waldo Heights apartments on 81st Street and Holmes in 2021 and one at Stonegate Meadows apartments in 2022 that injured 15 people, including nine children.
“The idea that you would just do away with that agency for political partisanship reasons only I think is incredibly shortsighted by the congressmen,” Grissom told KCUR. “I'm really surprised that Congressman Alford would take that position.”
