Earlier this month, a federal audit published by the Interior Department’s Office of the Inspector General found that the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Missing and Murdered Unit is understaffed and its few special agents are spread thin — handling “unmanageable workloads” throughout Indian Country.
Phoenix ranks among the top 10 of U.S. cities with the most unsolved missing persons cases — sixth overall behind only Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco and Memphis.
According to the National Missing and Unidentified Missing Persons System — better known as NamUs, which is run by the National Institute of Justice underneath the U.S. Department of Justice — Phoenix is home to 221 unsolved cases alone…