CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Between phone calls, emails, and direct messages, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center receives around 5,000 tips per day.
All of those are processed at the FBI’s Clarksburg, West Virginia campus.
The federal agency gave 11 Investigates an inside look at how they operate to get resources to people in need quickly.
“We’ve seen unprecedented volume as it relates to incoming complaints,” said Chad Yarbrough, Chief of the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center (NTOC).
Nationwide protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis and a contentious election cycle have led to a spike in threat tips.
Earlier this month, a tip that was called in to an FBI Field Office in Norfolk, Virginia led to the arrest of two armed men outside of the Philadelphia Convention Center where mail-in votes were being counted.
Yabrough also points to a recent tip about a potential suicide on social media.
Armed with only a username, NTOC’s Social Media Exploitation Team was able to identify the person and locate them in the Buffalo area in less than an hour.
Yarbrough said that officers reached the person in-time to revive them.
“Ultimately, it’s us combing through those [messages] one at a time and identifying if [they] could be a potential threat to life,” Yarbrough said.
It’s that type of tip that NTOC acts on daily.
With the spike in activity nationwide, Yarbrough expects the activity level may not change any time soon.
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