By Steve Neavling
Jeffery R. Downey, who was serving as a section chief for the Critical Incident Response Group for the FBI, has been named special agent in charge of the El Paso Field Office in Texas.
Downey’s career as a special agent with the FBI began in 2003, when he was assigned to the Buffalo Field Office in New York. He was transferred to the Augusta Resident Agency of the Atlanta Field Office in 2006. In both field offices, Downey investigated violent crime, gang, criminal enterprise, and public corruption investigations.
In 2007, Downey worked an 18-month assignment as a supervisory special agent in the Criminal Investigative Division at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., working on the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Fusion Center Task Force.
In 2009, Downey moved to the Detroit Field Office, where he was promoted to supervisory special agent and put in charge of the Organized Crime Squad. A year later, he began supervising the office’s Public Corruption and Civil Rights Squad. In 2013, Downey became the senior supervisory resident agent in charge of the Oakland County Resident Agency.
In 2016, Downey was promoted to assistant special agent in charge of the Detroit office, where he oversaw the criminal, crisis management, and mission services branches, which included specialty teams such as SWAT, the special agent bomb technicians, the crisis negotiators, and the Evidence Response Team.
In 2020, Downey returned to FBI headquarters as section chief of CIRG’s Crisis Management and Intelligence Coordination Section.
Before joining the bureau, Downey served as a special agent with the Secret Service. He earned a bachelor’s degree from John Carroll University.
