Special Agent Ashley T. Johnson is the first woman to be designated as special agent in charge of the St. Louis FBI Field Office. Originally from Alabama, the 47-year-old started as a probation officer in drug court.
After earning a master’s degree in social work, she applied to be a victim’s advocate for the FBI. The woman who oversaw the New Orleans office, however, urged her to become an agent.
In 2007, she had just begun working at the FBI field office in New Orleans investigating civil rights and white-collar crimes when a man approached her in her office and told her about the police shooting death of a man named Henry Glover following Hurricane Katrina.
RELATED STORIES
Even though Johnson was skeptical, she promised to investigate as she sought answers and followed up. Five New Orleans police officers were eventually charged in the case while federal prosecutors argued that a rookie cop had shot and killed Glover. His charred remains were later found in a friend’s Chevrolet Malibu parked by the Mississippi River, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
After several trials and years of appeals, four of the five policemen were cleared of all charges but the investigation was incorporated into a larger investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into rampant improper behavior inside the department.
The case led her to overseas outposts, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and finally St. Louis, where she has now made history.
The FBI reports that before her groundbreaking position, Johnson held a variety of positions throughout her career. She was at the Human Resources Division at FBI Headquarters, with her most recent position being section chief of the International Operations Division at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 2020.
She also held the position of assistant special agent in charge of the Atlanta Division’s Criminal Branch, where she established the Atlanta Development and Leadership Council, which focused on diverse mentorship, leadership development, and skills assessment and training initiatives.
In 2017, Johnson was asked to be behind the creation and maintenance of an airport squad at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, where she was responsible for all criminal, domestic and international terrorism, cyber, and counterintelligence investigations.
Six years before this, Johnson was in Washington, D.C., where she was a supervisor in the cyber division before joining the Atlanta Division, where she supervised the civil rights and law enforcement corruption squad. She later supervised the domestic terrorism squad.
In addition to her master’s degree in social work, Johnson has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a master’s degree in sociology. Even before joining the FBI, Johnson was employed as a psychiatric social worker and probation officer.
