Amelia Schafer
ICT
If convicted next week, NDN Collective Founder Nick Tilsen is facing a maximum sentence of 26 years following a 2022 cop watch, a situation in which community members monitor police interactions, in Rapid City, South Dakota.
The state of South Dakota alleges that on June 11, 2022, Tilsen, Oglala Lakota, allegedly accelerated or lurched his vehicle toward Rapid City police officer Nicholas Glass in an attempt to stop police activity. Tilsen said he was conducting a routine cop watch and pulled over to view the officer’s interaction with a homeless Indigenous man in downtown Rapid City.
Tilsen’s trial begins in Rapid City on Jan. 26 and is expected to continue through the week.
Glass did not press charges until June 30, 2023, over a year after the alleged offense occurred and on the same day that NDN Collective announced it was holding a July 4 protest against police violence in Rapid City. That same day, the city and then-mayor Steve Allender issued several public safety messages discouraging the protest and warning against potential violence. The protest was ultimately peaceful.
Tilsen told ICT he was allowed to leave the scene immediately after the incident.
“After hearing my side of the story, the commanding officer, the sergeant on duty, let me go,” he said. “I didn’t hear anything about this incident until a year later. … This is outrageous that they can bring these charges and take me all the way to trial.”
Tilsen is charged with felony aggravated assault on law enforcement and obstruction of law enforcement, a misdemeanor charge. A jury could also choose to find him guilty of felony simple rather than aggravated assault following a January 7 grand jury indictment.
“It shows me how weak their aggravated assault charge was to begin with,” Tilsen said. “You think the aggravated assault charge is a 25-year charge, maximum sentence of 25 years, and a simple assault charge is a maximum of two years. To me, it feels like they’re just trying to create a menu of options for a jury as opposed to when these charges… shouldn’t have been brought in the first place.”
The cop watch encounter
During the June evidentiary 2025 hearing, Glass testified that his back was turned to Tilsen’s pickup truck when he heard the vehicle begin to move toward him. Glass said the vehicle came to a stop around one to two feet away from him.
In South Dakota, an aggravated assault charge includes threatening or intending to cause harm with a deadly weapon, which a vehicle is considered.
Glass testified on June 12 2025 via Zoom that he was approached in late June 2023 and asked if he’d like to press charges against Tilsen. Glass is now a member of the U.S. Air Force and is stationed outside of South Dakota and did not appear in person.
Glass said he was approached by someone from the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office and asked about pressing charges, but he could not recall who had approached him.
Glass is Native American, but the presiding judge did not allow Glass to elaborate on his Native identity.
The Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
‘A pattern’
In fall 2023, members of the Rapid City Native community organized a sit-in demanding that Pennington County State’s Attorney Lara Roetzel resign. Community members cited her office’s track record of over-prosecuting Native people and lack of progress investigating cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People.
Tilsen previously faced charges in 2020 resulting from a protest at Mount Rushmore; those charges were later dismissed. While the current incident has nothing to do with the Mount Rushmore protest, Tilsen said it does demonstrate a troubling pattern.
“This has been a pattern,” Tilsen said of legal action taken against NDN. “NDN Collective is eight years old, and in six of those eight years, we’ve been under some form of litigation or, you know, political or legal attacks from the legal system.”
Tilsen said that the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office has repeatedly tried to paint him as a dangerous individual and a criminal, despite him having no criminal record.
“What they’re trying to do here is to build a false narrative around me and my work in a community,” he said. “You know, this incident wasn’t a huge protest or anything like that. It was a simple cop watch. It is simple community care.”
Tilsen said he is deeply concerned about getting a fair trial. As a public figure, he is widely recognized in Pennington County.
“I do think that the good people of this community, both Indian and non-Indian people, take jury selection seriously here,” he said. “My hope is that the jurors that get selected in this process can be, you know, non-biased and to be truthful and to see the truth for what it is.”
Tilsen said the years-long legal battle has put many aspects of his life into perspective. If convicted, facing a maximum of 26 years, he’d miss out on priceless time with his children, wife and future grandchildren.
“I’m facing a maximum sentence of 26 years. When that is hung over your head, it makes you really think about every single move that you’re going to make,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that you don’t make moves and that you don’t do organizing and you’re not in community, but it means that you are being more cognizant about the risks in which you are taking in community.”
So far, more than 21,000 individuals have signed a petition demanding the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office drop the charges against Tilsen. NDN Collective delivered the petition in person on Thursday, Jan. 22.
Charges against him could be dropped at any point, he said.
“I don’t want to spend my time fighting all of these charges all the time, fighting attacks from them all the time,” he said. “I don’t want the attention that comes along with it. I don’t want to spend resources on doing, on fighting these things. I would much rather love to do the work that I do in the community all the time. Organizing, helping people, helping people with ceremonies, doing foot patrols, helping the community.”
Tilsen will be represented by Bruce Ellison, a Rapid City-based attorney known for his work representing protestors of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.