Stewart Huntington
ICT
RAPID CITY, South Dakota — The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation sprawls over 3.1 million acres but today has only about 30 police officers serving some 40,000 residents.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe says that level of policing is too low and has sued the federal government claiming it has abrogated its treaty obligations.
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Thirty years ago, the tribe had 123 police officers patrolling the western South Dakota reservation, which is larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, according to the lawsuit.
Today, the number of officers has dwindled even as crime has risen.
OST police Chief Algin Young, Oglala Lakota, testified in February during a two-day hearing in federal court in Rapid City that his officers are exhausted fighting a crime wave fueled by guns, methamphetamine and fentanyl.
“They’re burning out,” he said.
The tribe says the Bureau of Indian Affairs is not living up to treaty obligations from 1825, 1851 and 1868, and asks the court to order the BIA to provide funding for 112 Pine Ridge officers. OST officials say the suit is important beyond the borders of the reservation.
“The United States government needs to listen to Native Americans throughout the nation,” said tribal President Frank Star Comes Out, Oglala Lakota. “For decades and decades and decades, we’ve been ignored and put on the back burner, and today we are taking that stand, not only as a tribe but as a nation and speaking for Indian Country, that we need to be heard.”
Read more:
—South Dakota tribe sues US over crime
In its filing and in court, the tribe has cited BIA studies on law enforcement staffing that concluded 2.8 to 3.3 officers per 1,000 inhabitants in rural areas were required to meet federal law enforcement obligations. Using the lower figure of 2.8 officers per 1,000 persons, the tribe asserted in its complaint that the Pine Ridge population would dictate a minimum of 112 officers.
With only 30 officers on staff today, the tribal community is getting nowhere near the level of service the BIA’s own documents say it needs, Young said.
Between July 4 and Sept. 7 last year, for example, the tribal police responded to calls involving five homicides, four shootings, four stabbings, three sexual assaults and five violent assaults, Young said in a deposition filed with the court.
Young, who served as the third-highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the BIA before becoming the top cop on Pine Ridge, said the workload is putting a strain on his officers.
The complaint was heard over two days in February in Chief U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange’s court in Rapid City. He offered no timeline on when he would issue a ruling.
A BIA and a spokesperson told ICT the bureau’s policy is to not comment on ongoing litigation.
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