Hope the tribe prevails. It is one desolate and dangerous area.

PINE RIDGE, S.D.—On a recent night, Officer Jason Lone Hill got a call from dispatch as he steered his patrol car through neighborhoods on the sprawling Pine Ridge Indian Reservation marked by boarded-up houses, junked cars and roaming dogs.

A prisoner had ditched a correctional officer at the emergency room of the local hospital, sending Officer Lone Hill on a race to search parking lots and nearby streets. Then, two more calls came in rapid succession: someone was having a stroke about 20 miles away and an intoxicated man was threatening a pregnant woman.

Public safety on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
There are typically about five or six officers on duty at any given time to patrol the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, in an area roughly the size of Connecticut. The Oglala Sioux tribe has sued the federal government to get more law enforcement resources for the area, which has high crime rates.



20 km

Note: Calls for service for 2022 fiscal year.

Sources: Pine Ridge Department of Public Safety
Emma Brown/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
With five or six officers typically patrolling during each 12-hour shift on a reservation about the size of Connecticut, police are often forced to make a choice like the one faced by Officer Lone Hill, said Algin Young, chief of the Oglala Sioux tribal police.

“There are times people have to wait for an officer to respond for two hours. There are times when the officer may not show up at all,” he said.

The tribe, which fought for decades against the westward push of the U.S., is now fighting the government to get the policing help it says was promised in treaties signed to end the hostilities. In a federal lawsuit, the tribe is demanding the Bureau of Indian Affairs more than triple the number of officers on the South Dakota reservation, arguing that the tribe was promised adequate law enforcement to protect its members against “bad men.”

With more than 50% of residents living below the poverty line, the reservation is one of the poorest places in the U.S., making it near impossible for the tribe to pay for its own law-enforcement, tribal leaders say. The situation isn’t unusual in Native American country, whether the BIA patrols reservations directly or a tribe contracts with the BIA to hire its own officers, as is the case on Pine Ridge.

“You’ve got a third-world country right here in the United States,” said Frank Star Comes Out, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, his boots muddy on a recent day after participating in a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the occupation by American Indian Movement activists of Wounded Knee, site of an 1890 massacre of more than 200 Native Americans by federal troops. “We are way, way underfunded. And it’s slowly choking us out.”

When Chief Young of the tribal police was a rookie cop in 2001, the department had more than 110 officers, funded by the BIA and Justice Department grants, he said. When the grant money dried up, the BIA never picked up the slack as it had promised at the time, according to the lawsuit. The tribe today receives around $4 million annually from the BIA to fund dispatch and about 33 patrol officers handling more than 61,000 dispatch calls a year, Chief Young said.

Gun calls have surged to nearly three a day from fewer than three a year in the early 2000s, Chief Young said. The reservation had 16 murders in 2022, a number not seen since the 1970s, he said. “Meth is very common. It’s easier to tell you who’s not on it, than who’s on it, it’s that prevalent here,” he said.

Fed up with slow police response times, Darlis Morrison-Crow, a 55-year-old home health aide, decided a few years ago to start a volunteer neighborhood patrol. Almost every night, she and a few friends pile into her mud-spattered SUV with 260,000 miles on the odometer and keep watch over a large area surrounding the town of Oglala.

The Angry Grandmas of Oglala, as they are known, say they have in recent months rescued a homeless man who was beaten and abandoned on the side of the road; comforted a young man on methamphetamine who barreled into a parked car on his four-wheeler; and brought to safety a young woman fleeing her abusive boyfriend.

“We hardly have any police here, so we tried to come together and calm some of the craziness,” Ms. Morrison-Crow said.

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Does the federal government have an obligation to the Native American people of Pine Ridge? Join the conversation below.

As debates rage in other parts of the country about whether to beef up or defund the police, there is little disagreement that law enforcement is underfunded here. A lawyer for the government acknowledged during a recent hearing in the tribe’s lawsuit that the need for law-enforcement funding on tribal lands is “at least double and in some particular situations it may be significantly more than double” what Congress ultimately provides.

A spokesman for the BIA didn’t respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment.

The government argued in its motion to dismiss the case that there is nothing in the treaties that spells out how many officers the U.S. must provide to the tribe. The tribe is asking for 112 officers, arguing the number is based on the BIA’s own assessment of what is needed in a community the size of Pine Ridge, where more than 40,000 live and work, according to the lawsuit.

A federal judge is currently weighing the motion to dismiss from the government and a request for a preliminary injunction by the tribe.


Algin Young of the Oglala Sioux tribal police says the tribe gets around $4 million annually from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to fund and dispatch about 33 patrol officers.

Oglala Sioux Tribe patrol vehicles parked outside of the Justice Center on the reservation.
The lawsuit is based in part on three treaties signed between 1825 and 1868, a time when settlers backed by the U.S. military were pushing further west and various tribes were putting up fierce resistance. So the government negotiated for law-enforcement powers. The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, for instance, said if “bad men among the whites” commit a wrong against a Native American the government will “proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished.”

Brendan Johnson, a former U.S. Attorney for South Dakota, who won a 2020 ruling that the government has a treaty obligation to provide competent, physician-led healthcare for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said the treaties were not gifts to the tribes. “This was a necessity. It was because of substantial losses that were being inflicted on the U.S. government by the Native American tribes,” he said.

Ms. Morrison-Crow started her group, formally known as Oglala District Community Policing, before the pandemic. She and a few other volunteers, including her husband, Rex Crow, go out most nights to keep watch over the Belt Village Trailer Park two miles from their home and miles of roads in the district. They serve as the eyes and ears of the police, but also make whatever difference they can before police or medical workers arrive.


Darlis Morrison-Crow and a few friends regularly keep watch over a large area surrounding the town of Oglala as part of a volunteer neighborhood patrol.
One of the most disturbing incidents came on a snowy January evening after midnight, she said, when she saw what she thought was a dog making its way through a ditch that runs along the trailer park. When the figure suddenly stood up, she realized it was a little boy.



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He said he was looking for his mother after being turned out in the cold by an aunt, Ms. Morrison-Crow said.

She and a fellow grandma comforted the 5-year-old for more than an hour until an overworked police officer arrived from the next town over, she said.

“People ask us why we do this and I just say I’m tired of seeing the broken,” Ms. Morrison-Crow said.

Write to Joe Barrett at Joseph.Barrett@wsj.com

LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/s...entury-treaties-3c3b

Good for them. I hope they win. This version of “reparations” I would support.

It’s a sad place to drive through, and I never did it at night.
Perhaps we can split $400B between all the tribes.

I still remember the public school teaching the Indians killed all the buffalo and that's why there aren't many left. Only recently did I learn the US military killed off the buffalo so they could starve the Indians. History frequently isn't what we've been taught.

^^^^Sad but true^^^

A sad place indeed. Sad, poor and dangerous. The U. S. government, my favorite government in the whole world has an abysmal, appalling history on honoring treaties with the tribes. The article notes the 50% poverty rate and I believe Oglala County, which is entirely on reservation land, is the poorest county in the country.

I think that we as a country could pungle up the government dough to get another 100 tribal cops on the job, very rough cost, maybe $100 grand a year a pop, $10 million or so, about the cost of an Abrams tank which we have so many of we're giving them away. Have a garage sale.
We're giving them away so we must not need them.

I'm not serious there, but I'm not making light of the situation either. Our government disarmed them and made them dependants; obligations go with that.

I worked on two different Indian Reservations for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Both were dismal, short staffed, and the officers were over worked.

Our average work week was over 60hours and that did not include court, in service or drive time.

The turnover rate is almost 80% due to individuals coming to the BIA to get their foot in the door then jump to the FBI, DEA etc..
Plus, most of the individuals could care less about the reservations or its people. To most it is just a stepping stone.

The biggest problem is that the BIA are idiots and human resources is useless. I just got an email from an individual and he has been waiting 180 days for a final judication of whether he has been hired. I know both times it took me over a year for the whole process.

The reservations that have their own depts are even worse off. They don't have the applicants, pay, finances, equipment, etc..


The reservations that benefit the most are ones that go to a state academy and have very little contact with the BIA.

To me, the BIA is the most useless and corrupt agency that the US Govt has.
It was corrupt and bloated when it was created in 1824 and it has not gotten any better.

https://www.theguardian.com/us...outh-dakota-governor

I’m not saying anything against the request for more officers and support. A few years ago they were happy to go against the Gov & Federal Gov’t, President Trump. I was out there, made it a point to avoid their roadblocks.

I know someone close to a tribe in the Midwest, they were awash with Covid money, ended up giving checks to every member.

Most every tribe I know has hitched their wagon solidly to the left politically. I’m a little more indifferent to the cause, cronyism and corruption is often part of tribal monetary affairs.

Neither “whitey” nor the Indians killed off the buffalo - at least, not directly.

Small pox wiped out ~90% of the Indians, who were the apex predator. This resulted in over population and disease, which lead to the mass die off.

The killing off at the end, was deliberate to protect cattle herds/they survived because of the actions of Charles Goodnight and other cattle barons in preserving them.

I used to travel that area. White Clay, Ne. has to be up there with Pine Ridge. I made the mistake of traveling there on the Fri. gov checks were cut.

Never have seen anything like what I saw. Hard to believe I was in America.

quote:

Originally posted by Poacher:
It’s a sad place to drive through, and I never did it at night.
Perhaps we can split $400B between all the tribes.

The people that need it the most would never see it. It will swindled away by big gov wasteful and worthless projects and whatever may be left over will go to line the tribal councils pockets and hand outs to their buddies.

Amen 357 fuzz.

Like that Ray Charles son, “Them that’s gots is them that gets.”

[FLASH_VIDEO] [/FLASH_VIDEO]

I spent a summer in High School living on Pine Ridge it certainly was an eye opening experience.
It was powerful in many ways for me and quite the timing in my life an coming of age.

Being young at the time and not having a a true grasp on reality the only thing that made me uncomfortable were the packs of dogs that roamed wildly.

Can’t recall seeing any police honestly.

I do hope to go back some day.

Until you see it, the Reservation, little to no hope for the old, middle or young kids. Shameful.

More cops are not going to fix the problems on the Rez. There needs to be a fundamental shift in the culture and I have no idea how to bring that about.

Is there something in the American Indians DNA that locks them into Mr. Booze?

quote:

Originally posted by 2000Z-71:
More cops are not going to fix the problems on the Rez. There needs to be a fundamental shift in the culture and I have no idea how to bring that about.

Here is the most honest answer you're gonna see about the situation. Very similar to what is happening in inner cities. Sitting on a reservation complaining about one's lot in life isn't gonna get anything done. Sure, choices may be limited if you're wanting to have Uncle Sugar take care of you, but there is nothing on the books that says you must stay on a Reservation, can't attend a college, or generally pick yourself up by the bootstraps and get shit done.

I'm honestly sick and tired of all the whiners that say "we must take care of them, because whitey is bad, and we have to feel guilty"...

Not one scintilla. I didn't do anything to them, much like they haven't done anything to me. As far as I am concerned, they've got as much opportunity (truly more due to their race) to make something of themselves, but the majority don't.

I think getting them more law enforcement is a great idea. There is definitely a need for it.

Until you have been to a reservation, let alone one as poor and diseased as Pine Ridge, you won’t understand. The poverty, the generations of alcoholism, it’s so sad. 25% of the kids born on the PRR (Pine Ridge Reservation) are born with FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). Seeing kids that are born with FAS is terrible. For those that don’t know, FAS ranges from having a kid that’s a little “slow”, to one that is wheelchair bound, with more health problems than anyone should endure. It’s what we used to call “severely retarded with severe physical disabilities”. It’s just unimaginable. Most of the kids born on the PRR with FAS are closer to the latter, where they are born to a life of constant care.

The life expectancy of a woman on the PRR is 44 years old. Men are 42. If you look at the PRR as an autonomous country, it has the lowest life expectancy of any country on the planet. Even lower than Somalia. Think about this for a minute. If the average is 44/42, how many are dying before that age? Seeing the drinking is something that you feel is a prank. Like waiting for the hidden camera and everyone to start laughing. But it’s not a joke, there’s no prank. Literally watching people drink 24 hours a day, and I mean drinking. Like drunker than I ever care to be, then just don’t stop, keep that train going. When I say it is unimaginable, it really is.

This is all due to alcohol. Alcohol on the PRR is like the meth and opioid problems in much of the US, but worse. Worse than you can imagine.

I have a pretty vast knowledge of the PRR and it’s just sad.

So yes, let’s start by getting some law enforcement. Then continue with education, specifically alcohol education.

None of this can be true. Its not what I was taught in school.

quote:

Originally posted by Beancooker:

So yes, let’s start by getting some law enforcement. Then continue with education, specifically alcohol education.

I give money to the Red Cloud Indian School.
https://www.redcloudschool.org...54&preselect=monthly

Having lived on the reservation granted that was 20+ years ago but it was about the only opportunity giving place on the reservation and they get no government or tribal money and honestly I see that as a plus.