Last week the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent 25 additional police officers to the troubled Pine Ridge Reservation to supplement the police force there. The problem is, according to North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, the agency took six of those officers from the Standing Rock Reservation in his state.
“The Standing Rock Reservation had a crime rate that was more than five times the national average," Dorgan told the Bismarck Tribune. "The additional police officers moved there by the BIA have substantially reduced the crime rate. This is not the time to reduce the number of police officers."
The BIA should use the $23.7 million appropriated last year by Congress for the Safe Indian Communities Initiative to put more officers in American Indian communities with high crime rates, Dorgan said.
I believe majority of the Indian Reservations have a high crime rate. My reservation has barely enough officers to patrol, we are short of officers but I found out that my tribe had detailed two of our officers to this reservation and getting two officers from another tribe to help out. Why not keep the two officers here and sent the other two to Pine Ridge? This does not make sense to send two and bring in two temporarily. Tribes need to get on the BIA and hold them to their trust responsibility to the tribes.
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