Oglala Sioux Tribe sues federal government over police staffing on Pine Ridge Reservation
The Oglala Sioux Tribe is suing the federal government for failing to provide adequate law enforcement on the Pine Ridge Reservation, according to federal court documents filed Tuesday.
In the complaint filed against the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Deb Haaland, the secretary of the U.S. Interior Department, and various high level officials in the Interior Department, OST wrote that Pine Ridge only has 41 tribal law enforcement — 33 police officers and eight criminal investigators — to police 3.1 million acres of land. The lack of law enforcement has created a "public safety crisis" on the reservation, documents said.
Those officers were tasked with handling more than 133,700 emergency calls in 2021 with between six to eight officers on shift at any given time, according to the court documents.
Comparatively, Rapid City has 176 police officers in their police department and responded to nearly 115,000 emergency calls, according to the lawsuit.
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OST alleges in the lawsuit that in order to comply with BIA standards of having 2.8 police officers per 1,000 people, the Pine Ridge Reservation would require at least 140 tribal officers.
Because of the lack of law enforcement, officers are working on average 80 hours of overtime on top of their 160 scheduled regular hours, according to court documents. Officers respond to calls alone and do not have adequate back up for serious emergency calls.
People living on the reservation do not feel safe going out at night and businesses have been tasked with funding protection for their property and employees, according to the lawsuit.
Between January and June 2022, 285 missing persons reports were filed on Pine Ridge, with two of the disappearances resulting in "questionable deaths," according to court documents.
The U.S. Interior Department has called the number of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) a national crisis.
Earlier in the year, the OST was partially denied funding for various law enforcement programs that included drug enforcement, MMIP investigators and internal affairs officers, according to the lawsuit.
Members of the OST also traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with federal officials about the issues law enforcement faced but were met with indifference, according to the lawsuit.
The South Dakota state legislature also wrote a resolution during the 2022 session requesting the federal government "fulfill treaty obligations by fully funding" the OST tribal police department.
The OST is requesting an injunction for the federal government to equip a minimum of 140 law enforcement officers on the reservation and a declaratory judgement stating the federal government violated its responsibilities to provide law enforcement on the reservation, according to the lawsuit.
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Federal officials named in the lawsuit have 60 days to respond.
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This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Oglala Sioux Tribe sues federal government over tribal police staffing
