Tribal police questions

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Trooperdan

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Of course this came from watching Longmier. It appears that tribal police have very little authority over their citizens. If the Indian "nations" are truly nations why wouldn't the TP have total authority?
For that matter, if the Indian res is a separate nation why don't they have passport requirements? The most depressing sight of my trips out west has been driving through the rez and seeing the poverty and depression there. Retaining Federal authority over the rez seems like another in a long series of affronts to native Americans
 
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Good questions for which I don't have answers. But I think there are a couple of members here who have been involved in rez law enforcement in other capacities--one, as I recall, as a FBI agent.

I imagine you'll get the info you want.
 
The Navajo T P seem to have a lot of authority in Tony Hillerman's books, excepting that serious crimes like murder and rape are investigated by the FBI.


I cannot speculate here why I think poverty is such an issue on reservations.


But your other questions should be answerable by member SIG P-220 .45, who was an FBI agent working closely with tribal police until recently.


Have you read Hillerman's detective novels? He was a journalist, not a cop. I think that limited his perspective, but the books are basically pretty good. The author is now deceased. But his books are easy to find.
 
Trooperdan said:
Of course this came from watching Longmier. It appears that tribal police have very little authority over their citizens. If the Indian "nations" are truly nations why wouldn't the TP have total authority?
For that matter, if the Indian res is a separate nation why don't they have passport requirements? The most depressing sight of my trips out west has been driving through the rez and seeing the poverty and depression there. Retaining Federal authority over the rez seems like another in a long series of affronts to native Americans
Click to expand...

Tribal police and tribal courts have authority over misdemeanors. Once you hit felony land, the alphabet federal agencies take over. That's the reason that almost all federal violent crime precedent is based upon convictions and appeals from the reservations . . .
 
It can be complicated.

The Supreme Court acknowledges the paramount authority of the United States with regard to Indian tribes but recognizes the existence of Indian tribes as quasi sovereign entities possessing all the inherent rights of sovereignty excepting where restrictions have been placed thereon by the United States itself.

This has been the case more or less since 1885 when, a couple of Native Americans were convicted in a territorial court for a crime committed on the reservation and the conviction was vacated due to the lack of jurisdiction of federal law on the reservation. The result was the Major Crimes Act of 1885, which applied federal jurisdiction to reservations for murder, manslaughter, rape, assault with intent to kill, arson, burglary and larceny, and in 1932 the list was expanded to add incest and robbery.

There's a long history of the evolution of BIA police but the short story is that they were badly underfunded up until the early 1970s. The practical result of that has been that BIA police are charged with enforcing minor offenses on the reservation, but the FBI is still able to assert it's jurisdiction to investigate major crimes on a reservation.

The interplay between BIA and state and county police is even more complicated since the US courts regard tribes as "quasi sovereign entities" and prevents many state and federal laws from being applied to individual tribal members living on the reservation.

Reservation boundaries and jurisdictional issues are also not as clear cut as you'd think, especially watching Longmire, given how the reservations, particularly those in the northern plains states, were opened for settlement under the Dawes Act. In essence, the Indians living on the reservations were allotted 160 acres for adults and 40 acres per child, and the rest of the land was opened for white settlement, with a resulting checkerboard of white and indian owned land inside the geographic boundaries of a reservation.

At times, that has become very problematic. In the 1950s for example, with alack of jurisdiction over native americans and badly underfunded BIA police, maintaining order on a reservation was a challenge. Even after the BIA police were properly funded it has from time to time been a problem. For example, in SD in the early 1990s the state and the tribes got in a tiff and the tribal governments would not allow the SD Highway Patrol or county Sheriff's offices to enforce laws on the reservation at all and made it problematic when there were issues crimes or complaints by whites living on the reservation. A plus of sorts was that no one enforced the speed limits on highways on the rez, so everybody went everywhere at about 90 mph and it shortened the distance between far flung communities.

For the most part though, my experience was that state, county and BIA police do a good job of cooperating and coordinating with a minimum of friction - certainly not to the level you see on Longmire, and the FBI stepped in when necessary for major crimes that were then prosecuted in Federal court. In most cases if someone was apprehended and the officer making the stop did not have jurisdiction, an officer with jurisdiction would promptly show up and take charge, so people weren't just getting off due to jurisdictional technicalities.
 
Slightly off topic... I planned a prairie dog hunt on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation last June. In preparation, I was concerned about concealed carry on the reservation so I called the Rosebud Indian Police and was informed by the captain that the reservation recognizes concealed carry permits based on South Dakota law; so they recognize any permit SD recognizes. He explained that they use the local county sheriff to process concealed permits on the reservation, therefore the reservation recognizes SD law. Seemed to me the reservation police and state police agencies worked together fairly well.
 
427mach1, I hope you had better hunting on the Rosebud than we did. Was there hunting in 2014 out of Wood, SD (in the Rez) and we used an Indian guide and we had access to plenty of area, but the dogs have had so much shooting pressure and were so gun-shy we seldom got any shots less than 400-500 yards. We hunted 2 1/2 days and I think I took 26 or 27 shots.
 
Inusuit said:
Novels and TV shows are generally poor sources of accurate information. Especially Longmier. Craig Johnson and the screenwriters are woefully ignorant on many topics.
Click to expand...

I just realized the OP was attempting to relate a television series to real life. I apologize for posting a response . . .
 
Here in Indian Territory, (most of Oklahoma), where there are no reservations like out west, the whole thing can be pretty convoluted.

Tribal police have juridiction over tribal lands and the people on them. For the most part here in Oklahoma, that means casinos. That's where all the problems are and where the vast majority calls for LE come from. Yes, there are other Tribal lands and facilities, but generally, crime happens at casinos.

If a person commits a crime on Tribal land, the incident will be investigated by Tribal law enforcement. Felony, misdemeanor alike, no difference.

If it is a major crime against persons, homicide or such, Tribal cops do call on the Feds, who here in rural OK, are generally not equipped to work a murder case. So, they in turn call on State LE who deal with this kind of case more often. A major case winds up being a joint Tribal/Federal/State effort.

If the offender is a CDIB holder, (Certificate Degree of Indian Blood), he is subject to prosecution by Tribal courts and not State courts, but may be subject to prosecution by the Federal courts, depending on the offense and the descretion of the U.S. Attorney. The U.S. Attorney may decline to prosecute in favor a State prosecution, and usually does.

If the offender on Tribal land is not a CDIB holder he is prosecuted in state court, or Federal court, depending on the nature of the offense and again, descretion of the U.S. Attorney, for the offense on Tribal land. This never made any sense to me, but that is the way it is.

That descretion of the U.S. Attorney means that they decline most cases and dump them on the State judical system.

The whole Tribal/Federal/State conundrum means as a practical matter, that in Oklahoma, the already overworked criminal justice system gets overrun by offenses created by the casinos which are a magnet for crime and criminals, but no funding, or support by Tribal governments.

So the rest of us get to pay the freight on the fabulous wealth being gleaned by Tribes from gambling, with a heavy toll to the infrastucture,(courts and jails), that cant begin to keep up.

Yea, I'm on a bit of a rant, but when I read stuff like, "another in a long series of affronts to native Americans", I kinda want to puke.

The reason our Federal cops in the local area aren't equipped to work a murder or major crime against persons? Because they spend all their time investigating corruption cases in Tribal government.
fpalm.gif
 
I can tell you how it works on the big Western reservations I worked - Navajo, Blackfeet, Apache, Shoshone/Bannock and Shoshone/ Paiute. As noted above, Oklahoma is largely checkerboard and is a nightmare for jurisdiction. Other reservations - like the Flathead in Montana - have chosen to allow the state to have jurisdiction.

I was on my rezzes because (as also noted above) the tribal courts can only prosecute crimes for which the penalty is up to one year. Everything else goes to federal court. In the real world that meant murder, manslaughter, serious assaults (maimings, per the code), rape, child sexual assault, arson, and some thefts of tribal property. Half of my cases were child sexual assaults, followed by about equal portions of the rest.

Even though the tribal courts don't handle felonies, the tribal police do. A tribal Criminal Investigator (CI) can work a complete case and present it to the United States Attorney's Office for prosecution, and often do. On some rezzes, all sexual assaults of victims over 12 are handled entirely by the tribal CIs, just due to the huge volume of cases involving younger victims.

I only made it through the first episode of Longmire. I know folks here like it so I won't rag on it. But tribal police have plenty of authority over tribal members within the boundaries of the reservation. They have little authority over non-members, but I would advise against arguing points of jurisdiction with a tribal cop on the side of the road. They are good cops doing a tough job for crappy pay and do not generally tolerate much nonsense.

As to the "sovereign nation" stuff, I know the big reservations are wholly dependent on federal funds. I have worked on reservations where the BIA came in and replaced the entire tribal PD because of "irregularities". I don't think passports or border checkpoints would last long.
 
H Richard said:
427mach1, I hope you had better hunting on the Rosebud than we did. Was there hunting in 2014 out of Wood, SD (in the Rez) and we used an Indian guide and we had access to plenty of area, but the dogs have had so much shooting pressure and were so gun-shy we seldom got any shots less than 400-500 yards. We hunted 2 1/2 days and I think I took 26 or 27 shots.
Click to expand...
I grew up in western SD and spent a good deal of my adult life in western SD. I did an awful lot of priory dog shooting on our ranch as well as in various areas of the western part of the state where I was assigned.

It's not nearly what it used to be in part because hunting in general has become much more commercialized in SD. I noted the change in the early to mid 1990s when my assigned area was primarily Tripp, Todd and Mellette counties.

The last time I bothered pheasant hunting we showed up to a place we'd hundred for years, only to be told that we couldn't hunt as Kevin Costner showed up and wanted it all to himself. (Mr. Costner is a dick. Not all celebrities are that bad. I hunted with Martina Navratalova one weekend and she was a regular person - with very large and very strong hands - she'd have made a great pistol shooter as well as a tennis player.)

But I digress... In terms of prairie dogs, the widespread use of poison has reduced prairie dog populations, and over the last few decades it's grown into a major destination activity.

Those two factors have conspired to reduce the overall prairie dog populations, while at the same time concentrating a much greater number of hunters into much smaller areas.

The Rosebud and Pine Ridge areas in Todd and Shannon counties get a lot of hunting traffic, as do areas of Tripp and Mellette counties.

However, there are still some areas, and in particular north of I-90 that see less hunting pressure and that are less commercialized.

Pennington county offers the most access to public lands, with some very large prairie dog towns in the national grasslands.

Meade county has a large number of prairie dog town on private land, and there's good opportunities on private land in Butte and Perkins counties as well. You'll just need to develop some land owner relationships.

Show up at the local cafe in the morning, talk with the waitress, have some coffee, order what ever pie is on special, be polite, don't act like a dick or an idiot who's going to leave the gates open or worse, shoot someone's cattle, and you'll probably be able to get connected with a landowner who'll let you shoot on a town that doesn't get hunted that much.

There is also a good number of prairie dog towns on private land around Mobridge, and in Dewy and Ziebach counties in general, which is the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe reservation. As noted in my post above, it's a mix of private, tribal and grazing association land, much more so than the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations, so you'll again have to rely on an outfitter to get connected. I haven't been back to the Eagle Butte area for about 10 years now, but the climate was a bit more hostile than it was when I was younger so I don't recommend the cafe approach. But if you go farther west to Dupree, Lemon or Bison and that approach will work fine.
 
We used to make two trips a year to shoot P-dogs on the Rosebud
in south central SD. We stayed in Valentine Nebraska and drove up
to the res. every day after breakfast. This was early-mid 90's when
we first started going out there. First day we drove in to Mission to talk
to the F&W agent and he gave us a tribal land map and circled where
we could find some good shooting and not bother anyone.
It was pure Heaven. We set up on some smaller dog towns that had
red hot shooting from 25-200 yards and every distance in between.
The kind of shooting where you better set your .22-250 down and
let it cool awhile. Have an adult cold beverage, clean rifle, then start up
shooting again.
It all changed about 1998 or so i believe. The Tribe decided that now to
varmint hunt you had to employ a "tribal guide" to be with your party
at all times. Yea...right.....That was all for us on the Rosebud.

This meant mostly calling a very small handful of guides, who just
happened to be, from well connected or wealthy "known" families.
Didn't take long for word to spread about guides who would take
their hunting parties to a big dog town, say there it is, and then leave for the rest of the day. After being full paid of course.
Or guides who wouldn't even bother to show up at appointed meeting
places or times on the day of the hunt...hungover.

It was just a sham. With the "guide" fiasco, poisoning, and even the Plague wiping out some dog towns, the writing was on the wall, we better find somewhere else to hunt. We simply knocked on doors of private landowners and also went to a couple local Farm/Tractor dealerships to ask for assistance in locating any ranchers that might want some dogs shot. We found PLENTY of private land to shoot on just be asking.

We never once in 6 years had any interaction with a member of
the Tribal Police.


Chuck

Chuck
 
Two basic set-ups:

There is the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) police.

Some tribes have BIA police. I'm not sure of the process, but some tribes can elect not to have BIA police and to have their own police, like the Colville Confederated Tribes, Spokanes and Umatillas.

What is interesting about the aforementioned tribes is that their hunting, fishing and general forest product rights apply to federal land, outside of the reservation.
 
Don't know about law enforcement, but.....
A few weeks ago I drove up to Albuquerque for the gun show. Made a pit stop on the Jornada. The car next to mine had license plates that read "Tigua Indian Nation". I didn't know that Indian Nations could issue license plates.
 
Cyrano said:
Don't know about law enforcement, but.....
A few weeks ago I drove up to Albuquerque for the gun show. Made a pit stop on the Jornada. The car next to mine had license plates that read "Tigua Indian Nation". I didn't know that Indian Nations could issue license plates.
Click to expand...

Despite all the tribes here (23!), none in NM do. OK, OTOH, is another story . . . this might be of interest:

Vehicle registration plates of Native American tribes in the United States - Wikipedia
 
okiegtrider said:
This thread does a good job of illustrating why juries so often return dumb verdicts. Their base of experience is rooted in what they see on television. When what they see in a court room doesn't add up to fifty minutes of fantasy, they just don't know what else to do but call it reasonable doubt.
Click to expand...

Actually there's been some very interesting research on jury behavior. Some of the best studies have involved selecting juries for trials on cases where a judge had already thrown the case out due to a total lack of evidence needed to bind the accused over for trial. With this as a starting point they would select a jury and the conduct the trial with a judge and attorneys but with actors playing the role of witnesses and accused - with the jury having no idea it isn't a real trial.

These studies have found in the past that in about 10% of all cases tried, the jury still comes back with a guilty verdict, despite lack of sufficient evidence to support a conviction. When interviewing the jurors on why they voted to convict, the general trend was that jurors believed that the police would not have arrested the accused if he wasn't guilty, and in turn that the prosecutor would not have prosecuted the case if the accused wasn't guilty.

This was 1980's research and strongly supported the idea that the public trusted law enforcement, and reflected the fact that officers at that point also had a habit of using officer discretion appropriately.

The net result was however that juries tended to over convict, not under convict, something borne out over time as DNA evidence has cleared many people convicted under badly flawed eye witness testimony and only partial police investigations that stop looking at anything that does not support their initial suspicions in the case.

I agree that the public perception of law enforcement is probably a lot different today - but the question of why that is the case is something we need to take hard look at. I suspect the root cause relates back to unprofessional police conduct by a small percentage of officer that tars the vast majority of officer with the same brush.
 
Cyrano said:
Don't know about law enforcement, but.....
A few weeks ago I drove up to Albuquerque for the gun show. Made a pit stop on the Jornada. The car next to mine had license plates that read "Tigua Indian Nation". I didn't know that Indian Nations could issue license plates.
Click to expand...

Interesting that you saw that plate in Albuquerque.
You do know where those Tigua folks are from?
 
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