Members of South Dakota's Oglala Sioux tribe are suing the government over surging crime on Native reservations, including a sudden barrage of gunfire that killed a 6-year-old boy.
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The tribe sued the Bureau of Indian Affairs and some high-level officials in July, alleging the U.S. is not complying with its treaty obligations nor its trust responsibility by failing to provide adequate law enforcement to address the"public safety crisis" on the reservation. The federal government countered in court documents that the tribe can't prove treaties force the U.S. to provide the tribe with its"preferred level of staffing or funding for law enforcement.
The shooting death of 6-year-old Logan Warrior Goings is one of many examples of a crime surge fueling South Dakota's Oglala Sioux tribe's lawsuit against the U.S. government. "We’ve had a radical increase in guns, gun violence," she said."We’ve had a radical increase in hard narcotics. It is heroin. It’s fentanyl. It’s meth. It is things that are life threatening."
The federal government, tribes and counties have tried to bolster public safety on reservations — where, in some locations, Native women are killed at a rate more than 10 times the national average — with approaches that include cross-commissioning agreements, expanding sentencing authority for tribes and programs that allow tribal prosecutors to try cases in federal court.
The tribe would need over 140 more police officers on the reservation to fight the rampant crime, according to court documents.
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