Tribe disbands security task force, cites financial struggles

A Bureau of Indian Affairs office at Fort Thompson on the Crow Creek Reservation. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)

FORT THOMPSON — The Crow Creek Sioux Tribe has disbanded a security task force formed a year ago after the homicide of a young man in Fort Thompson.

Task force members were not sworn law enforcement officers, but responded to public safety incidents to de-escalate situations and provide aid.

The Crow Creek tribe doesn’t have its own police force. Many of South Dakota’s tribes do have their own police departments, but Crow Creek is among the tribes without one.

Crow Creek Tribal Chairman Peter Lengkeek said the hope was to transition the task force into a federally funded, tribally managed police force.

“That was one of the goals of this,” said Lengkeek, who added that the tribe remains interested in moving toward a local force.

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Officers with the federal government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Office of Justice Services provide law enforcement services for Crow Creek and the neighboring Lower Brule Reservation. But Crow Creek leaders have argued that BIA officers aren’t always able to respond to calls in a timely fashion. The tribe declared a state of emergency after the killing of a young man in 2023 and launched its task force.

Task force members were paid by the tribe and received training from a private security firm headquartered on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

The dissolution of the task force follows the election of three new members last month to the tribe’s seven-member council. Lengkeek, who retained his seat, confirmed this week that the security task force has been disbanded.

In May, Lengkeek told South Dakota Searchlight he’d hoped to be able to fund the force through the tribe’s marijuana dispensary business and its farming operations. But he also said that “we need to get some funding” to keep the force going.

This week, Lengkeek said the endeavor was not fiscally sustainable without federal support.

Lengkeek said he met with the state’s congressional delegation, and “made them well aware of the situation in the state of emergency and asked them to take the state of emergency where it needs to go for consideration and funding.”

“None of this has happened and no communication has come back to the tribe on the status of this,” Lengkeek said.

Congressional reaction

The Department of Interior’s BIA, Lengkeek said, has yet to address the issue. Questions sent by South Dakota Searchlight to the BIA on the matter early this week had not been returned as of Friday.

Members of the state’s congressional delegation have addressed public safety in tribal areas directly in several forums and formats over the past year.

Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson and Republican Senators John Thune and Mike Rounds asked Interior Secretary Deb Haaland for more public safety funding for tribes in a June 2023 letter.

Rounds sent another letter to Interior in December, and another to the Government Accountability Office in March, in that case asking a series of pointed questions about budgets and calls for service he said have been left unanswered by Interior. In April, he sent a letter requesting a meeting on a regional BIA law enforcement training center, and he signed on to a bipartisan letter from senators in May asking for a budget increase for tribal public safety .

Also in May, he talked about tribes setting up their own ad hoc security forces during a congressional hearing .

“In response to the police shortages, some residents of tribal communities have even resorted to establishing citizen patrols to look out for crime,” Rounds told Assistant Interior Secretary Bryan Newland during a May oversight hearing by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

Rep. Johnson had a virtual meeting with Crow Creek leadership last August. A spokesperson for his office pointed out that while the emergency declaration had no specific ask for funding, Johnson has also pushed for a regional law enforcement training center, and has called for a congressional field hearing on tribal land.

“Tribal communities are desperate for relief … The federal government [should honor] the commitment we made and work to meet the law enforcement needs of Indian Country,” Johnson said in a press release on the field hearing request.

Johnson’s office also referenced letters to the House Interior Appropriations Committee that directly referenced public safety emergency declarations from Crow Creek and the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

Backdrop of controversy

The launch of Crow Creek’s task force came about seven months before Gov. Kristi Noem gave a speech to lawmakers linking illegal border crossings to alleged drug cartel activity on reservations. Lengkeek and other tribal leaders pushed back on the speech and Noem’s later comments suggesting that some tribal leaders are “personally benefiting” from a drug cartel presence on their lands.

Yolanda Aguilar, Crow Creek tribal secretary, was a member of the task force and remains a member of the tribe’s suicide response team, a volunteer group that came before the security task force and will continue on in its wake.

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Aguilar said it’s unfortunate that the task force is over, but said she and other members won’t waste their training. If she sees a situation and she feels that she can help, she doesn’t plan to ignore it.

“I’m still going to help out,” she said. “It’s about being a good neighbor.”

Jennifer Wounded Knee, who lives near the location of the 2023 homicide that preceded the task force’s creation, said it’s a shame the group has disbanded. Wounded Knee didn’t see it as an adequate replacement for law enforcement, but it helped.

“When they would drive by, people would kind of disperse,” Wounded Knee said.

Fort Thompson resident Alphonso Drapeau said in the end, the force wasn’t able to move the needle on violence in the community.

“We’ve still got gang violence over here,” Drapeau said.

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