Policing on American Indian Reservations

1 Department of JusticeOffice of Justice ProgramsNational Institute of JusticeNational Institute of JusticeR E S E A R C H R E P O R TPolicing on American IndianReservationsStewart WakelingMiriam JorgensenSusan MichaelsonManley Begay COMMUNITY ORIENTED Policing DEPARTMENT OF Department of JusticeOffice of Justice Programs810 Seventh Street , DC 20531 John AshcroftAttorney GeneralOffice of Justice ProgramsNational Institute of JusticeWorld Wide Web SiteWorld Wide Web Site on American Indian ReservationsA Report to the National Institute of JusticeStewart WakelingMiriam JorgensenSusan MichaelsonManley BegayFrancis X.

2 Hartmann, Co-Principal InvestigatorJoseph P. Kalt, Co-Principal InvestigatorProgram in Criminal Justice Policy and ManagementandHarvard Project on American Indian Economic DevelopmentMalcolm Wiener Center for Social PolicyJohn F. Kennedy School of GovernmentHarvard UniversityCambridge, MassachusettsJuly 2001 NCJ 188095 Winifred Reed and Phillis McDonaldProgram MonitorsThe National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes theBureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and DelinquencyPrevention, and the Office for Victims of Wakeling, Susan Michaelson, and Francis X.

3 Hartmann are affiliates of Harvard University sProgram in Criminal Justice Policy and Management; Miriam Jorgensen, Manley Begay, and Joseph are affiliates of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. This researchwas supported under award #95 IJ CX 0086 from the National Institute of Justice, Office of JusticePrograms, Department of Justice. All points of view expressed in this paper are those of the authorsand do not necessarily represent those of the Department of Justice or Harvard authors wish to thank each of the tribes andtribal police departments that participated in thisstudy for their generous help.

4 Without the infor-mation they provided, the work would not havebeen possible. In particular, we wish to thankthe Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes ofthe Flathead Reservation, the Gila River IndianCommunity, the Three Affiliated Tribes of the FortBerthold Reservation, and the Tohono O odhamNation for providing access to their police depart-ments, criminal justice systems, and other govern-mental units. Knowledge we gained from our timeon site formed the core of our addition to thanking the four tribal governments,we would like to express our appreciation to thepeople on each reservation who assisted us in somany ways: sharing information, offering guidance,telling stories, and helping us to get it right.

5 Thesepeople included tribal leaders; elders and othercommunity residents; department officials; depart-ment clerks and others who tolerated our manyrequests and questions; and, especially, the policechiefs, captains, and officers who spent many hourstalking to us, giving us information, and allowingus to ride with also thank the many individuals in policedepartments who took the time to complete thesurveys. These questionnaires provided an impor-tant picture of Policing across many departmentsin Indian in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)Division of Law Enforcement Services also wereextremely helpful.

6 In particular, Ted Quasula (Chief,BIA, Division of Law Enforcement Services) andBrent LaRocque (Criminal Investigator, BIA, Divisionof Law Enforcement Services) talked with us atlength, introduced us to people both on and off thereservations, provided documents, and supportedour work throughout the course of the project. Theirperspectives and knowledge of Indian country were fortunate to collaborate on the survey withEileen Luna, assistant professor of American IndianStudies at the University of Arizona. Through thispartnership, we were able to reach more tribes andgather more data than we would have been able toon our authors received essential assistance fromstaff at the Program in Criminal Justice Policy andManagement: Mairgreg Agen, Stephen Brimley,Edward Gomeau, Gillian Thomson, and MelissaWeintraub.

7 Their contributions, especially to thesurvey analysis and literature search, are woventhroughout the final are especially grateful to our funder, the NationalInstitute of Justice (Office of Justice Programs, of Justice), for seeing the value in ourproposed study. We hope and believe that their recog-nition of the need for research on Indian Countrypolicing as evidenced by their support of thisstudy and others will contribute to tribes effortsto improve Policing , public safety, and the qualityof life in their SummaryIntroductionThis study had two principal goals.

8 The first was totake a broad look at Policing in Indian country inorder to better understand the many arrangementsfor administering reservation police departments,develop an initial assessment of the challenges fac-ing Indian Policing , and identify Policing strategiesand approaches that might be successful in respond-ing to the growing crime problem in Indian second was to evaluate the prospects for commu-nity Policing in Indian country . Could this strategy,which grew out of the experience of police depart-ments in urban settings, be usefully applied to thestrikingly different cultural, geographic, and demo-graphic features typical of Indian Reservations ?

9 Thisstudy is a first effort to characterize the variety ofarrangements for reservation Policing combined witha more comprehensive effort to better understand theoperations of a limited set of representative depart-ments and their tribal for this study included several compo-nents. We began with a literature review and visitsto several Indian police departments and the IndianPolice Academy in New Mexico. We then distrib-uted a two-part survey to Indian police departmentsand undertook intensive site visits to four reserva-tions.

10 The strategy for selecting study sites was tochoose Indian nations that varied on as many rele-vant dimensions as could be captured in a smallsample. The four nations selected were the TohonoO odham (in Arizona), the Gila River IndianCommunity (also in Arizona), the ConfederatedSalish and Kootenai Tribes of the FlatheadReservation (in Montana), and the Three AffiliatedTribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation (in NorthDakota). We studied these reservation departmentsand the tribal contexts in which they operate inorder to gain a richer understanding of the diverseand complex ways in which Native communitiescope with Policing challenges.