Tribal police recognition endorsed by South Dakota lawmakers

Rep. Eric Emery, D-Rosebud, speaks with lawmakers on the House floor during the governor’s budget address on Dec. 3, 2024, at the South Dakota Capitol in Pierre. (Photo by Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)

The South Dakota House of Representatives overwhelmingly supported a bill Wednesday to recognize tribal officers as law enforcement officers under state law, but some members balked at a resolution urging a tribal law enforcement training academy before adopting it.

Tribal officers frequently offer mutual aid to state, county and city officers when asked, but are not extended the same legal protections extended to the officers they aid. If a tribal officer is assaulted while providing aid away from tribal land, the perpetrator can’t be charged with the felony state crime of assaulting a law enforcement officer.

House Bill 1007 came from the State-Tribal Relations Committee and is sponsored by Rep. Eric Emery, a Democrat from Rosebud and a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. If passed and signed by the governor, legal protections would be extended to “any officer, prosecutor, or employee of an Indian tribe who is assisting or aiding in” the enforcement of state criminal or highway laws.

The House passed the bill 67-0, sending it to the Senate.

A resolution tied to tribal policing didn’t get quite such clear support. 

House Concurrent Resolution 6001 would signal the Legislature’s support for locating a federal tribal law enforcement academy in South Dakota. Currently, most tribal officers are expected to attend basic law enforcement training at a federal Bureau of Indian Affairs facility in Artesia, New Mexico.

Meeting between lawmakers, tribal officials points to potential for more cooperation in policing

U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, has called on the federal government to establish a tribal police training facility for the Great Plains and locate it in Pierre, in hopes of making it easier to recruit officers to work for one of the nine tribes in South Dakota.

Some consternation followed the addition of an amendment specifying that the resolution doesn’t support such a BIA training facility being used to train officers for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, being used as an ICE detention facility, or the establishment of any memoranda of understanding between ICE and any South Dakota tribe.

The amendment was made by the House Judiciary Committee on Friday.

Emery was also the resolution’s sponsor. Rep. Scott Odenbach, R-Spearfish, asked Emery where the amendment came from. Emery said it was added at the request of tribal officials.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is not part of the Department of Homeland Security, but recruits from several federal agencies — including BIA and Border Patrol — train in Artesia.

“Because of that connection with Homeland Security and ICE, they just wanted to clearly lay out that there’s a separation between the two,” Emery said.

Some tribes in South Dakota have issued statements critical of ICE since the federal agency’s operations ramped up in Minneapolis earlier this year. This week, the Yankton Sioux Tribe’s Business and Claims Committee passed a resolution to “ban ICE on the reservation to protect our tribal citizens from dangerous enforcement activities.”

Back at the Capitol, Odenbach said he was troubled by the language excluding ICE.

“My preference would frankly be the opposite,” said Odenbach, a member of the State-Tribal Relations Committee who endorsed the concept of the resolution last fall.

Rep. Peri Pourier, R-Rapid City, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, urged her colleagues to support the nonbinding resolution, saying that tribal governments are sovereign nations and want to make sure that their longstanding support of training for tribal officers wouldn’t be interpreted as support for ICE immigration enforcement.

State, local or tribal governments can enter into agreements with ICE. Some South Dakota agencies have signed such agreements. 

“The reason why this is being clarified is because the tribes have a right to go into those agreements or not,” Pourier said.

The resolution passed 49-18.