(CN) — The federal government has a duty to support law enforcement in the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwest South Dakota, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, granting in part a preliminary injunction to the Oglala Sioux Tribe in its suit claiming the government failed to fulfill treaty duties and responsibilities to the point that tribal citizens are often scared to leave their homes at night or send their children to school.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe, which has roughly 51,000 enrolled tribal members, said in its complaint that a lack of adequate law enforcement has seriously affected the community and is responsible for a dramatic increase in reservation deaths, murders, drug activity, and police-involved accidents. The tribe also noted that health care costs have increased due to the number of overdoses, assaults, domestic violence incidents and other crimes, and the economy has been negatively affected as new businesses want to avoid high crime areas.
The tribe sued in July 2022 seeking a declaratory judgment stating that the U.S. is responsible for providing a competent, effective and sufficient number of law enforcement to ensure treaty and statutory obligations are met, and also asked for an order requiring the federal government to fund a minimum number of tribal officers, among other things.
In its request for a preliminary injunction, the tribe asked the court to take immediate action to keep the situation at Pine Ridge from getting worse.
The federal government had argued that none of the appropriations funding police on the reservation over many decades were made in order to fulfill any treaty obligation, and that none of the treaties or statutes the tribe referred to actually impose a duty to provide law enforcement at the tribe's "preferred level."
On Tuesday, Chief U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange said in a 78-page order that while the government's treaty-based duties may not be as broad as the tribe asserts, they are also not "nonexistent."
The U.S. "has a duty of protection, cooperation, and support of the Tribe's law enforcement, and the defendants may neither abandon altogether funding and support of the Tribe's law enforcement," the Obama appointee wrote.
"Defendants should reevaluate the Tribe's requested funding including the service population data, and provide technical assistance to the Tribe to refine its funding requests," he added.
While the judge did not grant the tribe everything it asked for in its injunction motion, Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out told Courthouse News: "To us, it's justice. Justice being served."
Tribal officials blame the lack of funding for law enforcement on outdated formulas. The tribe said in its complaint that it receives more than 133,755 emergency calls per year from an area of about 5,400 square miles, a land mass it said was about the size of Connecticut, but was provided only 33 federally funded officers and eight criminal investigators.
“Our court system is backlogged," said Donna Salomon, executive secretary to the Oglala Sioux Tribe president. "There is limited personnel to deal with this.”
The lack of funding extends to other public safety fields, including emergency management, officials said. The neighboring Rosebud Indian Reservation recently lost six people in a December snowstorm, deaths the Rosebud Sioux Tribe said could have been prevented.
“We all suffered throughout that storm. We were in survival mode," said Star Comes Out. "We pretty much used all our resources, but the weather was still overwhelming and the lack of funding played a big part in that.”
While the order was received by tribal officials as good news, the problems of Pine Ridge remain staggering, with high unemployment and extreme poverty rates, and one of the lowest life expectancies of any community in the Western Hemisphere of 66 years — although the Pine Ridge Hospital cited an average life expectancy for men at just 47 years and women at 55 years, according to the National Institutes of Health.
"We’ll continue to take the steps to ensure the safety and welfare of our people.," Star Comes Out said. "This is only the beginning."
Lange also denied the government's motion to dismiss. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Justice, which is representing the defendants, declined to comment.
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