WAGNER, SD – U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday during a visit to South Dakota that the national crime rate has

declined

but challenges remain on tribal reservations in the state.

“We know that progress in some communities has not been the same,” Garland said. “Developments across the country remain uneven. Of course, there is no level of violent crime that is acceptable.”

He said that since 2021, the Department of Justice has awarded $19.1 million in grants to support tribal justice initiatives in South Dakota.

“Tribal communities deserve safety and justice,” he said.

Garland’s visit included a morning meeting in Sioux Falls with Alison Ramsdell, United States Attorney for the District of South Dakota, as well as federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement leaders. On Wednesday afternoon, he attended a roundtable in Wagner with representatives of the state’s nine tribal nations and U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

In a Q&A with the media in Wagner, Rounds, a Republican, commented on the importance of working with Garland, who is part of the Democratic Biden administration.

“Sometimes he and I disagree on politics, but one thing we do agree on is that law enforcement and taking care of public safety is something that transcends politics,” Rounds said.

One area of ​​agreement is inadequate federal funding for tribal law enforcement. Rounds said “the current system is not working” and “the funding formulas are not fair.”

Garland, in his remarks after the roundtable, pledged to support more funding for the Department of the Interior, which includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs, known as the BIA.

“I do realize that our department cannot provide the full level of police assistance and officers that you need on the reservations, and that the BIA needs more money for that purpose,” Garland said.

Rounds said the roundtable discussion, which was closed to the media, included talk about officer training, possible reforms to the formulas used by the federal government to fund tribal law enforcement and whether block grants to tribes might be a better way to fund public safety than existing methods.

John Pettigrew, Acting Chief of Police for the Oglala Sioux Tribe,

told recently

a congressional committee that federal funding for tribal law enforcement — required by treaties dating back to the 1800s — is “a joke.” He said the tribe’s Department of Public Safety is funded at 15% of its needs, a shortfall that has led to inadequate staffing levels, longer response times and officer burnout.

Police Chief Edwin Young of the Yankton Sioux Tribe told the South Dakota Searchlight ahead of Wednesday’s meeting in Sioux Falls that the tribe is struggling to recruit and retain officers.

“We need competitive wages with the local law enforcement. We don’t have a real pension system. That’s pretty much non-existent in most tribal programs,” Young said.

His department

currently working

with three officers and needs at least 12 to police the area effectively, he said.

Logistical obstacles in training and recruitment compound the funding challenges.

Traditionally, tribal officers have had to complete their training at a Bureau of Indian Affairs facility in New Mexico, a requirement that has been a barrier to recruiting new officers. But the agency recently gave its support to a new, state-led one

summer training sessions

in Pierre, which provides training closer to home for aspiring tribal officers. Rounds

have asked for

the establishment of a federal tribal law enforcement training facility in the Great Plains region.

Prior to Garland’s visit, public safety on reservations in South Dakota had been a long-standing topic of public debate.

Republican Governor Kristi Noem

gave a speech

in January, claiming that Mexican drug cartels operate on reservations, and she is

is repeated

these claims many times since then. These and other comments prompted leaders of all nine tribes in the state to vote in favor

ban her

from their reservations. Noem did not attend the meetings on Wednesday.

The South Dakota Searchlight asked Rounds why Noem wasn’t there, and he said Garland’s staff wanted a “sovereign nation to sovereign nation” meeting.

“They wanted to do direct government-to-government between the federal government and the tribes,” Rounds said.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe has

sued

the federal government, alleging that it is not adequately enforcing its treaty obligation to fund public safety. Concerns about public safety on the tribe’s Pine Ridge Reservation have increased recently after a 56-year-old man, Tom Thunder Hawk, was

fatally shot

at a powwow earlier this month.

“It just shows the gun violence that’s still going on throughout Indian Country,” said Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Come Out, who had to skip some of Thunder Hawk’s memorial services to attend the event with Garland and Rounds. “How do we control that? How do we control the violence, the crime, the gangs, the meth, the fentanyl, the overcrowded prisons, everything? Those are a lot of issues that the chairmen today expressed concern about.”

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire said reservations deal with these and other public safety concerns on a daily basis.

“Until we have adequate law enforcement and public safety, our people will always live in fear,” Alkire said.

This story was originally published on SouthDakotaSearchlight.com