A bipartisan bill in Congress aims to bolster tribal law enforcement and combat the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous people. The BADGES Act makes resources available, assists with officer recruitment and retention and increases tribal access to a national missing persons database. KNAU’s Ryan Heinsius spoke with the bill’s cosponsor, Arizona Representative Ruben Gallego, about the challenges of policing in Indian Country.
Ryan Heinsius: A lack of communication and coordination between federal, state and other law enforcement agencies is often cited as a major deterrent to combatting the epidemic of missing murdered people on tribal lands. How would this bill break down some of those barriers?
Rep. Ruben Gallego: Well, look. Because a lot of our tribal governments have very few funds, they have to rely on federal government for investigative as well as just your just normal everyday law enforcement. If there is a local tribal police officer from preferably that nation, they might understand some of the intricacies that might cause a woman to either be missing, murdered or has just disappeared, or understand what’s happening in certain areas with certain families. There’s just a lot of things that we don’t understand as the outside world, so we need to empower these communities to protect themselves and give them their opportunity to really bring safety to their community and it doesn’t necessarily just have to happen from us at the federal level.
RH: Indigenous women endure very high rates of violence with nearly four in five having experienced domestic or sexual abuse. How should law enforcement on tribal lands—what do they need to do in order to address these numbers?
RG: We had a hearing on missing and murdered Indigenous women. And there was just way too much non-attention happening when these women disappeared. We can’t deny the exploitative nature of outsiders that come on tribal land knowing that they can get away with crimes, knowing that prosecution is extremely difficult, and they exploit and traffic Native American women all over this country. By having adequate police forces that are properly trained and certified, and that come from the community that they’re trying to police, there’s a really good chance that we can start catching some of these bad actors.
RH: The Navajo Nation has an especially daunting challenge when it comes to policing, as we know, with only a couple hundred officers tasked with patrolling 27,000 square miles. How will this bill impact officers’ abilities to do their jobs at a basic level?
RG: Look, at a basic level it’s going to be easier to retain, recruit and train these police officers for them to actually be able to have the fully functional law enforcement capabilities. A Navajo police officer is just as good as any other police officer. Heck, if you’re a Navajo police officer and certified by AZ-POST, you could easily get lured away by Phoenix police, by Flagstaff police. So, we want to make sure that these tribal police officers and tribal police agencies have the capability to compete, retain and retrain their police force to make them the top notch in the country.
RH: What can be done to address the underlying causes of many of the crimes that of these officers are responding to like joblessness, substance abuse, things like that, on tribal lands?
RG: The first thing we should be doing is actually listening to our tribal governments. They will tell you what they need and a lot of times we just don’t hear about it. It’s also simple things. Last I heard, 30% of the Navajo Nation still doesn’t have indoor plumbing or consistent water. We can’t ask people, American people, our Native American brothers and sisters, “Why aren’t you doing so well?” when they’re not even at the same basic economic level. Helping them reach economic independence, economic freedom is extremely important and give them the resources to have control over their lives and trust that they know how to do it. They’re Americans, we should trust them and give them the sovereignty they need to actually accomplish their American dream and give them the funding that they need because we still have a responsibility for federal to tribal-level agreement that we’re supposed to take care of them.
