Sessions expands program to combat crime on tribal lands

Listen to this article

BOBBY CAINA CALVAN

Associated Press

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions sought Tuesday to deepen ties with Native Americans by allowing more tribal nations to tap into national anti-crime databases.

Sessions discussed the change along with other policies meant to help tribal authorities combat crime on reservations stretching from the Puget Sound area of Washington state to the Adirondacks in New York. The centerpiece of his proposal is an expansion of an Obama administration program launched in 2015 giving some tribal nations access to the criminal data.

Nine tribes are already a part of the program, which Sessions said he would extend to 10 more tribes. The expansion was first announced in December.

Law enforcement officials on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana began using the federal databases on Tuesday, giving them access to additional background information, including on people who might have crossed state lines.

Ken Trottier, supervising investigator for the reservation, said the new data will help fight an entrenched problem with methamphetamine and other criminal activity spawned by a population boom in the Bakken oil region.

“Suddenly we saw a lot of strange and new faces — people we didn’t know. It was just tough to find out anything about them,” Trottier said. “This is going to be our way of staying that one step ahead.”

Access to federal databases will also soon expand to the Metlakatla Indians of Alaska, Navajo of the Southwest and the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Cheppewa Indians, among other tribes.

The broader mission is to strengthen relationships with reservations throughout the country. Complex historical, cultural and legal relationships between tribes and the U.S. government have complicated that work in the past.

“Law enforcement in Indian Country faces unique practical and jurisdictional challenges,” Sessions said in a statement, “and the Department of Justice is committed to working with them to provide greater access to technology, information and necessary enforcement.”

The Justice Department will be holding a series of “listening sessions” with tribal leaders and law enforcement officials to better understand obstacles to fighting crime.

The department has also set up a working group, composed of federal officials from 12 agencies, to increase collaboration between U.S. authorities and those in sovereign Indian nations.