Give Peacekeeper a Chance?

By Troy Doney, Unfiltered 8-25-08

A friend of mine texted that she was going to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation for family matters.

I told her, “Damn!  You’d better watch your back, man.”

“Why is that, huh?” she replied. She must have thought I was going to rag on the Sioux, but that wasn’t even remotely the case.

I was worried more for her safety because the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation is ground zero for a controversial Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement program. It’s called Dakota Peacekeeper.

“I didn’t even know about this,” she texted back. “Tell me more.”

The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation is on the South Dakota and North Dakota borders, around 2.3 million acres and had nine tribal police officers to work with. The violent crime rate was hovering around six times the national average in an area roughly the size of some New England states. Six times the national average is something we can all agree on as ‘out of control.’ Something had to be done, and Dirk Kempthorne, the Secretary of the Interior, had an idea.

The idea, Operation Dakota Peacekeeper, gives additional federal funding for more lawmen to patrol “the Rock.” According to the file, the “BIA will deploy additional personnel to the Standing Rock reservation and utilize community-policing tactics to carry out the mission of the deployment and objectives of the operation. Team members of the deployment will supplement the existing police and correctional service officers on the reservation. Initially, the supplemental force will be comprised of BIA police officers and BIA special federal agents who will provide patrol and investigative services as needed.”

A massive influx of personnel to control skyrocketing violence. After all, if it works in Fallujah, it was bound to work in the Dakotas.

And naturally, there were tangible results. Over 1,000 arrests were made, five active federal cases, major drug trade scared off and people able to sleep soundly for the first time in a long time. These are all good things. But there were limitations with this package. Dakota Peacekeeper was originally funded to last 90 days. On August 5th, Senator Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. and chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, announced that Peacekeeper would be extended through September with some officers staying past the expiration date.

But, much like some critics of the Iraq surge say, these are results that can easily disappear after the surge ends. When the federal funding dries up and the extra officers leave, the various malefactors of the Reservation won’t just stay away. Just how quickly after the surge ends will hoodlums start pushing that violent crime rate back up? Just how is that solving a problem? How many other undesirables will return once the watchful eyes are gone?

You can’t change a society with a ham-fisted military maneuver that’s already showing its flaws in similar federal exploits. You sure as hell can’t do it when you have a three month time limit (even with an extra month). You certainly can’t expect it to continue working after you leave. If there’s to be any results that last past the press releases getting cold, then the Interior is going to have to think up a Surge that has a lessened police action approach that works with the community more and has long-term results.

I may have reservations about D.P.K. now, but I’m more worried about the future. The worst case scenario in all of this is the idea of Dakota Peacekeeper catching on.  The belief that all you really need to do to help people is to rally the troops, bust some heads and leave before the resentment sets in. I don’t want an approach like that becoming the answer to problems for reservations across the United States. 

With all of this talk of law enforcement programs, government organizations, senators, police officers and the drug trade, its almost easy to forget that the this is all raining down on the people of the reservation.  Ostensibly, the people that Peacekeeper intends to help.I can’t articulate an alternative to Dakota Peacekeeper, just like I don’t know how to find victory in Iraq. I do know that if we want it to work, we’re going to have to figure out something better.

It’s a lot of information to get out text message format. My friend came back to Belknap, as close to safe and sound as she ever is. I hope things turn out OK for the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, too. You can’t keep the peace forever.  Or in some cases, not even five months. 

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