LACKING LAW ENFORCEMENT: As crime on the Crow reservation increases, so must the police force that protects

AT 8:40 P.M., a Ford Crown Vic­to­ria patrol car turned on its lights and sped down the frontage road to Hardin, leav­ing the dis­patcher alone at Crow police head­quar­ters. Within the fol­low­ing half hour she would answer a call for police in Crow Agency, but no offi­cer was avail­able to respond. Nearly 50 min­utes would pass before the Crown Vic­to­ria would return to the small brick build­ing, located off Inter­state 90 near the Lit­tle Bighorn Bat­tle­field National Monument.

The vehi­cle would remain parked, its engine run­ning and tail lights glow­ing red in the wan­ing day­light of March 29. Five min­utes later, tribal police offi­cer Jeff Grisham rushed back into the run­ning car and drove north out of the lot to respond to a call near Lit­tle Bighorn College.

The 2-mile road bends east past the grand­stand, a 200-foot-tall struc­ture for rodeos and other events, and wraps back over Custer Creek into town. Kitty-corner to cam­pus, on the south­east side, is a cul de sac with trail­ers and homes of vary­ing conditions.

Thirty min­utes ear­lier Bernadette Charette, who lives at the end of the cul de sac near Custer Creek, put on her blue robe and slip­pers to let out LaFee and Molly — a schnau­zer and a toy fox ter­rier. Out­side the two dogs bolted under the camper parked on the front lawn of the small blue home.

Charette, 78, focused through her large, round spec­ta­cles on the blue house across the way.

A moldy and tat­tered mat­tress sat just below the sill.

As her eyes adjusted, Charette noticed the vague out­line of a girl in the cor­ner of the house near the mat­tress. The girl stood still, shiv­er­ing. They made eye con­tact. Charette, a small woman with white hair and hunched back imme­di­ately turned towards the camper.

“Molly! LaFee!” she whis­pered urgently, open­ing the front door. “Get inside!”

She locked the door behind her and told her hus­band, Fred, what she saw. They waited up the next half hour, but there was no move­ment outside.

There was no response to the call for police.

After decid­ing it was safe to sleep they headed to bed. It was then, Charette noticed the search lights of a tribal officer’s car. The light passed over their home and then the home across the way, illu­mi­nat­ing the mat­tress and the cor­ner. The girl was gone.

Shortly after, another car arrived. Dorothea Adams, Charette’s neigh­bor, had called the police because a grand­daugh­ter had shown up to her house drunk. It’s ille­gal to drink on the Crow reser­va­tion. When Grisham and tribal offi­cer Tim Smells knocked on the door of Adams’ new green double-wide trailer home, she answered, but her grand­daugh­ter had run long ago.

“She knows she isn’t sup­posed to be there drunk,” Grisham later says. “Dorothea has to call them in some­times.”
On a busy week­end night, though, offi­cers aren’t able to respond in time to such calls. Unlike Adams, but like most on the Crow Reser­va­tion, Charette reacted differently.

“I didn’t call the police,” Charette later said. “I don’t call the police.”

CHARETTE’S FEELINGS are shared by a major­ity on Crow. And not with­out reason.

The reser­va­tion has a com­pli­cated pub­lic safety sys­tem that con­sists of both a tribal police force and a larger fed­eral law enforce­ment agency, run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs Jus­tice Ser­vices. The BIA, which has full juris­dic­tion over the Crow reser­va­tion, is a small divi­sion of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. This means per­son­nel con­stantly changes as offi­cers seek out higher BIA or fed­eral posi­tions for higher pay, stature and improved benefits.

In 20 years, the Crow has been unable to cre­ate a ver­sion of its own steady law enforce­ment team to serve and pro­tect the reser­va­tion with any kind of consistency.

The result is an increas­ing polar­iza­tion between the BIA police and the tribe whose laws they are con­tracted to enforce. There has also been a steady increase in crime for more than three decades.

As a smaller part of the larger BIA sys­tem, the Crow have seen sev­eral suc­cess­ful police chiefs come and go. Effec­tive lead­ers are even­tu­ally chan­neled into higher posi­tions, mak­ing the Crow reser­va­tion a mere stop toward greater opportunity.

Despite his efforts to improve enforce­ment on the reser­va­tion, Tony Larvie is a recent exam­ple in his­tory of this upward momentum.

Larvie was appointed chief of police Decem­ber 2011. At the time, he was a drug inves­ti­ga­tor for the BIA Offices of Jus­tice Ser­vices in Billings. He was hired in the wake of Crow’s most vio­lent year in recent his­tory. Accord­ing to the BIA Jus­tice Depart­ment, in 2011, stab­bings and shoot­ings claimed the lives of five — four in Lodge Grass and one in Pryor — along with 45 other seri­ous inci­dents includ­ing aggra­vated assault, arson and sex­ual offenses.

Larvie reports the Crow police depart­ment had a total of nine offi­cers, tribal and BIA, when he arrived. But with Larvie came a rush of sup­port from both the Crow tribe and the BIA for more police officers.

Tribal offi­cers, who are sup­ported through the Crow tribe and trained in state acad­e­mies, were given more fund­ing through grants sup­plied by the Crow tribe. The Wash­ing­ton D.C.-based BIA offices also allo­cated money for more offi­cers, who are trained at a fed­eral base in New Mex­ico. In total, Larvie’s law enforce­ment staff more than doubled.

Dur­ing the sum­mer of 2012, Crow admin­is­tra­tive offi­cials reported 10 BIA patrol offi­cers, six tribal police offi­cers, two super­vi­sory advi­sors, and three inves­ti­ga­tors at the sta­tion. Larvie believes the increase helped lead to more arrests for dis­or­derly con­duct, pub­lic nui­sance and drinking-related offenses in 2012.

These arrests, he said, have a cor­re­la­tion to the nearly 20 per­cent decrease in more seri­ous crimes recorded in 2012 — the BIA Jus­tice Depart­ment recorded 42 seri­ous inci­dents the entire year.

But the flaw remains.

Larvie is no longer police chief. And many of the posi­tions cre­ated dur­ing his tenure are now vacant.

THE MAIN entrance of head­quar­ters was blocked with unused cab­i­nets, boxes and exer­cise equip­ment. The east entrance is used by both police and the gen­eral public.

Upon return­ing from the failed search of Dorothea Adams’ grand­daugh­ter, Grisham parked his patrol vehi­cle near the oth­ers. A light from the west win­dow illu­mi­nated a Ford truck, inves­ti­ga­tion van, and eight Ford Explor­ers parked in two per­pen­dic­u­lar lines on the grass. They haven’t been moved in years because they don’t have the tribal offi­cers to drive them.

Four days later in the Crow police meet­ing room, Grisham recalled the evening. Grisham is a wide man for 5 feet 9 inches. His black BIA garb was uncom­fort­ably tight over the bul­let proof vest he wore.

Grisham said such busy week­end nights, which require long hours, are why he wants to switch to BIA. And the rea­son so many tribal cars sit vacant.

“The bad thing about being a tribal offi­cer is that we don’t get ben­e­fits, health insur­ance, retire­ment. And there is always the job secu­rity. There’s always things going on with the tribe and who knows where cuts are going to be made,” Grisham said with a chew tucked in his right lip. “I think that with a major­ity of the tribal guys that we have, every­one has men­tioned that they want to go Bureau.”

Down the hall Police Chief Jose Figueroa Jr. sat at his wood desk. Var­i­ous papers were stacked on the dressers sur­round­ing the room. A door lead­ing to a back patio was blocked by a cab­i­net. In front of him, two Dell mon­i­tors dis­played sep­a­rate email drafts.

Figueroa became police chief in August 2013. He is the sec­ond since Larvie was pro­moted to dis­trict direc­tor of drug enforce­ment in Billings in Feb­ru­ary 2013. He is aware of the allure that the BIA has for many of his officers.

“The per­cep­tion is that every­one that goes to Crow, typ­i­cally, goes on to big­ger and bet­ter things,” Figueroa said, lean­ing back in his leather chair. “And that’s what most of the staff has asked me, ‘How long are you going to be here?’”

Both of Figueroa’s pre­de­ces­sors were pro­moted to Billings. The cur­rent BIA Jus­tice Depart­ment Direc­tor in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Dar­ren Cruzan, spent just under a year at Crow in 2004 before con­tin­u­ing up the pro­mo­tion chain. Indeed, it seems the nat­ural tra­jec­tory for those police chiefs that pass through Crow is up. This has kept Crow police num­bers down.

“First and fore­most, as you can see on the board,” Figueroa said, point­ing to a white­board list­ing Crow offi­cers. “We need to get more guys here.”

Figueroa is tall, more than six feet. His hair is cut high and tight, expos­ing a broad fore­head and thin eye­brows. He is half Mex­i­can, but grew up Assini­boine and Sioux on the Fort Peck Reser­va­tion. He has a wide smile betray­ing the red eyes and heavy sock­ets of a thought­ful man low on sleep.

Writ­ten in red dry-erase marker was Figueroa’s name along with the names of six BIA offi­cers, a lieu­tenant and two tribal offi­cers. Addi­tion­ally, two names filled the slots next to Sex Offender Reg­is­tra­tion and Noti­fi­ca­tion Act offi­cer and High­way Patrol offi­cer. Four BIA offi­cers posi­tions, along with one tribal posi­tion, were blank.

Figueroa said the BIA pro­vides fund­ing for 15 offi­cers, includ­ing a police chief and two lieu­tenants, and the tribe pays for three tribal offi­cers and han­dles grants for three spe­cialty offi­cers. He has more bud­get for more offi­cers than Larvie did just two years before. But the offi­cers aren’t there to fill the positions.

Just as police chiefs are pumped through Crow, so are BIA offi­cers. Figueroa said it’s stan­dard for the BIA to re-assign offi­cers to dif­fer­ent reser­va­tions as needed.

“When I first got here in August, I estab­lished a Lodge Grass offi­cer and a Pryor offi­cer because that’s where our needs are,” Figueroa said. “And we had five guys then, but we have lost five guys since then.”

The Pryor offi­cer is no longer, and Figueroa keeps up with the duties of the four empty BIA offi­cer positions.

OF THE seven reser­va­tions in Mon­tana, three uti­lize their own tribal law enforce­ment, two uti­lize state law enforce­ment and laws, while two con­tract through the BIA. Crow falls in the lat­ter while still employ­ing a few tribal offi­cers. But many on Crow believe the tribe should employ its own police force.

“The biggest prob­lem we have here is that the guys that we have here on the ground want to do the work, but they’re being dic­tated by peo­ple out of the area office, which is in Billings. They don’t under­stand what is going on here,” said Tribal Chair­man Dar­ren Old Coy­ote in his office in the Crow Tribal Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing. “And that is the biggest prob­lem because they have to answer to an out­side entity, where we are sit­ting here and we know the prob­lems, and where to do this and that.”

Old Coy­ote says to get rid of the prob­lem, the tribe would have to invoke Pub­lic Law 93–638, the Indian Self-Determination and Edu­ca­tion Assis­tance Act of 1975, which allows U.S. tribes to con­tract from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment a num­ber of pub­lic ser­vice pro­grams such as health care, law enforce­ment and education.

By “638-ing” the entire pro­gram, the Crow would receive the fed­eral dol­lars that are cur­rently used to pay for the fed­eral BIA police force and use that to run a tribal law enforce­ment program.

“That’s an option that we are look­ing at,” Old Coy­ote said, “but at the same time we are mind­ful of the lia­bil­i­ties that we would have to assume.”

Even after 638, fed­eral grants would not be near enough to pay for a law enforce­ment agency large enough to appro­pri­ately cover the Crow reser­va­tion. At 2.3 mil­lion acres, Crow is the largest reser­va­tion in Mon­tana. To suf­fi­ciently cover the land, Crow needs a police force larger than the aver­age reser­va­tion, which would mean the need for more money.

Direc­tor of Crow Land Secu­rity Henry “Hank” Rides Horse, said there would need to be 35 police on staff to appro­pri­ately cover the reser­va­tion. A num­ber, Rides Horse believes would cost roughly $2.5 mil­lion dol­lars annually.

“Our next step is to be uti­liz­ing our resources. And in doing so, we won’t be ask­ing from the U.S. gov­ern­ment,” Rides Horse said. He added that the tribe has sev­eral nat­ural resources, includ­ing coal, water and tourism. “We have to start uti­liz­ing them in order to be self suf­fi­cient, not only law enforce­ment, but the whole government.”

THE CROW tribe has tried to oper­ate its own law enforce­ment before. Since the 1905 ter­ri­to­r­ial estab­lish­ment, Crow had been in charge of cre­at­ing and enforc­ing their own laws within the reservation.

In 1980 the Crow police began to sup­ple­ment tribal offi­cers with BIA inves­ti­ga­tors. But it wasn’t until 1990 that the tribe’s police force began con­tract­ing a major­ity of their law enforce­ment through the BIA.

In the early ‘70s, Thomas Lar­son Med­i­cine­horse, 74, was a tribal offi­cer based out of Crow Agency. He says that dur­ing that time, there were also sub­sta­tions in Lodge Grass and Pryor.

When Med­i­cine­horse was 23, he decided to attend the BIA police acad­emy, and enrolled in the first grad­u­at­ing class. In 1990 he returned to the reser­va­tion and ran for sher­iff of Big Horn County to bat­tle the racial pro­fil­ing Crow tribal mem­bers reported expe­ri­enc­ing by sheriff’s deputies. He became the first Crow sher­iff of the county, a posi­tion he held for 16 years.

But as civil rights and law enforce­ment took a large step for­ward at the county, tribal law enforce­ment faced cri­sis on the reser­va­tion. Finan­cial cuts hit Crow police the hardest.

“The tribal offi­cers were qual­i­fied to do their work,” Med­i­cine­horse says. “It was the lead­er­ship. Some peo­ple were advanced beyond their capa­bil­i­ties, and then the tribe used up the money. So the tribal police were left with­out funds. They didn’t have no money to go out and patrol. And they only had about five or six offi­cers at that time, because they couldn’t hire anymore.”

Sid­ney “Chip­per” Fitz­patrick Jr., who was the offi­cer sta­tioned in Pryor, was one of those to leave. He had been the D.A.R.E. offi­cer for Pryor High School, but the tribe offered few ben­e­fits to law enforce­ment offi­cers, ben­e­fits offered with a job at the BIA. He was the last offi­cer sta­tioned in Pryor for more than two decades.

“I think that when I left, it changed then,” Chip­per said. “And there is more peo­ple. When I was a cop, we were at about 7,000, now we are up to 13,000.”

But until the Crow can revert to the old sys­tem, Chip­per, now Bighorn County Com­mis­sioner, believes the com­mu­ni­ca­tion between law enforce­ment and Crow cit­i­zens needs to improve.

“It’s not just law enforce­ment, it’s every­body. It’s the com­mu­nity that net­works together to tackle this issue — vio­lence, drugs and alco­hol,” Chip­per said. “Just the law enforce­ment ain’t gonna’ change it, we need to change as a reservation.”

TO FACILITATE net­work­ing between com­mu­nity and law enforce­ment, the Crow have assigned an inno­v­a­tive posi­tion, direc­tor of pub­lic safety, to an inno­v­a­tive individual.

William Falls Down sat at the wooden desk he found aban­doned in the east wing of the Crow Tribal Admin­is­tra­tion build­ing. He wore a red, button-down shirt, black jeans and black cow­boy boots. Falls Down’s wide smile showed dis­placed teeth.

He was hired when Old Coy­ote was elected and adapted a room tucked in the mid­dle of the admin­is­tra­tion build­ing. He is a Repub­li­can sur­rounded by a pre­dom­i­nantly lib­eral staff. It is his expe­ri­ence that got him to the position.

Falls Down has been in law enforce­ment for more than 28 years. As a BIA offi­cer, he has served in 87 dif­fer­ent reser­va­tions in a vari­ety of positions.

Born Crow, Falls Down returned to his reser­va­tion to serve with Crow Fish and Game before switch­ing to direc­tor of pub­lic safety. Through his expe­ri­ence, Falls Down also believes the tribe should take over the pub­lic safety pro­gram. But he doesn’t believe it will hap­pen any­time soon, even under the admin­is­tra­tion that hired him. Thus he looks at what he can do with the BIA offi­cials he is given.

“We give them (the BIA) the author­ity to super­vise our tribal offi­cers,” Falls Down said. “The chief of police, Jose Figueroa, works with me on a daily basis on the daily func­tions of the tribal police.”

Since start­ing his posi­tion, Falls Down said Figueroa is the first BIA Police Chief that has been eager to work with the tribal offi­cers the Crow sup­ply. Their work­ing rela­tion­ship goes back to Figueroa’s child­hood when Falls Down used to babysit him on the Fort Peck Reservation.

Figueroa said their close­ness has opened up a dia­logue that he is sur­prised didn’t hap­pen before.

“We both said that we have to work together. We can­not not work together. It doesn’t work that way,” Figueroa said. “I don’t know why they had these issues before, but we have to work together. The gov­ern­ment and tribal still have to inter­twine because we are both try­ing to accom­plish the same mis­sion, which is ser­vices to the com­mu­nity and pro­tec­tion.”