Program improves law enforcement response in Native communities
Pilot program launched after passage of Savanna’s Act
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News from the Office of Senator Tester
U.S. SENATE — A pilot program launched by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation is developing a collaborative community response plan to quickly address emergent Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons cases in Indian Country.
Directives were outlined through the recent enactment of U.S. Senator Jon Tester’s legislation, Savanna’s Act.
CSKT’s pilot project will develop a Tribal Community Response Plan to improve the collaborative response to missing indigenous person cases by tribal governments, law enforcement and other partners through regionally appropriate guidelines.
CSKT’s TCRP pilot project is the first of its kind in the nation, and its results will serve as a guide to establish similar regional programs across the United States.
The DOJ intends to complete the Tribal Community Response Plan by Dec. 11.
Indigenous women and girls in Montana face murder rates that are 10-times higher than the national average, and according to the National Institute of Justice, more than 80 percent of Native American women have experienced violence, and half have experienced it within the last year.
Tester’s Savanna’s Act, signed into law earlier this year, is named in honor of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, who was murdered in North Dakota in August of 2017.
Savanna’s Act works to improve information sharing between Tribal and federal law enforcement agencies and increase data collection on cases involving missing and murdered Indigenous people. It requires:
— Law enforcement training on how to record victim tribal enrollment information in federal databases.
— The creation of standardized, regionally-appropriate guidelines for inter-jurisdictional cooperation on cases.
— The Attorney General to include data on missing and murdered indigenous people in an annual report to Congress.
