Flandreau Police Department

Year

The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe’s lands are situated within Moody County and the City of Flandreau, South Dakota. This location presents the Nation with a particular challenge: How do you provide adequate and culturally sensitive public safety and law enforcement for your citizens in mixed jurisdictions? Starting in 2000, after years of struggling to find a solution, the Tribe entered into a joint power agreement with the City of Flandreau. The result has been a single police department governed by a Public Safety Commission composed of tribal and city representatives. The department consolidates resources, delivers law enforcement services for the City of Flandreau and for all the Tribe’s trust lands, while training officers to deal respectfully and responsibly with all citizens, Native and non-Native. The Tribe is pioneering a genuinely new intergovernmental relationship in a crucial area of public life.

Resource Type
Citation

"Flandreau Police Department". Honoring Nations: 2005 Honoree. The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2006. Report. 

Permissions

This Honoring Nations report is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. 

Related Resources

Thumbnail

Former Flandreau (South Dakota) Police Chief Ken James discusses how the Flandreau Police Department works to provide culturally sensitive law enforcement to all of the citizens it serves.

Image
Police Protection in CT Increases: Tribes Can Now Arrest Non-Natives

On Friday, August 1, 27 members of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Police received the power to arrest non-Natives on tribal land. “Up until now they could only hold and detain non-tribal members until the state police could come and make the arrest,” William Satti, director of public affairs for…

Image
Tribal Equity Toolkit: Sample Tribal Resolutions and Codes to Support Two Spirit & LGBT Justice in Indian Country

This Toolkit has been developed to give tribal legislators a brief overview of legal and policy issues that impact the equal treatment of Two Spirit/ LGBT individuals. The Toolkit identifies areas in which existing laws discriminate against Two Spirit/ LGBT individuals, and offers sample resolution…