New Patrol-Tribal Agreement: Expanded Public Information

SPIRIT LAKE, ND (trfnews.i234.me) The North Dakota Highway Patrol and Spirit Lake have entered into a new, mutual aid agreement, which could mean a better flow of information for the public on whats happening on the reservation.
the north dakota highway patrol and spirit lake tribe have signed a mutual aid agreement it will enhance law enforcement in the areas of emergency calls requests for mutual aid and other law enforcement functions on the spirit lake reservation the agreement does not expand arrest authority it does provide a legal means for officers to intervene during certain situations regardly regardless of tribal status until local law enforcement is available spirit like tribal chairman douglas yankton offered comments noting that the mere presence of law enforcement hinders criminal behavior to include drug trafficking and human trafficking which are serious problems on the state’s five tribal reservations now whether or not this agreement will improve communications with media companies like inews has yet to be determined it’s currently basically impossible to get any information from tribal officials regarding murders accidents fires and more i’m wondering if this agreement will help impor the flow of information for things that happen on the reservation we sure hope it will so what this agreement does is it allows mutual aid capacity for the highway patrol to go to spirit lake and help with emergency calls for service assisting crash investigations and also details things like pursuits and use of force and high liability areas that frequently come up um so whenever the highway patrol is involved in an incident uh we favoritionally document everything that we do um and so the information on our end is always going to be well documented and we uh follow open records laws as well so as long as the case is closed it’s always uh readily available to the public as well um and then we hoped because this agreement um kind of organically helps us work better with tribal police and bia officers as well we hope the communication alone and then the kind of domino effect that occurs from that uh that information sharing uh and things of that nature will uh start to improve and hopefully that will begin to happen and improve our coverage of the spirit lake nation i’m Neil Berg reporting for eye news dot tv