Hey everyone! Happy week 6!
In reading the ‘Policing on American Indian Reservations’ article, there are many obstacles that
are prevalent. The main ones being little to no police support, their lack of resources when it
comes to crime prevention as well as rising cases of violent crime. On the reservations their
violent crime is increasing but because of the lack of communication between tribal and federal
agencies, it’s hard to know how dramatic the rate of increase is as well as how violent the crimes
are. A statistic I found very interesting while also alarming in the article is that large cities in the
U.S. typically hold 3.9 to 6.6 officers per 1,000 residents while Indian Country departments hold
2 officers per 1,000 residents, if that (Wakeling, Jorgenson, & Michaelson, 2001). It’s also noted
that they have a high turnover rate in Indian Country which can only be equated to the stress of
having so few officers leading to poor employee morale. On the Indian Reservations it seems as
though community policing is a must, if nothing more than to utilize the organized system
community policing is and implementing their own beliefs and resources to further strengthen
their own departments (Wakeling, Jorgenson, & Michaelson, 2001). I don’t see any downfalls of
community policing among the reservations however this system will not work if the tribal
citizens and law enforcement officials cannot coexist and fully cooperate with each other.
References:
Wakeling, S., Jorgenson, M., & Michaelson, S. (2001). Policing on american indian reservations.
PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi:10.1037/e527932006-002
