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Law Enforcement Needs to Get with It on MMIW [1]

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Date: 2023-02-03  

I was on a break from a band rehearsal, when I could not help but overhear the singer plead with her teenagers to leave Lake Thunderbird before dark. I asked, “You have to worry about that there?” “Yes, they could get hurt by men around there,” she said. I remembered why "often white and other non-Native American men outside the jurisdiction of tribal law enforcement" kill and rape indigenous women.

"They know there are fewer resources on the reservation, in terms of police and things,” she said, “so that’s where they target people.”

I also remembered a huge part of the problem.

“We can be the villain in our stories as well,” Brien says in the series, pointing out the likelihood that at least some of the culprits come from within. The frustration among families and friends comes not from the belief that all Natives are innocent, but from the difficulty of getting law enforcement to take action.

So, there is difficulty of getting law enforcement to take action. Meaning there are myriads of excuses. Excuses are like assholes — you know the rest —and they either revolve around blaming the victims and their families or playing the “are they Native American or not” game. Feel free to add more in the comments, and I will update. If killer cops, who target African Americans don't think African Americans matter, why would they think Indigenous Women matter? And whatever evil excuse a white supremacist tells himself, he goes to a reservation to kidnap, rape, or kill.

Sex trafficking remains a scourge, with nearby Interstate 90 considered a prime thoroughfare for predation. This, most believe, is what happened to Shacaiah Harding, the disappeared teen whose body was never found.

Hey law enforcement, I bet your family has been dysfunctional. Doesn’t mean police shouldn’t investigate if your child is missing or murdered, does it? Oh no, not you too!

Links Between Officer Trauma and Substance Abuse For years, many professionals in the fields of research, counseling, public policy, and criminal justice have expressed concern over alcohol use and abuse among law enforcement officers. Despite the widely held assumption that police officers are at risk for higher-than-average rates of alcohol abuse, very little research has been conducted to investigate patterns of substance abuse within the law enforcement field.1 Recent research into the relationships among social and cultural factors, stress, trauma, and problematic alcohol use has finally been able to shed light on this special population, which is, in turn, opening the doors to new, empirically founded treatment strategies.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women matter more than "white and other non-Native American men outside the jurisdiction of tribal law enforcement." It's high time rights of white supremacists become less than rights of their victims, so that the perpetrators may finally meet their jail cells. There’s a reason my friend was scared shitless about her daughters being out after dark at Lake Thunderbird. Law enforcement needs to get with It on MMIW.

I say deputize her:

Author is a member of the Metis Nation of the United States

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/3/2150907/-Law-Enforcement-Needs-to-Get-with-It-on-MMIW

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