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- By Elyse Wild
The Senate unanimously approved legislation last week to address chronic staffing shortages in Tribal Law enforcement and improve resources for missing persons cases.
The Bridging Agency Data Gaps & Ensuring Safety (BADGES) for Native Communities Act proposes to expand Tribal access to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) by requiring dedicated Tribal facilitators to conduct outreach, provide training, and serve as liaisons between Tribes and law enforcement agencies.
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To address critical staffing shortages that have plagued Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement, the bill authorizes the BIA to conduct its own background checks for officer applicants—a change expected to significantly accelerate the hiring process. The legislation also ensures BIA officers and Tribal police have access to culturally appropriate mental health and wellness programs.
Additionally, the bill establishes a grant program enabling states, Tribes, and Tribal organizations to better coordinate their responses to missing persons and sexual assault cases. It also mandates a comprehensive report on Tribal law enforcement needs to help policymakers identify remaining gaps.
The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Crisis is characterized by the disproportionate rates of violence experienced by Native Americans and the wide systemic gaps resulting in a large number of unsolved missing and murdered cases.
Native people are murdered at a rate 10 times the national average. Homicide is one of the leading causes of death for Native women ages 10-34. The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates there are 4,200 unsolved MMIP cases, although those numbers are outdated and the actual number is likely higher, Native advocates say.
The BADGES Act is in response to recommendations made in a report by The Not Invisible Act Commission, a federal commission tasked with developing federal recommendations to mitigate the nation’s MMIP crisis. The Commission identified inconsistent, inaccurate, and disparate data as a driving force for high rates of unsolved missing persons and murder cases in Native communities.
The report notes that there are more than 18,000 federal, state, county, tribal, and local law enforcement agencies in the U.S., all of which have their standard operating procedures and guidelines for data collection and entry in their agency’s case management systems, as well as others they may use to help solve cases.
The report was removed from the Department of Justice website more than 300 days ago and has not been restored.
The BRIDGES for Native Communities Act is led by Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz), and Mike Rounds (R-S.D).
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