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Nebraska State Patrol study: Boys make up majority of missing Native Americans
A study from the Nebraska State Patrol and others found that the majority of Native American missing persons are boys age 17 or younger.
That’s just one of the findings in a 42-page study the State Patrol released Saturday. The study was done in collaboration with the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs.
State Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, introduced the bill.
The State Patrol and others looked at missing persons databases and policies from 51 law enforcement agencies and conducted listening sessions with four Native communities.
Among the findings, a disproportionate number of the state’s reported missing persons were black or Native American. The greatest percentage of Native American missing persons are boys age 17 or younger, accounting for 73.3% of all Native American missing persons in Nebraska.
Among all racial demographics, 59.6% of Nebraska missing persons are boys age 17 or younger, the report found.
The challenges of reporting and investigating cases may be exacerbated by jurisdictional issues between tribal and nontribal law enforcement agencies, lack of relationships between the agencies and racial classification when entering the cases into databases, the study found.
Judi gaiashkibos, executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, said Saturday that the study was a step in the right direction, but it is just the beginning.
“This study reveals that persistent and deliberate human and Indigenous rights abuses are significant factors in Nebraska’s staggering rates of violence against Indigenous women and children,” gaiashkibos wrote in the report. “There is a need for transformative legal and social change to resolve the crisis that has devastated Indigenous communities in this state.”
Col. John Bolduc, superintendent of the State Patrol, said in a press release that his agency has been able to develop new partnerships through the study that are already benefiting the state’s Native American citizens.
“The most common points raised during the listening sessions illustrated a need to revitalize connections between tribal residents and law enforcement,” Bolduc said. “That work can have a substantial impact on multiple facets of public safety, including missing persons cases.”
The State Patrol found that many law enforcement agencies across the state do not currently have a policy for reporting missing persons to centralized databases. The patrol said it will work with the Nebraska Crime Commission to develop a standard operating procedure for handling missing persons cases and provide it to agencies throughout the state.
Brewer said Saturday he hadn’t had an opportunity to review the report in its entirety.
If conducting the study broke down some of the barriers between law enforcement and the state’s Native American citizens, then it’s a step forward, Brewer said.