American Indians, by per-capita populace percentage, have the highest rate of all races in the USA for being targeted in the “Being Killed by Police" category. And Native American leaders, many of whom are now parents and even grandparents, are growing tired and fed-up with this carnage.
The killing never stops. As soon as all the clamor and mayhem over one nefarious fatality seems to quell a bit, another comes about, keeping the fury alive in Indian Land. It’s heartbreaking and these are not the kind of stories any journalist enjoys writing. Likewise, posting pictures of young Native men who are no longer alive because they were gunned down by cops isn’t a thing any layout artist likes to do; but these stories must be written and the images need to be displayed because Native Americans are a forgotten and even an invisible race. With less than 1 percent of America’s population, the young men of the First Nations seem to have bulls-eyes painted on them for trigger-happy cops to aim their high-caliber guns at and fire, fire, and fire again.
One of the latest incidents: Police shot and killed a young American Indian man Mandan, N.D., on April 14 who allegedly refused to drop a knife with a short, 3-inch blade attached to it. Ivan Wilson-Dragswolf, 24, was shot by police officers in Mandan after they responded to a domestic dispute on the city’s northeast side, according to the Associated Press. Police said they shot Wilson-Dragswolf after he made an aggressive motion toward them with a knife in hand. Wilson-Dragswolf was pronounced dead at the scene, the AP reported. Three officers involved in the shooting were placed on administrative leave.
According to his obituary, Dragswolf was a U.S. Marine and a graduate of New Town High School in New Town, North Dakota. Dragswolf served a tour in Afghanistan, Indian Country Media Network contributor Ruth Hopkins posted on Facebook. A study released in 2014 found that Native Americans are most likely to be killed by police. “Native Americans, 0.8 percent of the population, comprise 1.9 percent of police killings,” the study reads, according to IndianCountryToday.
Stan Starcomesout (pronounced ‘Star Comes Out"), an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe and who was a police officer for 24 years, and during that time even served as Chief of Police, said, “I don't think it was the proper way of handling things. That's the way they do things in Rapid City, though. Cops today will shoot someone for any little reason. Accordingly, the BCI investigations will clear that officer. In this area, of all the officer shootings, I've never heard of an officer being reprimanded or fired. It's their buddies who are investigating. When I was a tribal cop, the FBI from Rapid City would come and investigate us. We had much tougher standards to abide by then.”
A career cop after serving in the Vietnam War with the U.S. Army Infantry, Starcomesout was a police officer for 10 years with the Pine Ridge Department of Public Safety, and was the police chief for the department for a year, on a temporary basis, and he was also an investigator/detective for eight years and during this time, was investigator/detective department supervisor of the Pine Ridge Department of Public Safety for five years.
“When I was a cop, I was attacked with knives, Samurai swords, even guns, and I never shot anyone. I always handled things without shooting somebody. I think these training programs they have today incite fear in these new officers. In our department here on Pine Ridge, we began to see this in the 1980's,” he told this writer Thursday night during a telephone interview.
“We handled things much differently before. We had debriefings after something like this happened, like what happened to Ivan Wilson-Dragswolf. On the rez, we're all related to one another. We educated our fellow tribal police officers on tribal heritage and customs. We didn’t want to see anyone killed,” Starcomesout said.
“I would have just disarmed him,” Starcomesout said of the Wilson-Dragswolf killing. “It's a fad these new officers have. They sit around and talk with one another about getting a notch on their gun. A story that they can tell their grandkids. It's not just here, it's everywhere, throughout the USA. The new training programs teach them that they should play on their fears. You always hear the remark that these officers who kill someone 'feared for their lives.'"
“In the 1980's, we had gun calls everyday. We never shot anyone. We disarmed them. Today, the reason they shoot someone is because 'they feared for their lives.' It's really dumb, I think. It's always the same - the same dumb excuse, 'they feared for their lives’. They even write it in the police reports. I had a supervisor who always told us, 'never pull your gun unless you're going to use it’. I always talked them down, wrestled these weapons from their hands,” Starcomesout said.
Earl Denny (Angry Little Bear), who was a police officer for 17 years in Phillips, Wisc., said he only had to draw his gun once in all the time he was a cop. Denny is an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Chippewa Indians, who spent some of his youth growing up on the Bad River Indian Reservation in Wisconsin, along with living in a very large city in the northern, high-plains state as a youth. Denny is also a leading activist these days in the Strong Heart Warrior Society in South Dakota, a benevolent group that helps Native Americans country-wide deal with day-to-day problems, along with being an activist organization fighting in the arena of public opinion which gets involved with legal battles being undertaken by Native tribes and their people.
“I don't know, these officers are too eager to use their guns today. They don't go by a continuum of force. First, I'd talk to a suspect. If that didn't work, I'd talk louder. And if that didn't work, I'd use pepper spray or tase them. Pepper spray and tasering will take anyone right down to their knees. It's brutal. There is no reason to shoot when you can use these alternate forms of disarming someone," said Denny.
“It's especially tough for people of color. We are the major targets of most of these senseless police shootings. When I was a policeman, I had a great supervisor who really believed in a lot of training. We were trained using a continuum of force. I don't see how things have gotten so bad these days. It's horrible," Denny said.
In an earlier interview, Denny told this writer that racial profiling exists these days. And he knows because he was a victim of racial profiling and saw others being made victims, too. After he retired from being a police officer, Denny said he parked his car in a parking lot in Rapid City and two groups of young people in other cars — some young Caucasians in one car and another group of young Natives in another vehicle — were in older model cars that both looked like they were in need of some mechanical work. A police officer pulled up and hit his flashers after pulling behind the car holding the young Natives, seeming to ignore the other car filled with young people who happened to be white. Denny also said that once, a police officer stopped him for having a broken taillight. As a cop, Denny told me he still makes it a habit of checking over his vehicle every time he leaves his house. “I didn't have anything wrong with my car and told that cop I did not have a broken headlight,” Denny said, and he said he insisted in discussing these matters with the cop’s immediate supervisor. After a bit of heated back and forth discourse, the supervisor was finally notified and arrived at the scene, saw that Denny’s car didn’t have a broken taillight, and then apologized to him. Denny also wrote this incident off as just another case of blatant racial profiling. “He saw that I was an Indian and decided to pull me over,” Denny said.
James Magaska Swan, founder and leader of the United Urban Warrior Society, told this writer Thursday night in a telephone interview, “It’s more of the same stuff. It’s way out of line. A lot of law enforcement are just too eager to shoot and kill (Swan said of the Ivan Wilson-Dragswolf slaying). Just today in Rapid City, another guy was killed in his apartment by police. If you look at some of these police pictures, there are a lot of police dressed up like they ‘re in Afghanistan ready to go to war.”
“A few years ago, a guy named Lucas Ghost Bear was shot and killed by police here in South Dakota who had a three-inch knife. I mean, come on, you’re a police officer and you say you’re afraid for your life - that’s what the cop said about Ghost Bear. I mean, a knife with a three-inch blade? Come on, you guys have to handle things a lot better than this! They’re too eager to shoot and kill,” Swan complained.
According to a March 14, 2003, issue of the Rapid City Journal, a preliminary report issued around this time by the South Dakota Attorney General's Office indicated there was evidence that 21-year-old Pine Ridge resident Lucas Ghost Bear “was suicidal and drinking heavily” when he was shot and killed by a Rapid City police officer during a March 9 confrontation in north Rapid City. The report released by Attorney General Larry Long cleared Senior Officer Marc Black of any wrongdoing concerning the death of Lucas Ghost Bear. "Officer Black followed Rapid City Police Department policy with regards to use of force and used lethal force as his last option," the report said.
The report concluded that Ghost Bear had been drinking heavily and had made verbal and written suicide comments to people in the month before the shooting. Ghost Bear had called police twice on the morning of March 9 to report an intoxicated, unwanted man causing a disturbance at 1721 North Maple Ave. The description of the man the caller gave dispatchers matched Ghost Bear's description, the report said. When Black arrived, he was confronted by Ghost Bear, who was holding a knife. Black ordered Ghost Bear to put down the knife, then retreated as Ghost Bear made several threatening advances. Black continued to back away, placing his patrol car between himself and Ghost Bear, who continued to advance, breaking a window in the patrol car with his fist.
Black used pepper spray several times and continued to command Ghost Bear to put down the knife, the report said.
Ghost Bear then threatened others by pounding on the door of a nearby apartment. Black again ordered Ghost Bear to drop the knife and fired three shots from his duty weapon when Ghost Bear lunged at him from the apartment's front porch. An autopsy revealed that all three slugs struck Ghost Bear, in the shoulder, abdomen and chest. The chest wound was fatal, the report said.
Although Ghost Bear's blood-alcohol content was .22 percent at the time of the shooting, according to the report, being drunk is not grounds for being executed. And if Officer Black could not handle Ghost Bear, where were other police for support?
The legal level of intoxication in drunken-driving cases is .08 percent in South Dakota, by the way. The four-page report was completed after interviews with more than 30 witnesses, Long said. Ten agents, three lab staffers and two others from the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, along with 10 investigators from the Pennington County Sheriff's Office, participated in the investigation, according to the Rapid City Journal.
One witness told investigators that Ghost Bear reportedly said, "When the cops get here, we're going to get it on," after making the second phone call to dispatchers. A call to dispatchers from another witness occurred during the shooting. The report said Black could be heard in the background ordering Ghost Bear to drop the knife, followed by the sound of three shots, according to the report.
"The officer was unknowingly drawn into a situation where Ghost Bear would force him to use lethal force," the report concludes. Rapid City police spokesman Capt. Christopher Grant said Black returned to duty Wednesday after a mandatory three-day administrative leave, during which Black was required to be examined by a department psychologist who evaluated his mental fitness for duty. The report said Black's record during his nine years with the department revealed no prior incidents of use of excessive force,
according to the Rapid City Journal.
In another telephone interview Thursday, Canupa Gluha Mani, founder of the Strong Heart Warrior Society and an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe, said, “Well, what about the Curry kid who was killed two weeks ago? He was shot beyond recognition. He ran from the Bennett County Sheriff Dept. and he fled. He ended up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the Bennett County Police should have quit pursuing him because it was out of their jurisdiction. There was some noise and the police shot and gunned him down.”
According to OST Police Chief Harry Martinez, the exchange of gunfire took place Friday evening (April 7) and involved at least 11 tribal police officers who have since been placed on administrative leave pending further investigation into the incident, according to an April 12 online offering published by the Rapid City Journal. Gluha Mani said this case involves issues with Jeffrey Lynn Curry Jr. of Allen, S.D., who was “shot beyond belief,” according to Gluha Mani, because of “law enforcement’s behavior of over-responding to a law enforcement situation.”
Members of the Bennett County Sheriff Dept. chased Currry to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Gluha Mani said.
The Bennett County Sheriff’s Dept. lost their jurisdictional boundary here and Oglala Sioux Tribal Police were called for assistance since the chase ended on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and this incident escalated into a gun battle, Gluha Mani said.
“Everyone wants to protect law enforcement. They lie, they murder, they get away with it in the name of law and order and justice. He was shot multiple times. In this gawd-forsaken day, we need to have murder charges filed against these killer police,” Gluha Mani said.
A statement from Oglala Sioux Tribal President Scott Weston said the vehicle pursuit of Curry started with Bennett County law enforcement, then was taken over by tribal police as he entered tribal jurisdiction, according to the article that appeared in the Rapid City Journal on April 12.
According to the Rapid City Journal, The release from the tribe did not identify Curry but said the suspect fired multiple shots "at random occasions" at officers during the pursuit before he was shot and killed. Martinez said the chase ended in a field southwest of Kyle, S.D., and that Curry remained in his car as agents with the FBI and the Bureau of Indian Affairs arrived on the scene.
"After a couple hours of negotiating, the officers approached the suspect," Martinez said, at which point the man exited his vehicle and was shot during a further exchange of gunfire. In 2007, Curry, then 23, was sentenced to 27 months in custody and two years of supervised release for assaulting a man with a firearm. The assault happened May 6, 2006, in Todd County,
the Rapid City Journal reported.
*****
And although many Daily Kos readers might conclude that since Curry had a gun in his possession and reportedly was firing it at police, he was indeed in the wrong, but did the Bennett County Sherriff’s Department overreact here? Could some sort of de-escalation or another rung on the continuum-of-force have been relied upon instead of having all those fast-moving police cars motoring down the roads in Bennett County and then, onto the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation? Was a high speed chase necessary? Could this situation have been handled in another way, so as to not become a menace to others traveling on the roads that this car chase took place? Wasn’t this fast-moving police car posse a danger to unassuming motorists approaching from the other direction? And with up to an estimated 11 police officers reportedly firing their guns at Curry in the field once he had ventured onto Pine Ridge Indian Reservation territory, wasn’t putting so many projectiles of high-velocity-flying lead in the air a detrimental thing to those who live on this reservation? Was there any other way of handling this volatile and violent episode of that grisly and bloody night?
James Magaska Swan, leader of the United Urban Warrior Society based in Rapid City, S.D., said, “There was a little girl — an eight-year-old Native kid — who was tasered by police. And they said this cop was justified in his actions. I even confronted the cop about this. And there was an incident where another Native man was sleeping outside and was shot by police. It’s terrible. It’s a very bad thing that Natives face. And they wonder why we never call the cops when we have trouble. Who needs them around if they’re going to act like this?”
Fred Sitting Up, a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe, “I think they're too trigger happy. These police are too eager to use their guns. Here in South Dakota, they are doing a lot of racial profiling. We try to keep our people out of the cities. But they go into the cities. We don't know why they go there, for what I'll never know.”
“A couple of years ago, there was a gun battle that involved a young Indian boy and he killed a few of the cops and they shot him. According to his friends, though, these cops were always after him. There's far too much racial profiling going on and it will always be like this. They have access to the media. Indians don't,” Sitting Up said.
Sad to say, young American Indian men seem to have targets on them. There have been far to many police killings of young Native men in the recent past. Lance McIntire, a 44-year-old member of the Omaha Tribe was murdered Thursday, April 7, 2016, near the corner of L Street and 31st Street in Omaha, Neb., while inside his car, a red 2002 Toyota Camry, according to another article this writer wrote last year that appeared on the opednews.com magazine.
"This young man was taken by senseless violence. Lance was my nephew," said Canupa Gluha Mani, in the opednews.com article. Julia Ramirez, Lance's sister, said there were problems with the police report. "There are all sorts of conflicting stories," she told this writer in a telephone interview for the opednews.com story.
"At the crime scene, there was no crime lab present. People who witnessed this say there was no forensics team sent to the scene," Ramirez said. "And there was evidence tampering at the scene. We have pictures of the car's bumper that fell off the car. In the photos taken at the scene, one picture shows the bumper near the car and another picture shows the bumper moved to another area of the parking lot, far away from the car," she added.
Hermus Lone Dog, Lance's brother-in-law, who is married to Lance's sister, Dena, also told this writer in a telephone interview that there is conflicting evidence concerning the police shooting itself. Conflicting reports, even in the media, are muddled. One report claims Lance McIntire was killed by an African-American police officer, while another report claims there were two police officers who shot and killed Lance.
All told, media reports claim 16 shots were fired at McIntire and that four shots entered his body. A media report KETV-7 claims that all 16 shots were fired by Omaha Police Department Detective Dale Thomas.
It is not certain whether Lance McIntire had a gun in his car. Although the police claim he had a .22-caliber pistol in his vehicle, witnesses at the scene say they never saw a gun. Also, witnesses claim Lance McIntire did not brandish any type of weapon while he was being fired upon. If there was a gun in the car, witnesses and family members agree, it was in the back seat of the vehicle. All shots were fired by police from a Glock .40-milimeter, standard-issue police handgun, or possibly even handguns, in the plural sense, Omaha human rights activist D'Shawn Cunningham told this writer, who added that Lance's vehicle was immediately impounded by the Omaha Police Department but it was released to the family a short time later. This also raises questions concerning alleged evidence tampering possibilities on the part of the Omaha Police Department (in regard to possible evidence within McIntire's Toyota Camry), Cunningham alleges, according to the opednews.com offering.
This writer called the family the day the article was posted to see how any legal action taken against the City of Omaha and the Omaha Police Department was developing, but family members of Lance McIntire did not respond.
In yet another case, Phillip Highbear, of Eagle Butte, S.D., was arrested on Sept. 15, 2015, for being intoxicated and was subsequently thrown into the drunk tank, where inmates sleep on cement floors without mattresses and bedding. According to James Magaska Swan, the FBI is investigating this case and it is in limbo. Swan talked about High Bear's murder with this writer on Monday, Jan. 19, 2016, and was distressed and angry that nothing has been done by federal law enforcement concerning Mr. High Bear's death for such a trivial crime as being found inebriated by Tribal Law Enforcement, according to another article this writer penned for opednews.com.
“There are varied accounts of police and police administrators of this tribal law-enforcement CRST headquarters being fired after the FBI became involved. Some reports name officers and top brass that have resigned, but conflicting reports leave things up in the air. To say the fallout from Highbear's death has been nebulous is an understatement. It sounds more like the "he said, she said" talk before and after a Powwow. And it's typical aftereffect of a police cover-up,” my opednews.com article reads.
And the insanity of all these young Native American men just goes on and on. On Dec. 21, 2013, Mah-hi-vist Goodblanket, after having an argument with his girlfriend, went on a rampage by breaking several windows out of his parent’s home and knocking over a Christmas tree. His parents, feeling that he was a threat to himself and others, called 911, according to NewsOK. But law enforcement did not talk their son down or remedy this situation, they riddled Mah-hi-vist’s 6-foot-eight, 18-year-old body with bullets.
“An ambulance and officers arrived on the scene, according to accounts from both the Goodblanket family and the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribal Tribune. Melissa Goodblanket said she requested an assessment from the paramedics. `I was ignored,’ she said. Wilbur Goodblanket asked the officers `Don’t shoot my son. Tase him,’” according to IndianCountryToday.
According to COPBLOCK, “Around 8pm on December 21, 2013 18-year-old Mah-hi-vist Goodblanket was unjustly slain, shot seven times by two Custer County Sheriff employees – Dillon Mach and a still-unnamed second shooter. Present were also two Oklahoma Highway Patrol employees who work out of Troop H. The Goodblankets – Wilbur, Melissa, their son Ahk-ta-na-hi, and their dog – who were told by police employees to stay out of the way, sat inside Wilbur’s idling pickup facing the house. Mah-hi-vist sat inside talking with his girlfriend.”
COPBLOCK continues, “Two waves of police employees entered the dwelling through a large bedroom window that Mah-hi-vist had earlier broken. In the first entry, two Custer County Sheriff employees were inside less than 15-seconds before they exited and walked to the ambulance on scene, as one of those two – Chance Avery – had cut his hand on the broken glass. In the second entry, two Custer County Sheriff employees and two Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) employees entered through the window. Less than a minute later one of those OHP employees opened the front door for a third OHP employee to enter. As that happened, Mah-hi-vist’s girlfriend Noami Barron ran out the door between the kitchen and the garage and, as she fell crying and sick, yelled `They shot Bird!’”
“It’s thought that between the two entries, as Custer County and OHP employees arrived, they saw a fellow badge-wearing colleague enter an ambulance, and assumed that whatever injury happened was caused by Mah-hi-vist. Thus vengeance, not de-escalation, was their main drive. To date, Custer County sheriff Bruce J. Peoples has claimed that Dillon Mach and Chance Avery struggled with Mah-hi-vist and were forced to resort to deadly force. It was at that time, Peoples has stated, that Avery accidentally shot his own hand. Yet Avery wasn’t even on the property when Mah-hi-vist was shot, and the injury he sustained was caused by the broken glass of the window where he had initially entered the house,” COPBLOCK reports.
“When the body of Mah-hi-vist was brought out of the house, he was already bagged to be transported to Oklahoma City for the medical examiner's office,” IndianCountryToday goes on to say, adding, “Melissa insisted that she be allowed to pray over her son, which was allowed by investigators. It would be another five days—Thursday January 26—when Melissa and Wilbur would see the body of their son at the funeral home. Wilbur said that he counted seven entry wounds.”
“Indian Country Today Media Network asked Custer County Sheriff Bruce Peoples if a Taser was used on Goodblanket. Although he declined to comment as to the specifics of the investigation, he said that a Taser was used and that Goodblanket was armed. A report in the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribal Tribune on January 1 quoted Peoples stating that Goodblanket threw knives at officers and that one officer shot his own hand off. When asked about the officer, Peoples told ICTMN the officer `lost a finger,’” according to the article by the leading publication of records for the nation’s Native American populace.
“Within the heart of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal jurisdiction in western Oklahoma sits Custer County. The county’s namesake made a name for himself as an `Indian Fighter’ by attacking Black Kettle’s village on the Washita River in 1868—four years after Black Kettle survived the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864,” this article states.
“In the past few years, Custer has found itself linked again to the mysterious deaths of Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal members. On June 28, 2012, police officers in the city of Clinton, within Custer County, shot and killed 34-year-old Benjamin Whiteshield outside of their police station. According to the Oklahoman, Whiteshield’s family took him to the police station to get help for an alleged delusional episode. The report said that Whiteshield was armed with a crescent wrench, but nothing in the news report stated whether or not he threatened or attacked any police officers,” the ICT offering adds.