Still Not Enough Police on Standing Rock

From KQCD-TV, here's the whole thing:

The Standing Rock Reservation doesn`t have enough police officers.

That`s what Senator Byron Dorgan says, and he wants to find ways to fix it.

Dorgan held an official hearing at Fort Yates today to look at law enforcement in American Indian communities.

Ron His Horse Is Thunder, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, says he`s encouraged by Dorgan`s support.

He says a recent surge that increased the number of officers on the reservation from eight to 37 helped.

He says with those additional officers, people felt safe.

"Now that those numbers are reduced down to 12 law enforcement officers, you start to see the difference," says His Horse Is Thunder. "As we were talking about with Senator Dorgan, suicides have a direct correlation to the lack of law enforcement officers. Our children just don`t feel safe."

The reservation suffers from a violent crime rate more than eight-and-a-half times higher than the national average.

His Horse Is Thunder hopes that a proposal to create a new training facility for would-be officers will help improve that.