Bill focuses on missing persons in Nevada tribes

Law Would Open Access To Federal Tools

Assemblywoman Shea Backus, a Las Vegas Democrat and an enrolled member of the Eastern Cherokee, is sponsoring Assembly Bill 125, which would require all law enforcement in Nevada, including nontribal police, to take reports of Indigenous people who go missing from a Nevada reservation under suspicious circumstances. Police would enter the details into existing national databases, allowing any other o cer who might make contact with that person to know that they’ve been reported missing.

At a March 6 hearing, the bill’s first, Backus noted that going missing is not itself a crime, and her bill respects tribal sovereignty. If passed into law, the reporting requirement wouldn’t seek nontribal police to enter reservations to take over an investigation, but to get the basics into o cial national databases to get more eyes looking out for missing persons. Time is of the essence with missing persons, and tribal resources can be limited and patchwork, Backus said.

Not all tribes have police departments, and not all tribal police departments have access to databases like the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, so they will rely on the FBI or the federal Bureau of Indian A airs for law enforcement. The BIA has a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Unit, but the unit only has one dedicated agent to cover Nevada along with two neighboring states. In any event, jurisdictional issues can be tricky.

“The Department of Interior openly recognizes [that] Native American and Alaska Native communities have struggled with high rates of assault, abduction and murder of women” especially, Backus said. But the federal government also acknowledges that precise data on missing and murdered Indigenous people is unreliable, she said. Often, even their race is misclassified, she added. –Hillary Davis