WASHINGTON, D.C. (John Hult, South Dakota Searchlight) – Bureau of Indian Affairs police recruits in South Dakota need a training facility closer to home, South Dakota’s junior senator told the Department of Interior this week.

Sen. Mike Rounds urged the department to find a way to train tribal law enforcement in South Dakota in a letter to Brian Newland, assistant director of the department, which oversees the BIA.

Currently, most BIA officers are trained in New Mexico. In a Thursday news release, Rounds said the lack of a closer facility hamstrings recruitment efforts in the Great Plains, where some tribes have declared states of emergency over spikes in violent crime.

“With no basic federal training options for tribal law enforcement on the Great Plains, prospective officers are opting to work for local agencies or leave the law enforcement field altogether,” Rounds said.

The letter to Newland points out that several tribal communities in South Dakota operate with just a handful of officers to patrol “millions of acres.”

“Criminal entities are taking advantage of these shortages and are distributing higher volumes of illegal drugs, including fentanyl,” the letter says.

The lack of a local training option was a topic of conversation in Wagner on Wednesday, when South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson met with leaders of the Yankton Sioux Tribe.

Johnson suggested a partnership between the BIA and South Dakota’s Law Enforcement Training Center, located in Pierre.

“I can’t imagine anything but good coming from tribal law enforcement training alongside the state’s law enforcement,” Johnson said.

State Rep. Rocky Blare, R-Ideal, introduced a resolution during the 2024 state legislative session urging the establishment of a South Dakota training facility for tribal officers. It passed both chambers unanimously.

In his letter, Rounds tells Assistant Secretary Newland that he’s “become aware of several suitable, existing training facilities that could address the recruitment and training problem without significant cost.”

“With the current situation in mind, I respectfully ask you to meet with me to discuss this issue,” Rounds wrote.

 

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight) – The state Department of Corrections has decided to expand the number of allowable daily phone calls for inmates when tablet-based calling resumes on Friday after a pause that contributed to unrest at the penitentiary.

A memo posted Thursday to the DOC website says that starting April 5, inmates at its facilities will be allowed to make five calls a day, each with a limit of 20 minutes, from either wall phones or their tablets.

A memo earlier this week suggested that a resumption of tablet-based phone calls would be accompanied by a three-call daily limit – a move met with resistance by inmates and their loved ones.

The updated call limit is the latest turn in a month-long communications saga that has frustrated the families and friends of inmates and served as the spark for at least two nights of unrest and one staff injury at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.

Tablet-based communications were suspended indefinitely on March 8 because of an unspecified investigation into tablet-enabled behavior that Gov. Kristi Noem would later describe as “nefarious.”

Until then, inmates and their families and friends had been able to use the contractor-provided tablets to send email-like messages and instant messages for fees. South Dakota has collected at least $1.25 million in commission for calls, emails and messages over the past three years through a combination of tablet- and landline-based communications.

The DOC acknowledged the shutdown publicly with a notice on its website 12 days later. One week after that, a disturbance at the penitentiary’s East Hall – one of two wings in the oldest parts of the 143-year-old facility – erupted, during which inmates could be heard yelling “we want phones.” Yelling could be heard in East Hall the following night, as well.

A correctional officer was injured on the first night, Gov. Noem said in a recorded interview. No update on that officer’s condition has been released.

A representative for state employees told South Dakota Searchlight that tablets alone cannot explain the unrest. He pointed to inconsistent discipline policies and other changes that may have emboldened prisoners to harm correctional officers.

A DOC officer statement shared with The Dakota Scout pointed to a slowdown in the disciplinary use of the Special Housing Unit – commonly known as “the hole” – as part of the the reason for the disturbance. The same letter accused the DOC of downplaying the severity of the incidents.

On Sunday, DOC staff received a memo saying calls from tablets could resume this week, but that inmates could make three per day from either their tablets or the wall phones at DOC facilities.

An inmate at the Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield told the Argus Leader that tensions had been rising over the three-call limit, and that he’d heard “guys talking about, you know, retaliating against — I don’t want to say it — non-inmates.”

The latest memo from Director of Prisons Amber Pirraglia says tablet-based calling will resume with a five-call daily limit “to promote offender communication with family and loved ones.”

 

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – United States Attorney Alison J. Ramsdell announced that a joint online sex crimes operation, which ran from March 7, 2024, through March 12, 2024, has concluded with the arrest of 11 individuals. The operation was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, Sioux Falls Police Department, Watertown Police Department, Tea Police Department, Rapid City Police Department, Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office, Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, and the South Dakota Highway Patrol.

As a result, the following individuals from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, were arrested and federally charged with Attempted Enticement of a Minor Using the Internet:

• Kyle Dean Bult, age 38;
• Kalvin Michael Frankus, age 37;
• Hunter Hill, age 22;
• Stacy Shannon Hoover, age 56;
• Ryan Nigro, age 32;
• Jorge Manual Rodriguez-Marroquin, age 47;
• Dylan Ryan, age 24;
• Gerber David Santos Gonzalez, age 25;
• William Danery Sebastian, age 33;
• Southy Thepmontry, age 69; and
• Carter Lee Tyree, age 20.

The mandatory minimum penalty upon conviction is 10 years and a maximum of life in federal prison and/or a $250,000 fine. The charges are merely accusations, and all Defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

“This operation demonstrates the unsettling reality that here in our own communities, there are individuals using the Internet to target young girls and boys for sex,” said U.S. Attorney Alison Ramsdell. “We are grateful to our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, who regularly collaborate to safeguard children across South Dakota. May it serve as a stark reminder to parents, guardians, and caretakers that the Internet can be a very dangerous place for children, particularly when their activity is left unmonitored.”

“Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents work tirelessly to protect children from exploitation,” said Jamie Holt, HSI St. Paul Special Agent in Charge. “This successful online sex crimes operation shows the threat child predators pose in our communities and the importance of working hand-in-hand with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to bring individuals and networks who prey on vulnerable populations to justice.”

The cases are being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jeffrey C. Clapper and Elizabeth A. Ebert.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children, as well as identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc.

 

SIOUX FALLS — At a roundtable that Rep. Dusty Johnson organized Monday to discuss “the impact of the Chinese Communist Party,” some South Dakota business and agricultural leaders told him to protect business ties with Chinese partners.

Johnson, R-South Dakota, is a member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. He organized the roundtable to learn about the impact that the Chinese government has on the state. The roundtable at the Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce included business leaders, agricultural leaders and academics.

Some participants told Johnson they value their relationships with Chinese partners and expressed concern about actions that could hurt their businesses and institutions.

“China is a huge buyer of dairy products,” said Jason Mischel, of Valley Queen Cheese Factory in Milbank. “Without access to that market, it would have a big impact on American dairy producers.”

The roundtable was the latest in a string of events, media appearances, speeches and social media postings by Johnson focusing on threats from China’s communist government.

“We have hoped for 30 years that economic engagement would make China freer,” Johnson said Monday. “What we are doing is not working.”

Some roundtable participants were more focused on the potential economic ramifications of alienating China.

“Our supply chain is enormous coming out of China,” said Judd Guthmiller, international vice president at Daktronics, a Brookings-based scoreboard maker that relies on Chinese manufacturing.

Johnson sees China growing more authoritarian as it shifts even further toward one-man rule and leverages advanced technologies to control and sometimes abuse its people, steal intellectual property and spy on other nations. Johnson has said the U.S. should “strategically decouple” from China by moving vital supply chains for items such as pharmaceuticals and computer chips out of the country, while still sending agricultural commodities to China and engaging in other trade.

Evert Van der Sluis, professor of economics at South Dakota State University, said political leaders should focus on strengthening relationships with allies and investing in research and education efforts that ensure American supremacy, rather than economic decoupling.

“As we move towards a system of fragmentation with a China-based world and U.S.-based world, we have to look at costs,” Van der Sluis said. “If we want to remove ourselves from China, we have to acknowledge that prices will go up, and increase inflation even more.”

U.S. agricultural exports to China in fiscal year 2022 reached $36.4 billion, surpassing the previous year’s record and making China the U.S.’s largest agricultural export market for the second consecutive year.

Those record numbers came after Chinese retaliatory tariffs in 2019, during the administration of President Donald Trump, resulted in the lowest export values in a decade.

“For the average South Dakota farmer, $50,000 was the average loss,” said Jerry Schmitz, executive director of the South Dakota Soybean Association, referring to 2019.

China is also the world’s largest consumer of feed grains, like corn, sorghum and alfalfa hay. Additionally, China’s beef consumption and import demand have grown over the past decade, with total imports reaching $17 billion in 2022.

“They are the consumer,” Schmitz said. “And if we say we’re not going to sell to China anymore, or only a third as much, then another country is going to come in, buy our soybeans, transfer them to China, and we lose.”

President Joe Biden is already imposing new actions to counter China; specifically, banning the export of advanced technologies that might help China’s military build world-dominating weapons or artificial intelligence systems. And Biden signed the CHIPS Act, which aims to move some vital semiconductor manufacturing from China back to the United States.

The export ban is having an impact – a woman was recently caught smuggling computer chips to China in a fake baby bump. The policies have reverberated throughout supply chains, leaving some Chinese firms struggling to finalize business plans, fulfill orders and build production lines.

And then there’s TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media app that claims 150 million American users. Many Democratic and Republican politicians believe that user data is at risk. There are multiple ideas about how to ban TikTok at the national level, and several states have already taken action. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has banned TikTok on state government