Chief: ‘Criminals know we can’t act in Benewah County’

Keith Hutcheson, police chief of the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Police Department police chief, told lawmakers, “Since termination of the agreement, the department has been confronted on a daily basis with inability to enforce law with regard to non-tribal members on the reservation. We experience a slow to no response from the Benewah County Sheriff’s Department, causing a great risk to my officers.” He said his force has 14 officers, all of whom have gone through the state’s POST, or Police Officer Standards and Training academy. Yet, they can’t make arrests of non-tribal members in the Benewah County portion of the reservation, and must instead wait for a sheriff’s officer to show up to make the arrest.

“Criminals know that we can’t act in Benewah County,” Hutcheson said. “They find the holes and say, ‘Oh, we’ll go to Benewah County. … So they come to the area where we cannot enforce the law.” He said a recent incident in which sheriff’s officers wouldn’t respond involved a non-tribal member who was shooting a gun into the ground toward a park, “where there were children playing. … There was no response.” He said, “We’ve had incidents where we’re waiting for hours for a deputy to show up. … We don’t leave the scene, we hold them on-scene and wait for the deputy to show up.”