OLYMPIA, Wash. – Senate Bill 5060 is a proposed bill that would create a law enforcement hiring grant program.
The Washington State Senate bill creates a grant which could pay for up to 75% of entry-level salaries and fringe benefits of full-time local and tribal officers.
The goal of the bill is to help fill vacancies within local and tribal law enforcement officer positions in the state.
“Unfortunately, tribes… we don’t have a lot of money to fund law enforcement. So, unfortunately, oftentimes our police force is short staffed. Also, many of our tribal police officers get hired away for more lucrative positions,” Margo Lee Hill, a member of the Spokane Tribe of Indians, former attorney for the Tribe, former Tribal Judge and current professor at Eastern Washington University, said.
Crime remains an endemic issue on tribal land, with skyrocketing rates of homicide, drug use, child abuse, gang activity and more.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, violent crime rates, overall, on Native American reservations are 2.5 times higher than the national average.
“We are divested of our criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians under the Oliphant Decision of 1978…. So, bad actors whether they’re drug dealers or other types of criminal elements know that we have a real challenge over protecting our citizens and prosecuting them. So, our law enforcement [has] to work collaboratively with federal agencies,” Lee Hill said.
If SB 5060 is passed, the grant would pay percentages of the salaries for a maximum of 36 months.
To secure those dollars, it would require a 25% local cash-match.
The cap for each hired officer would be $125,000.
“We need more law enforcement. We have serious issues. And it’s not of our own asking. We didn’t ask to be placed on a reservation. We didn’t ask to have our criminal jurisdiction taken away to prosecute bad actors,” Lee Hill said.
To fund this act, approximately $1 million would be set aside for fiscal year 2026 from the General Fund.
NonStop Local contacted the Spokane Tribe of Indians’ Police Department Monday. They informed NonStop Local their Chief of Police was unavailable to talk about this bill by deadline.
