COPS Training Portal

Course Overview: Effective Multi-Jurisdictional Collaboration in Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Cases, an eLearning course, explores how partnerships between Tribal law enforcement and local, state, federal, and private sector agencies can strengthen and help sustain their efforts to prevent and effectively respond to MMIP cases using a fair, victim-centered and trauma-informed approach.

This course teaches how tribal, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies and private organizations can form partnerships through the use of Memorandums of Understanding/Memorandums of Agreement (MOU/MOAs), as well and other relationship-enhancing shared resources, to support communication and collaboration to prevent and respond effectively to MMIP cases. Through a case study exercise, students will learn how MOU/MOAs can be used as a guide for law enforcement agencies seeking to enhance their MMIP efforts by memorializing cooperative arrangements.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify gaps in jurisdictional authority, expertise, and resources that could impede an effective response to MMIP situations.
  
• Identify multi-jurisdictional partnership and collaboration agreements to supplement existing MMIP resources.
• Incorporate the key components of community policing into a Tribal law enforcement agency’s approach to developing partnerships and agreements to effectively manage, investigate, respond to, and solve MMIP cases.
• Draft, develop, and implement MOU/MOAs that effectively facilitate the formalization and adaption of agreements and resource-sharing efforts for effectively addressing MMIP cases.
• Establish multi-jurisdictional best practice protocols and procedures for successfully investigating MMIP cases.

Target Audience: The target audience for this online course is Tribal, federal, state, and local criminal justice agencies with responsibility for preventing and effectively responding to MMIP cases, including the following disciplines: law enforcement, emergency medical services, victim services, government administration, public safety communications, media/communications, medical/health care, education, emergency managers, community stakeholders.

Cooperative Partners: This tuition-free online training was developed by the Western Community Policing Institute (WCPI) and was supported by cooperative agreement 15JCOPS-21-GK-02123-SIND by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).

Learning Hours: 3 hours including the pre-test and post-test.

Is this POST approved in my state?

NOTE: This is a free resource, NOT an eLearning course. There is no pretest or posttest, and you will not receive a certificate of completion for reviewing this resource.

Resource Overview: Public Law 280 Training Program for Enhanced Collaborative Law Enforcement, a module-based curriculum, provides participants with background information and tangible strategies necessary for effectively policing PL280 reservations.  The nuances of PL280 can have varying applications in different states, resulting in confusion regarding jurisdiction in Indian Country. Through cooperation and collaborative resource sharing, tribal and non-tribal law enforcement can work within PL280 to benefit their jurisdictions.

The introductory module explores the history of PL280 while identifying when tribal, state, and federal governments have jurisdiction.  Learners then examine the practical applications of PL280 in their state and recognize benefits and challenges to community policing and how to implement key community policing strategies to enhance responsiveness to the most challenging and frequently occurring crimes in PL280 jurisdictions. The curriculum demonstrates how to establish a task force, garner support for task force development, gather resources, and adapt the task force to overcome environmental and political barriers. Insight into the historical background of tribal governments leads to understanding how sovereignty can be used to foster effective law enforcement by building capacity through regulation and tribal law.

Target Audience: Law enforcement and tribal and non-tribal state/government leadership.

Additional Resources

• Public Law 280 Homepage
• Strategic Applications International Homepage
• Cross-Deputization in Indian Country (pdf)
• Promising Practices in Tribal Community Policing (pdf)
• Public Safety Partnerships in Indian Country (pdf)
• Successful Tribal Community Policing Initiatives: A Resource for Communities Developing Public Safety Programs and Strategies (pdf)
• Department of Justice - American Indians and Crime (pdf)
• Department of Justice - Public Law 280 FAQ
• Department of Justice - Policing on American Indian Reservations (pdf)
• National Institute of Justice - Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men (pdf)
• What is Public Law 280? Learning Graphic (pdf)
• Tribal Community Policing Learning Graphic (pdf)
• Taskforce Development Learning Graphic (pdf)
• Sovereignty Learning Graphic (pdf)