5 things that may surprise you about Native Americans' police encounters.

[defacto7]

RAPID CITY, S.D. – It's a familiar story: A police officer shoots and kills a person of color, and is later cleared. Community outrage and protests follow.

While the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City grabbed national headlines and spawned the Black Lives Matter movement, Native Americans say they're also suffering from long-standing disparities in criminal justice, including police killings – far from the national spotlight.

Two recent incidents involving white officers in the state have stoked suspicions. In August, a tribal police officer on the Pine Ridge Reservation repeatedly used a stun gun on 32-year-old Jeffrey Eagle Bull. Then, in the state capital Pierre, the parents of an 8-year-old Rosebud Sioux girl sued police after four officers surrounded the child and used a stun gun on her when she was threatening to harm herself.
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According to a Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, Native Americans account for 1.9 percent of police killings even though they're just 0.8 percent of the U.S. population

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Native Americans are the group most likely to die in confrontations with law enforcement

I have little to add so maybe I'll just let it speak for itself.

[Dont call me Shirley]

1. I am profoundly sorry for the decimation and abuse the original inhabitants of the western

continents have suffered and still suffer at the hands of abusers, genociders and know-nothings.

[Terra Alta]

2. I'm half Native American, and find this alarming.

And people wonder why I don't trust cops.

It's sad that 500+ years after Columbus invaded and did horrible things to natives, people of Native descent are still being treated unfairly. Wish people were more aware of the plight still suffered by Native Americans. Native lives DO matter.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. I've had clerks give me a look when I buy firewater....

Not so much after I cut off the ponytail.

[raven mad]

4. Ditto for Alaska Natives.