Screenshot from video of Sioux Falls police officers arresting Daniel Bettelyoun on March 25, 2024.

By Darren Thompson

Sioux Falls, SD—Last week, several Sioux Falls police officers were recorded on a cell phone beating a man while making an arrest and communities are demanding justice. The video captures two police officers on top of Daniel Bettelyoun, a 44-year-old Oglala Lakota citizen, punching and tasing while he was laying face down in his mother’s apartment unit. The incident happened at approximately 10:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 25, 2024 at Daniel Bettelyoun’s mother’s apartment in Sioux Falls.

According to Sioux Falls Police Chief Jon Thum, police officers reported that Bettelyoun fled from police officers and ran into his mother’s apartment. The video of his arrest was recorded by another tenant in the apartment complex and has since been widely shared on social media.

The video shows a group of police officers detaining Bettelyoun while he’s laying face down on the ground and he’s suddenly punched on the left side of his head repeatedly by one officer and then immediately tased on his lower right leg by another officer. People were shouting in the background, asking officers to stop and Bettelyoun to comply.

Thum said to Keloland News on March 27 that a use-of-force situation can be difficult to watch, but it is part of police work. “A physical conflict with a resolution can be uncomfortable for people to see, but it is the reality of some situations,” Thum said. Thum also said the agency has begun an internal investigation on the use of the force by officers during the arrest of Daniel Bettelyoun and should be completed within two weeks.

Bettelyoun has since been released from custody, and faces several additional charges including resisting arrest, possession of a controlled substance, and obstructing police. The video has stirred up an organized response though, and groups of people are heading to Sioux Falls from Minneapolis, Rapid City, and the Sioux Falls area on Friday, April 5 to rally against police brutality.

Rachel Dionne-Thunder said in an interview with LRI Media that the Indigenous Protector Movement is organizing a caravan from Minneapolis, including paying for travel expenses to all who travel to the prayer and march planned for Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. “We want to show the Sioux Falls community support from Minneapolis,” she said.

“As Native and Indigenous people, it is our sovereign right to protect our communities when the system fails us,” said Dionne-Thunder, IPM's Vice-President of Operations. “The system failed Daniel Bettelyoun. The system has been failing the community of Sioux Falls. We will not stand idle when settler, colonial violence is being perpetrated against our people.”

Law enforcement data is often skewed and don’t include interactions, or arrests, of American Indian or Alaskan Native people because officers simply don't know if a person is Native or they are mixed race and categorized as an identifying race such as white, or black, or hispanic. However, independent studies show that arrests of American Indian people is often more than ten times the national average, and interactions are also violent according to a 2017 report published by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Native people—American Indian, Alaskan Native, or Native Hawaiian—are killed in police encounters at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group, according to their data. The mortality rate for being beaten, or manhandled, is 12% higher among American Indians compared to African-Americans and three times the rate of white people.

Last October, the Southwest Center for Equal Justice published a study that revealed Native Americans were arrested nearly 12 times the rate of white people in Flagstaff, Arizona, a “border town” in Coconino County. Several tribal communities including the Navajo, Hopi, Havasupai, Hualapai, and Southern Paiute all travel, work, or live in the city and have been advocating for change for years. In 2021, the study revealed that Coconino County had the second highest arrest rate of all Arizona counties, and Arizona had the eighth highest incarcerations rates in the country. The study also published that the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world in 2021 as well.

"It can be inferred from these facts that Coconino County has one of highest incarceration rates in the world. And the people who are incarcerated are primarily men and women who are members of the Navajo, Hopi and other Native American tribes,” read Southwest Center for Equal Justice study.

In Rapid City, South Dakota six murders of Indigenous people are still open cases, where a suspect has not been identified, since 2020. Recently, a young Oglala woman was shot on E. North Street on Rapid City’s northside and two suspects have been charged and arraigned in connection with the murder.

South Dakota has the highest incarceration rate in the world, at 824 per 100,000 people, according to a study published by the Prison Policy Initiative; the U.S. national incarceration rate is 664 per 100,000 people. Native people are incarcerated in state and federal prisons at a rate of 763 per 100,000 people, which is double the national rate of 350 per 100,000 people.

The incarceration rates for American Indian and Alaskan Native peoples in South Dakota’s jail and prisons is astounding. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics and data from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Indians comprise 8% of South Dakota’s population, but represent 36% in the state’s prisons and 47% of the state's jails.

Sioux Falls Police Recorded Beating Oglala Lakota Man During Arrest, Internal Investigation Underway