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But soon after he began working with Nez Perce tribal law enforcement, Beckstead had a striking first impression that the police department was embroiled in "chaos." 

"One of the big issues was just getting information from the police department to the prosecutor's office to be able to review it and decide the charges," he said.Ìý

Turf wars within the police department also meant that victim advocates were often sidelined, Beckstead said, because detectives seemed to believe those "advocates were meddling in their business or something like that." 

The "chaos" and dysfunction came to a head on Halloween night 2020 when a 28-year-old tribal citizen named Bessie Blackeagle was murdered by her boyfriend, Travis Ellenwood, Beckstead said.Ìý

The killing was a watershed moment for Beckstead.Ìý

Like many others within and outside the tribe’s justice system, Beckstead believes police could have done more to respond to allegations of domestic violence against Ellenwood before he murdered Blackeagle.Ìý

Blackeagle’s death, Beckstead said, "really changed my view of everything about what we needed to be doing" and "what I needed to do as prosecutor to try to protect people." 

But while Beckstead said he pursued reforms, he alleges that Daniel Taylor, who served as the department’s criminal investigator until 2024,  and others in law enforcement pushed back on his efforts.Ìý

He said he continued to press for change — and faced continued resistance — after being promoted in 2021 to serve as the Nez Perce Tribe’s Law and Order executive officer, a position that put him at the helm of the tribe’s entire justice system.Ìý 

Those efforts gathered new urgency last year, he said, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs found that three of the tribal police department’s top officials — Taylor; Harold Scott, who served as the tribe’s police chief from 2016 until 2023; and Leotis McCormack, who served as police captain until 2024 — had engaged in misconduct.Ìý

That misconduct included "retaliation/reprisal, the willful or negligent making of an untruthful statement of any kind in any written or oral report pertaining to an officer’s official duties, and dereliction of duty," according to a memo Beckstead sent to the tribe’s new police chief, prosecutor and chairman in November.

In an interview with Lee Enterprises, Beckstead described the contents of that BIA investigation, which resulted, he said, from "complaints of deficiencies in operations and investigations" within the Nez Perce police. Beckstead said the bureau's findings were focused on how Scott, Taylor and McCormack violated BIA policies through various actions.

After that report’s findings were released, Beckstead said he faced "tremendous pushback" from within the tribal government as he sought to get rid of those who the BIA had determined to have engaged in misconduct.Ìý

While Taylor and McCormack were ultimately fired and Scott retired, Beckstead was let go as well. Soon after he sent his memo about that investigation, Beckstead’s contract to serve as Law and Order executive officer was not renewed.Ìý

The reason, Beckstead believes, is that he spoke publicly about the BIA’s findings and tried to call attention to the problems within the police department.

‘Official response’

In response to questions from the Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team, Rachel E. Wilson, the tribe’s communication manager, provided an "official response" on behalf of the Nez Perce Tribe.

That response did not include answers to questions about Beckstead’s claims regarding his time with the tribe.Ìý

Wilson wrote that the tribe is "dedicated to maintaining the highest level of law enforcement" and that the "department is undergoing significant improvements" under Chief Mark Bensen, referring to the police chief Beckstead hired to take over the department in .Ìý

"While acknowledging that past incidents may have involved missteps or misunderstandings," Wilson added, "it is our priority to learn, evolve, and move forward with integrity and accountability."

Taylor and other officers found to have engaged in misconduct did not respond to questions for this article, but attorney Matthew Lovell replied on his behalf.Ìý

Lovell said he is representing Taylor and Leotis McCormack, the captain also found to have engaged in misconduct, in "ongoing litigation with the Nez Perce Tribe and the Bureau of Indian Affairs" but declined to comment further.Ìý

A BIA spokesperson answered some questions about its procedures for investigating and overseeing tribal police but said the bureau "does not comment on how a tribe handles justice, as long as they follow their own rules and federal agreements." 

The Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team made a public records request for the BIA’s complete investigative report in September, but the bureau had not provided it as of press time, nearly a year later.Ìý

‘Burying stuff’

Soon after he started as the Nez Perce tribal prosecutor, Beckstead said, he noticed "conflict" between two of the top police officials: Taylor, the criminal investigator, and Martin Antone, who was then the Nez Perce police captain.

They had a "huge feud and were very public about it," Beckstead said.

Antone did not respond to a request for comment.

"That was causing divisions within different tribal departments, and different people in the community would only trust one or the other. And so it was just kind of very hard to sort out whose heart was in the right place with stuff sometimes."

Meanwhile, Beckstead said, Scott, who was the police chief until 2023, appeared unable to maintain control of the department, leaving "a leadership vacuum." 

That created various shortcomings within the tribal justice system that Beckstead wanted to improve, especially after Blackeagle’s death, he said.Ìý

One thing Beckstead wanted to do was create a "domestic violence response team that was more proactive about dealing with the people that were experiencing violence," he said.

His idea was to bring advocates, cops and prosecutors together to share information and "make sure stuff wasn't falling through the cracks," Beckstead said. "Because Bessie’s case really laid bare how things were falling through the cracks." 

He noted that there "were several instances where cops and advocates had contacts with Bessie in the year leading up to her death."

In one, he said, police responded to a call and found Bessie with "marks on her neck and her butt was dirty from falling on her butt, which are pretty clear clues that she's been a victim of strangulation, which is a very serious crime, very high likelihood of death.

"It's ultimately what killed her. It's often the last thing (that happens) before the person does die — you catch the guy strangling her. But that wasn't caught on to by the investigating officer. He just kind of quieted down the situation, and that was the end of it." 

Up until that point, Beckstead had only looked at the reports that police sent to him indicating there was probable cause to pursue charges because he "trusted the police department were sending everything that they could find with probable cause to charge." 

But after Blackeagle’s death, he "wanted to become more involved in looking at all reports that are coming through," he said.Ìý

Doing so would allow him to see whether police had missed opportunities to charge people for crimes, he said.Ìý

It would also allow his office to "keep track of what's going on with these people and keep track of the pattern of what's happening to them, so that we do respond appropriately."

Overall, he said, the goal was "to be more engaged" in preventing crime, "rather than just responding to stuff." 

But Taylor and other investigators had a "very negative" response to his attempts to "become more involved" and to search through the police records system to screen for criminal activity, especially domestic violence or rape, Beckstead said.Ìý

Taylor told him in a "direct confrontation" to "back off" and "quit looking at this stuff before they pass it to us," Beckstead recalled.Ìý

That made him wonder if police were "burying stuff," Beckstead said.Ìý

‘Chaos on all sides’

The problems went beyond the police department, Beckstead said.Ìý

"It's not just all the cops," he said. "The court was kind of in chaos too. We had various judges come in for a while. We were without a main judge for a while. We had an interim judge that was coming down from Spokane a couple times a week. So it was kind of like chaos on all sides." 

But there were deeper issues, too.Ìý

While tribes were granted sovereignty under the terms of peace treaties with the U.S. government, they are limited in their ability to mete out justice themselves.Ìý

When Congress passed the Major Crimes Act in the late 19th century, it gave the federal government jurisdiction over certain offenses, including murder, felony child abuse and burglary.Ìý

When these crimes occur, tribal police are tasked with alerting the FBI, which investigates and makes recommendations to United States attorneys about whether to pursue charges in federal court. Those who are convicted are sent to federal prisons across the country.Ìý

But the lines between what is a Major Crime and what is not are often blurry.Ìý

That meant Beckstead and others in the tribal justice system had to convince the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Idaho to pursue charges for serious crimes in federal court, where penalties could be stiffer.Ìý

But with "no formal process" for deciding what should go federal and what should stay tribal, the federal and tribal law enforcement and prosecutors engaged in a "nuanced and mushy" process of trying "to approximate justice," he said.

So while Beckstead’s job was to prosecute "any crime that occurred within the boundaries of the reservation," it wasn’t so simple.Ìý

"What people commonly think of as felonies, they're still prosecuted" in tribal court, Beckstead said. "It's just that, due to the limitations of what Congress puts on tribes, they can only be treated like misdemeanors."

At the time, he said, the tribal court’s maximum sentencing power was a year in jail. That made it extremely difficult for the tribe to hold people accountable for "person crimes, when people are actually causing significant injury to other people," Beckstead said.Ìý

"Because people kind of know that you can beat the crap out of somebody, and the most you're going to get is a year, unless you get the feds on you," he said. "So I think that's kind of a systemic failure of how Congress limits tribes."

‘Vicious cycle’

Evidence suggests that when crimes occur on reservations, they often aren’t prosecuted in the federal system.Ìý

One found U.S. attorneys are "significantly more likely" to decline to prosecute cases that occur on tribal land than off it.Ìý

"The vicious cycle of violence on tribal lands is partially a result of the federal government's lack of judicial oversight of criminal cases that occur in (Indian Country)," the authors wrote. "The failure to prosecute (Indian Country) criminal cases results in perpetuating the occurrence of violent crime in tribal lands." 

That study also found, though, that Congress’ passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act in 2010 reduced this disparity and "significantly reduced" the rate at which federal attorneys declined to prosecute cases in Indian Country.Ìý

But not every tribe adopted the provisions of that 2010 act.Ìý

The Nez Perce Tribe didn’t do so until last year — too late for Bessie Blackeagle, Beckstead said.Ìý

Since doing so, the tribe is able to impose up to a three-year sentence and can "stack three offenses to make it nine years on somebody," Beckstead said. The result, he added, is that there’s "some decent relief available to the tribe now." 

‘Figure out what’s going on’ 

Beckstead said he "had nothing do with" the BIA investigation and that the bureau "never consulted with me or even told me they were coming to do it."

But he said he was aware of a second BIA probe of the police department, an audit "required of all tribes that contract with the BIA" for law-enforcement funding.

"And they found all kinds of deficiencies about how things were supposed to be," he said. "Were police reports written when cops were called out? No, not always. Were they reviewed and approved by a supervisor? No, not always. Was evidence logged properly? No, not always. So pretty basic things that a police department should be doing to do a good job weren't happening." 

A BIA spokesperson confirmed that the bureau "reviewed the Nez Perce police department in 2022" but said a Freedom of Information Act would be needed to access the report.Ìý

The Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team made a FOIA request for all BIA investigations into the Nez Perce Tribal Police Department conducted between Jan. 1 2020 and Sept. 2024 in September. The BIA provided no documents as of press time.Ìý

The tribe’s intimate-partner violence program, known as , or New Beginnings, also gathered "data and cases of things that they didn't think were investigated properly and they took that to the NPTEC," Beckstead said, referring to the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, which governs the tribe.Ìý

NPTEC, in turn, asked Beckstead to "contract with an independent third party to look into this and figure out what's going on."

That group found similar issues that were undermining the tribe’s ability to hold people accused of domestic and sexual violence accountable, he said.Ìý

‘Hard to rebuild people's trust’

When he took over as Law and Order executive officer, Beckstead believed it was important to bring in a new police chief who "could exert leadership and do investigations and fire people and get the house in order."

He hired Bensen, an outsider with a in law enforcement.Ìý

Soon after Bensen started, the BIA gave the new chief a heads up that sustained findings of misconduct were coming, Beckstead said.Ìý 

When the BIA delivered those findings in spring of 2024, Bensen wanted to fire Taylor and McCormack, Beckstead said. But the chief faced "tremendous pushback" from within the tribal government.Ìý

There was even an effort to fire Bensen and Beckstead instead of the officers found to have engaged in misconduct, he said.Ìý

As the debate raged during the tribe’s annual general counsel meeting last year, Beckstead decided to share with the public some of the "high level" findings from the various investigations into the tribal police.Ìý

"I just thought that people deserve to hear what the truth was of why we were doing what we were doing, especially since, basically since Bessie’s passing, there's been repeated questioning and concerns about that," Beckstead said.Ìý

Beckstead thought he "might get fired" for publicly sharing information about the investigations, but he spoke anyway.Ìý

He wasn’t fired. But he was suspended for a week, he said. And when his contract ended in November, the tribe didn’t renew it.Ìý

When he looks back on his eight years with the tribe, Beckstead sees "lots of little wins" and some big ones, like adoption of the Tribal Law and Order Act.Ìý

"So there was progress," he said. "It's just that it was not as much as I would have liked." 

And while Taylor and McCormack were ultimately fired, Beckstead made the case to the tribe that the work of restoring integrity within the Nez Perce Tribal Police was not done.Ìý

"Though two of the former employees have requested a review of these substantiated findings," Beckstead wrote in the memo he sent just before he left the tribe, "I strongly believe there is sufficient basis to review all investigations, especially internal affairs investigations, conducted by or immediately supervised by these officers." 

In his memo, Beckstead argued that because the officers all occupied senior positions in the police department, the implications of the BIA’s findings could be far-reaching.Ìý

"While I understand this may be an onerous endeavor, it is a necessary one, as the potential for further negligence, misstatements, or untruthfulness, resulting in the premature closure of a criminal case or retaliation on another former Nez Perce Tribal Police officer should be immediately rectified in the interests of justice," Beckstead added.Ìý

One of the main barriers to deeper reform, he said in an interview, is a pervasive "distrust of the police." 

"The cops have not done a good job for the reservation for a long time," he said. "And so it's hard to rebuild people's trust in the system and trust in cops that they're actually gonna do what they're supposed to do." 

Next: Tribal officers saw 'huge red flags' in the way police force administered justice on the Nez Perce Reservation.