Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Remarks at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Dakota

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Thank you, Alison, for that generous introduction. And for your leadership.

I am grateful to be here in South Dakota, and to have the chance to thank, in person, our federal, state, local, and Tribal law enforcement partners gathered around this table.

This group of leaders represent the law enforcement officers across the state who make daily sacrifices to protect the people of South Dakota. This also represents the collaborative approach that is at the heart of the Justice Department's strategy to combat violent crime.

When I became Attorney General three and a half years ago, I knew that the most powerful tool we would have to address violent crime would be our partnerships. That was my experience as a line attorney prosecuting violent crime and narcotics trafficking in the early 1990s, and as a Justice Department official organizing and supervising those efforts later in the 1990s.

So, we built an anti-violent crime strategy rooted in strengthening our collaboration across federal law enforcement; with state, local, and Tribal law enforcement; and with the communities we all serve.

And we fortified those partnerships by bringing to bear the latest technologies for identifying and prosecuting the criminals who represent the greatest danger to our communities.

Now we have seen results. Last year, we saw one of the lowest violent crime rates in 50 years nationwide. That included the largest drop in homicides in 50 years.

But we know that progress in many communities is still uneven. And of course, there is no level of violent crime that is acceptable.

The Justice Department is working here in South Dakota and across the country to arrest violent felons, disrupt violent drug trafficking, and prosecute the individuals and organizations most responsible.

That is what this U.S. Attorney's Office did in May, through the Justice Department's Project Safe Neighborhoods program. Working as part of the program, this office brought together partners from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the City of Sioux Falls Police Department, and Homeland Security Investigations to secure a seven-year prison sentence for a man who threatened and shot at his neighbor and his neighbor's six-year-old child.

Law enforcement later recovered a bullet that had gone through three walls in the victim's home. And over the course of the investigation, law enforcement found that the defendant was in possession of a handgun with an obliterated serial number.

I want to just speak for a moment about the successful sex trafficking sting that this office announced earlier this week, a joint sex trafficking operation involving federal, state, and local law enforcement. Designed as a sting during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, you apprehended persons attempting to arrange sexual encounters with underage children. Seven men were arrested and charged. This is this office and this group's effort to protect the most vulnerable among us.

In April - working with 10 different federal, state, and Tribal law enforcement agencies - this office secured sentences for three individuals responsible for carjacking and kidnapping an FBI employee at gunpoint.

At the time, the FBI employee, a victim specialist, had recently left an unrelated crime scene and was heading back to his duty station. The defendants carjacked and kidnapped him and held him at gun point for more than half an hour. They wanted the stolen vehicle because they were attempting to traffic meth, fentanyl, and heroin from Colorado to South Dakota, and they were trying to evade the highway patrol.

The three defendants, they were arrested, prosecuted, and each sentenced to more than 26 years in prison.

In addition to working to confront violent crime and gun violence, this office has worked tirelessly to stop the flow of fentanyl into our communities. We know that a single dose of fentanyl can be deadly. That is why we will never stop working to end this epidemic.

Last week, this office secured the guilty verdict for a man who helped traffic thousands of pills from Minneapolis to the northeast part of South Dakota. His sentencing date has been set for October.

In June, the office announced that it had secured sentences for six members of a drug trafficking organization that transported large quantities of methamphetamine and fentanyl into the Sioux Falls area. The defendants all received sentences between 10 and 33 years.

Also in June, the office worked with the FBI and the Flandreau Santee Tribal Police to investigate and prosecute a man who distributed fentanyl to a victim who died from an overdose. The defendant was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

Our partnerships with Tribes have also been key to addressing the longstanding crisis of missing or murdered indigenous persons (MMIP).

In June 2023, the Department announced the creation of a new MMIP Regional Outreach Program to prevent and respond to these terrible tragedies. The program has placed a regional coordinator here in South Dakota. In June of this year, through the program, this office identified and successfully prosecuted the man responsible for killing a victim in the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation, whose case had gone unsolved for 30 years. That defendant was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Tribal communities deserve safety and justice. Since 2021, the Justice Department has provided $19.1 million to support a number of Tribal justice initiatives in South Dakota. I look forward to traveling to Indian Country later today to the Yankton Sioux Nation, where I will meet with leaders from each of the nine Tribal nations.

This office, and the entire Justice Department, are committed to continuing to work closely with our partners in Tribal law enforcement.

The cases I've just shared with you are just a snapshot of the work that this U.S. Attorney's Office does every day to fulfill the Justice Department's priorities to keep our country safe, to protect civil rights, and to uphold the rule of law.

I am very proud of U.S. Attorney Ramsdell and of all the men and women of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of South Dakota. And I am equally proud of the people around this table and the partnerships they have nourished together. These are the people who work every single day to protect the people of this state.

Now I'm going to have a meeting to discuss what more we can be doing.

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