RAPID CITY, SD — In 2022 an incident between NDN Leader Nick Tilsen and Rapid City Police during a regular “cop watch” took place. A year later, the incident was brought forward as a battery of charges including Aggravated Assault on a Police Officer, a charge carrying a potential 26-year sentence.

This charge surrounded a moment in the cop watch where Tilsen, partially pulled into a downtown parking spot, which allegedly a police officer was standing partially in. During the relatively short altercation, Tilsen attempts to pull into the parking spot while engaging in exchange with officers on scene, lurching forward momentarily in an act which the state alleged was an intentional attempt to intimidate or harm an officer.

The affair, lasting around five minutes was ultimately peaceful, and in court the Jury seemed less than completely convinced in the state’s assertion, with Jurors delivering a hung result around 10pm, following several hours of deliberation. The judge overseeing the case, Craig Pfeifle declared a mistrial, leaving the state to deliberate pushing for a second trial. 

However, as of this week the state has announced that they will not be proceeding again with the case, and have dropped charges against Nick Tilsen.

In an interview on Wednesday, Tilsen stated that he was relieved by this result, stating that he believed it reflected a campaign of misrepresentation against his character. “The truth is, I’m not a criminal or a villain and that they [The Prosecution] were unsuccessful at trying to make the out to be one.” said Tilsen, who reported feeling relieved by the result of the incident, “I feel vindicated in the sense that their attempts to do that have failed, and then I’m going to keep doing what I do in the community, so I think it’s definitely a win”.

Tilsen stated in interview that the whole of the interstitial month between the end of the trial was defined centrally by an approach he said amounted to “plan for the worst, hope for the best”, and going on to say he felt the case as a whole reflected a systemic prejudice which exists in the Justice System, and that he felt people painted the situation as a battle between Tilsen over his personal issues with police in Rapid City. “These are accusations backed by a system that incarcerates Native American people disproportionately. Some people have attempted to chalk it up and make this thing actually be about ‘me and their prosecutor’ or ‘me vs the police’. It’s never actually been about any of those things, it’s been that we have identified it as a systemic problem in this community as it comes to policing and prosecuting,” said Tilsen, “It’s why native Americans are less than 10% of the population in the state of South Dakota, but comprise over 50% of the people that are incarcerated in the state, that’s a systemic issue that’s not a personal vendetta issue.”

Tilsen additionally seemed eager to move forward, and hoped to make contact with the city and police – hoping to start discussions on how situations like this might be avoided in the future by seriously considering current issues which, according to Tilsen, exist within local policing. “I might not like the form of policing that the police force uses, but I am a 1000%. In favor of public safety and stronger communities” said Tilsen.

Outside of this, Tilsen says he intends on continuing his activism work with NDN, and now that this chapter of his life is closed he intends on further focusing efforts on developments he is excited for, most prominently the forthcoming Rapid City Indian Center in north Rapid, to which Tilsen said NDN donated 70 acres of land.

“I just want to express my gratitude for people, both in the native and non-native communities who’ve reached out over the past days, expressing their support and saying how glad and happy they are that these charges are dropped, and that we can keep moving forward,” said Tilsen in conclusion, “I just want to send gratitude to everybody out there and in the community of all walks of life who showed up during this process”.