A blog on the internet thinks that law enforcement in North Dakota has the authority to shoot Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters on site. This of course is not true.

A blog known as Anarchic News published information that Governor Jack Dalrymple has given law enforcement permission to "shoot on sight Indigenous tribes that are peacefully protesting against the Dakota pipeline."

They back up this claim by stating:

Now though homeland security has taken over, legally, and the situation and the level of threat has been bumped up. This means they consider this a terrorist action and have the authority to shot [sic] on sight.

It's likely you've never heard of this blog and therefore this information doesn't matter. But apparently this news is spreading and people actually believe it. Someone submitted the information to Snopes.com to ask if there was any validity to this claim.

Snopes of course rightfully said that the law enforcement at the construction site, do not legally have any authority to shoot protesters on site. Additionally, there has been plenty of interaction between protesters and law enforcement over the last couple of weeks and nobody has been shot.

So just in case you were under the impression that law enforcement will shoot any member of any tribe that protests, you can now know that no such thing will happen. Just like under any other circumstance, law enforcement will only shoot if they feel there is an imminent danger to the lives of themselves or other people in the area.

As of now, no such imminent danger exists.

 

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