Federal lawsuit alleges Bureau of Indian Affairs officers “executed” unarmed Paiute man in Idaho

The family of an unarmed Paiute man who was shot and killed by Bureau of Indian Affairs police in March 2024 after a prolonged chase in southwestern Idaho has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit over his death.

The lawsuit accuses two unnamed BIA police officers of chasing Cody Whiterock outside of their jurisdiction, before shooting him multiple times in the face, back and chest. The officers then “falsified or withheld evidence to escape accountability,” the lawsuit says. The agency has not identified the officers involved and declined to comment for this article.

“The two BIA officers essentially executed Cody after an exhausting 80-minute chase through the snow,” the lawsuit says.

InvestigateWest reported last year on the killings of Whiterock and his cousin, Kirby Paradise, at the hands of BIA police.

After a ranch owner called 911 reporting an unwanted person on private, non-tribal land on March 2, 2024, two BIA officers found Whiterock, a father of two, trying to leave in his car alongside a rural stretch of Idaho Route 51 in Owyhee County, about 15 miles south of Riddle, Idaho. His car became stuck in the ice, and Whiterock ran from the officers. One officer chased him through a snowy sagebrush prairie for the next 80 minutes, according to law enforcement records.

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Whiterock’s family and lawyer cast doubt on the circumstances of the chase.  

The officer who chased Whiterock said the two got in an altercation that knocked him on his back, and Whiterock “continued aggressing him” and “kept reaching for his waistband.” The officer said he then hit Whiterock with the muzzle of his rifle, which was slung over his shoulder, "a movement virtually impossible from his position on the ground," according to the lawsuit. 

The officer also said he shot Whiterock four times at close range in the chest and face. A death certificate said that Whiterock was also shot twice in the back, and found lying face-down in the snow.

Whiterock's family said he was unarmed — no weapons were recovered — and posed no immediate threat.

“Curiously, despite the reported length of the pursuit, at its end Whiterock’s dead body was located only about 200 yards from the roadway,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit is seeking an injunction against further alleged Fourth Amendment violations by the BIA against tribal citizens, and states that at no point did the pursuit and eventual killing of Whiterock cross onto tribal land. 

The BIA is a small federal agency that is responsible for the fulfillment of some of the United States government’s treaty obligations to federally recognized tribes, which can include law enforcement — meaning BIA officers patrol a reservation rather than tribal or state police. The BIA provides direct policing services to roughly 200 tribal communities, including the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, where Whiterock lived. 

The suit is filed against three Bureau of Indian Affairs police officers — the two “unknown” officers involved in the killing of Whiterock as well as their supervisor. 

InvestigateWest’s reporting found that the agency did not report the deaths of Whiterock and Paradise to the U.S. Department of Justice, as required under the Death in Custody Reporting Act, a federal law meant to track in-custody deaths. The law requires states and federal agencies to report the number of deaths that occur in their custody, including arrest-related deaths, to the federal government. 

Deaths at the hands of BIA police are rarely reported publicly, particularly if they occur on tribal land. A lack of media attention means many killings of Native Americans by the BIA and other police agencies go unacknowledged publicly. 

The lawsuit claims that BIA police lacked legal authority to pursue Whiterock outside the boundaries of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, noting the agency had no memorandum of understanding with local law enforcement in Idaho. Since the BIA lacked jurisdiction, any use of force against Whiterock was “unreasonable and unlawful.”

“It’s the first time in my career where I’ve had a case where the officers may not have had any jurisdiction at all,” Idaho-based attorney T. Jason Wood, who is representing Whiterock’s family, said in an interview.

The lawsuit says that the BIA officers patrolling the Duck Valley Reservation lacked training regarding jurisdictional limitations.

Critics have argued that the agency operates without sufficient oversight, with a 2021 internal audit showing serious issues with how the agency tracks and treats in-custody deaths, particularly at the jail facilities it oversees. 

The agency recently settled a civil rights lawsuit over a separate killing by one of its officers. The lawsuit claimed that Arlin Bordeaux, a Northern Cheyenne man and father of two, was killed by a BIA police officer after the officer tased, pepper-sprayed, beat him with a baton and shot him three times in the back in Lame Deer on the North Cheyenne Indian Reservation, which shares geography with Montana. Federal authorities declined to prosecute the officers who caused his death. One of those officers, Murrell Deela, was charged in October with sexually assaulting a Northern Cheyenne child, and eventually banned from the reservation by the Northern Cheyenne tribal government. 

“They killed my son like a dog,” said Kenneth Bordeaux, the man’s father, a former police officer on the Pine Ridge Reservation. 

Wood says the agency refuses to release a report on Whiterock’s autopsy. He added that InvestigateWest’s reporting was critical to his ability to file the complaint.

The FBI has declined to investigate Whiterock's death. But as InvestigateWest has reported, the FBI is in charge of investigating in-custody deaths that occur under BIA's watch, according to a memorandum of understanding between the agencies.

Instead, Idaho State Police conducted an inquiry into Whiterock’s death. It’s unclear why the FBI, which declined to comment, did not investigate, and the BIA did not respond to requests for more information from InvestigateWest. Idaho State Police did not return a message Friday asking the status of the inquiry.

The lawsuit is seeking to uncover the identities of the involved officers, and also seeks damages.