No More No-Man’s-Land : Special Sheriff ‘s Unit Now Patrols 19 Reservations

Doris (Mitzi) Magante remembers what it was like to live outside the law.

Three years ago, when Magante was tribal chairman of the La Jolla Indians, her reservation and others in north San Diego County were being overrun with drugs and violence. Over several months, Magante recalls, six tribal members between the ages of 16 and 21 were murdered--among them, her son, Donald.

When Magante called the San Diego Sheriff’s Department to report a murder, it was usually an hour before a deputy arrived, she said. Anything short of homicide, however, and her calls seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“We couldn’t get any help. None. You’d wait three days for a deputy to show up, if they showed up at all,” she said. Sometimes, when the dispatcher heard she was calling from an Indian reservation, she said, “they’d hang up. We were last on the totem pole.”

Not anymore. Thanks in part to Magante’s lobbying and fund-raising efforts, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department has created a new Indian Enforcement Detail, a five-man team that federal officials say is the first of its kind in the country.

Backed by more than $450,000 in federal and county funds, the two-year program is the first ever to serve the county’s 19 Indian reservations--remote territory that until now has been treated as a legal no-man’s-land. But in addition to enforcing state law, the new detail has another, some say tougher, job: mending fences.

“There had been such bad feeling in the past, their biggest assignment is public relations,” said Magante, whose son’s killer has never been found. “The trust is not there. I know the attitude: ‘Who wants these guys around? They’re not going to be there when you need them.’ ”

Sheriff’s Department officials acknowledge that in the past, deputies were sometimes slow to respond to calls from Indian reservations. Rural substations were understaffed, the reservations were remote and deputies were unsure of their responsibilities on sovereign Indian land.

“The deputies were confused--’Can I go on the reservation, (or) can I not?’ ” said Sgt. Ken Prue, the supervisor of the new detail, who has worked hard to inform deputies that they can--and should--enforce state laws on the reservations.

Cmdr. Myron Klippert, who oversaw the detail until a recent transfer, said that in the past, “I’m sure a lot of cases that were assigned to investigators just fell through the cracks. If (an investigator) had seven cases and six were within a 4-mile radius and the seventh was 37 miles away (on a reservation) . . .

“Maybe (the Indians) did have some proper sense that they’d been put on the back burner. But they’re not there any more.”

Since March, four full-time sheriff’s deputies have made the reservations their sole focus. Assigned to patrol four or five reservations apiece, each has driven thousands of miles--up to 300 miles per day--navigating back roads, attending tribal meetings and introducing themselves to folks who have gone a long time without a visit from the law.

Some tribal leaders are already giving them high marks.

“They’re there. You can finally get ahold of somebody,” said Magante. “They have pagers, home phone numbers. And they get back to you.”

Edward (Joe) Welch, vice-chairman of the Barona Band of Mission Indians and a lifetime resident of its East County reservation, agreed. He said the detail serves as a necessary reminder for those who think living on a reservation makes them immune to state laws.

“They’re not (immune),” he said. “This lets the people who say they don’t know know. “

One priority is stemming the flow of drugs on Indian land. More than half of the detail’s funding comes from two anti-drug programs--$182,000 from the county’s asset forfeiture fund, which is made up of money and property seized in drug raids, and a $125,000 federal grant, administered by the Housing and Urban Development agency, to rid public housing of drug-related crime.

The pairing of these monies with about $150,000 from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs has enabled San Diego County to mount one of the nation’s most aggressive enforcement efforts on Indian land. Organizers hope the new program will bring success in an arena long racked with failure.

Until about 40 years ago, the federal government was still responsible for law enforcement on Indian lands. But in 1953, the U.S. Congress found that system to be cumbersome, expensive and ineffective, especially in states like California with scores of tiny reservations. It passed a law, now commonly called Public Law 280, that transferred criminal jurisdiction to some states.

Since then, California’s county sheriff’s--not federal authorities--have had the authority to enforce the state Penal Code on Indian reservations. But since that authority has often not been exercised, many people remain confused about who’s in charge.

In addition, some Indians would prefer to police themselves.

Especially now, at a time when opponents of three landfill projects proposed for Indian land in the county are questioning some tribal rights, some Indians are resisting even the appearance of outside control.

As sovereign nations, reservations are exempt from many state regulatory laws, and many feel fiercely that those rights must be protected.

“There are mixed feelings,” said Prue, the supervisor of the detail, which has no Native American deputies. “It’s a Public Law 280 state. That gives us the authorization and jurisdiction. But the concern of the tribes is their sovereignty. It’s a fine line.”

Deputy Terry Lawson, who patrols five reservations in East County, says he and his colleagues are treading that line lightly, often making their presence known with a nod or a wave, but trying not to wear out their welcome.

“Technically, we’re in a foreign country,” Lawson said recently as he steered his squad car onto the Viejas reservation in East County. Before the new detail began, he said, many deputies mistakenly thought they weren’t even allowed on the reservations. Some Indians still feel that way.

“During my first few weeks, I heard it a lot. Somebody would pull up in their car and say, ‘Hey, you’re trespassing,’ ” he recalled.

But as he becomes a more familiar sight on the Barona, Capitan Grande, Jamul, Sycuan and Viejas reservations, word has spread. The law is in town, and he’s not so bad.

“We’re glad he’s here,” said Carolyn Gilchrist, bookkeeper at the Barona tribal office. “If it wasn’t for Terry, we’d have no law.”

Much of his job so far has been fairly routine. When a drunken driver killed a man on the Barona reservation recently, upsetting the tribe, Lawson took his radar gun out to Wildcat Canyon Road to catch speeders. At the Viejas reservation, he caught a non-tribal member shooting an automatic weapon into the brush.

He has poked around the wreckage of abandoned cars, checking serial numbers to see if they’re stolen. He’s watched for non-tribal members toting chain saws--firewood poachers--and he’s kept an eye on houses that seem to attract more traffic than they should.

“I look for what doesn’t belong,” he said.

He’s also taken a good look at how he carries himself, and has made a few changes. In his conversations with his new Indian contacts, he noticed they rarely interrupted him. He now tries to return the favor. And he no longer relies on a handshake to make a good first impression--some Indians find that presumptuous, particularly from a stranger.

“You’ve got to make sure they offer their hand first,” Lawson said, sharing some hard-won knowledge. “Also, don’t talk to one person about another person--many Indians are offended by that.”

Slowly but surely, his phone has begun to ring. A new Ford truck has showed up on a dirt road--maybe it’s stolen, the caller suggests. Another caller thinks there’s a chop shop operating nearby, stripping stolen cars to resell the parts.

It’s going to take time, but Lawson predicts the detail will work.

“We’re learning things the hard way, and I’m sure we’re going to step on ourselves a lot more,” he said. “But they know I’m here.”

And that, Klippert says, is an improvement in itself.

“When something bad happens, you’re going to have a deputy who knows the tribal chairman and who the Indians know by his first name. We’re talking about personalized service,” he said. In the first year, he predicted, crime statistics on Indian land will probably go up.

“We’re going to probably have terrible statistics,” he said happily. “I hope we have an increase, because that means they trust us.”