Sheriff’s Raid on Indian Casinos Declared Illegal

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department was out of bounds in raiding three local Indian reservations and seizing gambling machines because it lacked the jurisdiction to enforce state gambling laws on tribal lands, a federal judge has ruled.

San Diego Sheriff Jim Roache said Tuesday that the decision didn’t make him feel frustrated or that he was “a loser.” But he expressed concern that the lack of federal scrutiny of Indian gambling creates “a no man’s land where we have a haven for what potentially could be illicit activities.”

The 30-page opinion, issued Monday by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff, was in response to the three tribes’ legal challenge to raids by sheriff’s deputies in October that netted 288 slot-type machines from the Sycuan, Barona and Viejas reservations in eastern San Diego County.

Attorneys for the Indian tribes hailed the decision and said they would work to win back the seized gambling devices--and sue the county for lost revenue.

The raids followed a directive from state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren that local law enforcement agencies crack down on illegal gambling on reservations, particularly on the proliferation of slot-type video machines.

Attorneys for the Indian tribes answered with their lawsuit contesting the legality of the raids and the confiscation of machines that were producing more than $100,000 a month in revenue.

“We had jurisdiction,” Roache said Tuesday, “and it was an area of state concern. As a law enforcement agent of the state, I had a responsibility to enforce state law on Indian reservations. Our actions weren’t taken to precipitate a controversy. . . .

“If the federal court has indicated it’s not our responsibility, that’s fine. It’s no longer our concern . . . ,” the San Diego County sheriff said. “But part of the problem is, I don’t think the feds are prepared at this juncture to enforce the law.”

Under a longstanding federal law, local law enforcement agencies have authority to police Indian land. But attorneys for the tribes argued that the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act placed illegal gambling violations under exclusive federal jurisdiction.

Federal prosecutors, however, have been reluctant to authorize politically sensitive raids on the gambling ventures that have become the centerpiece of tribal economies.

U.S. Atty. William Braniff in San Diego said his office is awaiting guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice--which is waiting, in turn, for the National Indian Gaming Commission to more clearly define what types of gambling are legal on reservations.

“The department doesn’t plan any immediate action until those regulations are finalized,” Braniff said Tuesday.

Huff’s ruling was the third in recent years in which a federal judge has nullified a San Diego County Sheriff’s Department raid on Indian lands, holding that the county had no jurisdiction on reservations.

George Forman, an attorney for the Sycuan Reservation, said he was delighted by Huff’s ruling. “We have no reason to believe there is any basis for a claim that anything that is happening on the Sycuan Reservation violates any federal law,” Forman said. “It is the tribe’s intent to follow, in all respects, applicable federal laws. And as far as the tribe is concerned, it hasn’t violated any.”

Times staff writer Paul Lieberman in Los Angeles contributed to this story.