Lungren Plans Summit on How to Enforce Laws on Tribal Land : Police: A shootout and other violent incidents on reservations prompt the briefing for local authorities, who must tread a fine line on Indian property.

Citing violence on Indian reservations, including a shootout at a tribal casino, Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren has issued a rare summons to local law enforcement authorities to attend a formal briefing on how to enforce the law on sovereign Native American lands.

In announcing the Dec. 14 gathering at a Sacramento hotel, Lungren told county officials he is requesting their attendance because of assaults at “several” Northern California reservations.

He said the meeting is designed to assist counties with Indian lands “or Indian gambling operations” and is being convened under a state law allowing him to assemble district attorneys and sheriffs to discuss “uniform and adequate” law enforcement.

Local authorities are required to tread a careful line when entering tribal lands to enforce laws--a line that Lungren’s agents are required to observe as they try, so far unsuccessfully, to halt slot machine play at reservation casinos.

But with the stakes elevated by violent incidents, Lungren said in a letter to county district attorneys and sheriffs, “I believe the meeting is necessary to familiarize California law enforcement with the authority . . . to enforce state criminal law in Indian country.”

Gunfire broke out in October at an Indian casino in Lake County north of San Francisco. For six days, a firefight raged over control of the casino among rival members of the Elem Indian colony. Seven people were wounded and five were arrested before a truce was reached.

Howard Dickstein, a Sacramento lawyer who represents seven Indian tribes, said it is probably a good idea to brief local authorities on their jurisdiction over criminal acts on Indian lands, but he questioned whether all the episodes cited by Lungren’s office should be equated with the Lake County shootout.

Lungren spokesman Steve Telliano said that in addition to that incident, there has been violence on the Round Valley reservation in Mendocino County and among the Jackson Rancheria members of the Miwok Tribe, who operate a casino near Jackson in Amador County in the Sierra foothills.

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Karl Knobelauch in Jackson said assaults within the local Indian community have been “low-level stuff” seldom associated with the casino there. But he said Lungren’s scheduled tutorial could be productive because “there is a lot of confusion about our authority on tribal properties.”

When it comes to violent crime, the law seems the clearest, legal experts said. Though somewhat hazy in most states, law enforcement officials in California are free to enter Indian territory to enforce criminal laws or apprehend suspects and often do so aggressively.

Recently, the point was made dramatically in the Round Valley reservation case cited by Lungren’s office.

Mendocino County sheriff’s officers searched for four months for Eugene (Bear) Lincoln, who was suspected of fatally shooting a deputy during a blaze of gunfire in which two other men were killed.

Before Lincoln surrendered in August, declaring his innocence, deputies virtually laid siege to the reservation, said Lincoln’s attorney, J. Tony Serra of San Francisco. Serra was quoted in Northern California newspapers as saying that deputies did not hesitate to search homes without warrants, set up roadblocks and brandish firearms at residents.

Capt. Berle Murray of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department said a gag order prevented him from commenting on the case or the deputies’ conduct.

Until recently, the vaguest area of the law governing jurisdiction on tribal lands related to slot machine gambling--banned elsewhere in California--but offered openly at tribal casinos in California.

Lungren and Gov. Pete Wilson have declared the slots illegal under California law. Indian interests argue that the state has no jurisdiction on their federally designated reservation properties--a view supported by recent court rulings.

While the courts were weighing the arguments, state and county officers, who were prevented by judges from raiding the reservations, tried to seize the machines as they were being delivered, before the trucks reached the sanctuary of sovereign Indian territory.

In one such successful operation in March, state agents stopped a truck moving slot machines across the desert at night to the Spotlight 29 Indian casino near Indio. The cargo was seized, and the supplier in Los Angeles was cited.

Nevertheless, most shipments get through. There are about 9,000 slot machines operating at 30 Indian casinos in California, according to Lungren’s office.

Times staff writer Mark Gladstone contributed to this story.