Lungren Says Indians Can’t Attend Session on Policing : Tribes: The meeting will discuss response to crime on reservations. A tribal leader says he has much to contribute, but an aide to the attorney general says attendance ‘would not be productive.’

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, in calling together local officials to discuss law enforcement on Native American lands, has rejected a request to allow Indians to attend the meeting.

Frequently at odds with tribes over types of gambling in reservation casinos, Lungren’s office turned down a request by a Northern California sheriff who wanted to bring Native American leaders with him to the Dec. 14 meeting in Sacramento.

One of the Indian leaders who would have attended, Dale Risling, chairman of the Hoopa Valley tribe in Humboldt County, said the tribe was “profoundly troubled” that Lungren would not allow his attendance.

A Lungren spokesman, Steve Telliano, confirmed that the Native Americans were excluded but only because the purpose of the meeting was confined to clarifying for county officials how to respond to criminal acts on reservations.

For Indians to attend, Telliano said, “would not be productive” because “they are not going to have a part in what happens” when law enforcement officials respond to reservation crime.

But Humboldt County Sheriff Dennis Lewis, as well as Risling, said the Hoopa tribe was closely allied with sheriff’s officers through a joint powers agreement under which tribal police officers have been deputized and integrated into the sheriff’s department and are trained and qualified to deal with criminal acts.

“It is ironic” that Lungren would exclude the Hoopa leadership, Risling said. “We could give them a how-to-do manual” on handling criminal cases in conjunction with local authorities. “We have worked long and hard in putting together very professional law enforcement authority.

“My people have gone to the same academies” as other officers, Risling said. Some of the Hoopa’s 12-member tribal police force “are ex-California Highway Patrol and city police officers,” he said.

Risling said he has testified before Congress “30 or 40 times” as an expert witness on laws pertaining to tribal lands and resents the implication that he would have nothing to contribute to Lungren’s meeting, to which county sheriffs, district attorneys and county counsels statewide have been invited.

The meeting will focus on law enforcement procedures for Indian lands and casinos, Lungren has said.

Because of recent violence at a casino in Lake County, Risling said, “This is the time for the attorney general to jump on his stump running for governor as the big law enforcement bully.”

Telliano, of Lungren’s office, said the invitation list was not aimed at excluding Native American. Chiefs of police, for example, also are not being invited, he said.

But on the county level, Telliano said, instances have arisen where agencies have been uncertain how to proceed when problems have arisen on Indian land.

Nevertheless, said Lewis of the tribal leaders, “I thought it would have been appropriate to have them there.”