California Shorted on Tribal Police Funding

When Atty. Gen. Janet Reno this month began doling out the biggest law enforcement grants for tribal lands in her department’s history, she promised that the $89-million program would “help ensure that all Native Americans living on Indian lands will enjoy the decrease in crime felt throughout the nation.”

All Native Americans, it seems, except those in California.

Although it is home to more Native Americans than any other state, California is receiving only $747,000 in grants to just four of its more than 100 tribes. That represents less than 1% of the total awards nationwide.

Federal officials realize that California’s tribes are getting shorted in the grant program but say that the problem reflects an old law and contemporary political realities.

The Justice Department is committed to giving the money to tribes that already have some semblance of police and court systems in place. But California tribes--hamstrung by a 1953 federal law that gave state governments in California and a few other places jurisdiction over criminal and civil laws on tribal lands--have lagged far behind in creating their own law enforcement services. Most California-based tribes do not even have police departments.

The new federal funds, which tribes can use to build jails, buy police equipment, beef up staffing and train officers, are aimed at combating a troublesome wave of crime against Native Americans.

A Justice Department study released earlier this year found that the rate of violent crime against Native Americans is nearly twice as high as that against other Americans. In seven of 10 cases, the offender was not a Native American.

“The problem is bad, and it’s particularly bad when you look at statistics like rape and sexual assaults,” in which the rate of victimization is as much as seven times higher for Native Americans than for whites, said Mark Van Norman, director of the Office of Tribal Justice at the Justice Department. “There’s a huge disparity.”

Authorities warn that the expansion of gaming on tribal lands in California and other states--bringing masses of outsiders with cash and sometimes alcohol into poorly secured areas--may worsen crime in coming years.

Still, said June Kress, a senior Justice Department policy analyst, “We had a limited amount of money, and we decided that we would not start up brand new departments.”

The California-based tribes that were awarded money are the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians, north of San Francisco, awarded $219,749; the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians in Mendocino County, which received $213,098; the Hoopa Valley tribe near Eureka, awarded $170,318; and the Morongo Band of Mission Indians near Banning, which got $144,330.

Justice Department officials said that they received surprisingly few applications from California tribes and that the four ultimately approved were the only ones in the state that requested help with police staffing, a central target of the program.

But several tribal leaders in California said they were never made aware of the grant program.

By contrast, Justice Department officials arranged a private meeting with the attorney general for tribal leaders from South Dakota, Montana and New Mexico to discuss law enforcement strategies.

California’s share of the funds falls far short of its proportion of the nation’s Native American population. Federal officials estimate that 65,000 Native Americans--a figure considered low by many state experts--live on or near reservations in California, representing 4.5% of the 1.4 million Native Americans on reservations across the country. A total of 308,000 American Indians live in California, according to the Census Bureau.

Yet even if they had known about the program and applied, several California tribal leaders said, the Justice Department’s push to fund existing police agencies would probably have made them ineligible.

The problem for California tribes--finding the money to start police departments when the federal government is funding only those tribes that already have them--poses “sort of a Catch-22,” said Gene Madrigal, a member of and lawyer for the Cahuilla Band of Indians in the foothills of Riverside County.

“This is a totally inadequate amount for California tribes, but we always seem to wind up on the short end of the stick,” he said. “The tribes have been working to try to do something about [the funding disparity], but after years of trying, there’s less of an immediate outcry.”

Some tribes have developed good working relationships with authorities that patrol their land. But for a small, isolated tribe such as the Cahuillas, located about 35 miles from the nearest Riverside County sheriff’s station in Hemet, an influx of federal aid could have dramatically improved the level of service, Madrigal and other tribal members said.

The 350 or so Cahuillas who live on the tribe’s 19,000 acres have no police force of their own, and it can take sheriff’s deputies hours to respond to complaints about drugs, domestic abuse, trespassing, illegal hunting and the occasional drive-by shooting, tribe members said.

Riverside County Sheriff’s Department officials did not respond to calls for comment, but Madrigal suspects that their poor response rate is about more than distance.

“The deputies,” he said, “seem to shun going out to the reservation.”

UCLA professor Carole Goldberg, head of the university’s joint program in law and American Indian studies, said the underfunding of California-based tribes reflects a history of federal inattention to the state’s Native American population.

It is rooted, she said, in 1953’s misguided Public Law 280, which has produced years of confusion over who is responsible for enforcing order on many California reservations. At worst, she said, state and local authorities have simply ignored the tribal lands altogether without acknowledging the tribes’ right to police themselves or providing the funds to help them do so.

Kress, the Justice Department analyst, agreed. California-based tribes, she said, “are so far behind in the development of justice institutions, and I really blame PL 280 for that. They’ve never been able to develop tribal institutions at the rate other states have.”

But tribal leaders say Gov. Gray Davis’ administration has given them room for optimism.

Paul Hare, chief of the Cabazon Tribal Police Department near Indio, said state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer visited his tribe last month and supported changes that would give all tribes in the state more autonomy and support in policing themselves. The current administration, he said, “has been a great help in looking at this whole problem in a new light.”

A spokesman for the attorney general said Lockyer is meeting with tribal leaders to try to improve the tribes’ deteriorated relations with local law enforcement officials, although no formal legislation on the issue is in the works.

Changes are long overdue, many agree.

California’s shortcomings are so great that even if the entire $89 million in grants were given to state tribes, said Ted Quasula, who oversees law enforcement at the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, “it wouldn’t cover California’s needs.”

“It’s a terrible disservice to the tribes,” he said.