Tribes Seek More Power for Their Police Forces

Cabazon tribal police officers have chased drunk drivers only to see them careen off the reservation in defiance.

The officers have ticketed midnight dumpers who ditched illegal loads of trash here--20 miles east of Palm Springs--then skipped their court dates with impunity.

“We can’t chase these criminals off the reservation,” said Cabazon Tribal Police Chief Paul Hare. “All we can do is advise other law enforcement agencies [of the crime]. So a lot of people commit these crimes and get away.”

New streams of wealth flowing to Indian reservations through casinos have allowed some California tribes to form their own police departments and hire officers trained by the same programs that prepare sheriff’s deputies and municipal police. Of about 100 California tribes, at least nine have full-fledged police departments, and many others have rangers or security forces.

Yet their badges lack the luster of their county and city counterparts. In California, tribal officers hold authority only to enforce tribal laws among tribe members on tribal land. Off the reservation, or in incidents involving non-tribal members or state penal code violations, they must conduct citizen’s arrests, then wait for sheriff’s deputies to finish the job.

A coalition of 67 California tribes is negotiating with the state attorney general, the federal Department of Justice and the California State Sheriffs Assn. to give tribal officers full law enforcement authority. That would allow them not only to pursue, arrest and book suspects, but also to conduct investigations and share crime information with other agencies.

State Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar) has pledged to introduce legislation early next year to grant state peace officer status to tribal police and seek federal funding to help tribes without their own police forces pay for outside help.

California sheriffs agree that any addition to law enforcement ranks is good for the public, but they say the details will make or break the plan.

Any plan should hold tribal police to the same standards as other officers, sheriffs say. It should provide means for citizens injured due to police misconduct to get redress, they say, noting that tribes are immune to civil litigation under U.S. law. And it should map out how tribal officers, whose pay comes largely from casino revenues, would fairly probe crimes associated with such businesses.

Some who have been in the trenches with tribal police are more confident. Humboldt County Sheriff Dennis Lewis has deputized Hoopa Valley tribal officers and said both forces benefit from the arrangement.

“The advantage to them is that they can take prompt, corrective action. If arrest is necessary, they can do that,” he said. “The advantage to me is it helps me do my job.”

The current limits on tribal police power stem from an earlier effort to ensure order on Native American lands. In 1953 Congress perceived a gap in law enforcement on reservations and passed a law to fill it, said Jacqueline Agtuca, deputy director of the office of tribal justice in the U.S. Department of Justice. Legislation gave responsibility for law enforcement on reservations in Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon and Wisconsin to state governments.

Nearly half a century later, California tribes complain that the law has tied the hands of their police departments--just as reservations are seeing crime surge with new cash and visitors brought by casinos. Drug sales, alcohol offenses, assaults, burglaries and car thefts all come with that gambling territory, tribal police say.

For mystery lovers, such officers have come into view through the best-selling novels of Tony Hillerman, who weaves tales around the lives of Navajo tribal police. Like Hillerman’s hamstrung heroes, who must often hand over hot leads to coolly receptive federal agents, real tribal officers frequently find themselves dependent on outside authorities to close their cases.

“We have 1.7 million [people] coming onto the reservation properties over a year for the entertainment venues,” Cabazon Police Chief Hare said. “And we only have this citizen’s arrest power, which means that once we are detaining these people, then we have to wait for the sheriff to arrive.”

Tribal officers can hold suspects for only a limited time without risking charges of illegal imprisonment. If sheriff’s deputies are occupied when that time elapses, tribal police must release the suspects.

Driving behind the reservation power plant toward a tribal burial site, Cabazon Officer Phil Weigle pointed to old furniture, beer cases, even an abandoned hot tub left by illegal dumpers. Officers cite offenders, but the tribal court has no binding power over non-tribal members.

“So there’s really no deterrent to whatever illegal activity they want to do,” Weigle said.

Traffic stops can be hair-raising for officers, who have no access to state criminal databases that can warn whether a vehicle holds a wanted felon or just a distracted driver. Some suspects, spotting a tribal squad car, simply speed off the reservation and out of reach.

The Cabazons have sued the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department over the tribe’s right to display light bars on police cars driving on and off tribal land through the checkerboard reservation. The lawsuit describes an 1996 instance in which a woman died of a heart attack at the tribal casino while local police detained a tribal officer who was heading to the emergency.