San Manuel Tribe Signs Agreement with City of San Bernardino for Police Services

Under a new three-year intergovernmental agreement, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians will pay $3.1 million to the City of San Bernardino to provide law enforcement services in city neighborhoods that surround the tribe’s reservation.

The agreement, signed last week, is an outgrowth of the tribal-state gaming compact entered into by the San Manuel Band, a press release issued by the tribe said. It provides a framework for the tribe and city to support a consistent level of law enforcement services in neighborhoods served by the San Bernardino Police Department through funding and ongoing cooperation between city police and the tribe.

The funds provided in the agreement will cover the cost of six San Bernardino police officers, one sergeant, a part-time detective along with crossing guards and support vehicles and equipment for the three-year period.

The San Manuel’s 800-acre reservation is located near Highland, Calif. The tribe owns/operates San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino, which employs about 3,000 people.

The area covered in the agreement has always been within the jurisdiction of the City of San Bernardino, said Jerry Paresa, the tribe’s chief administrative officer; thus, the SBPD patrols and responds to this area.

Under the tribal-state compact, the tribe had paid into a Special Distribution Fund, Paresa said, and some of these funds went to the County of San Bernardino and were put into a special account to pay for any impacts to the community from gaming.

Under S.B. 621, signed into law in 2003, a committee was formed to distribute funds for services in the form of grants sponsored by the San Manuel. Since the 2003/04 fiscal year, Paresa said, some funds have been appropriated to offset the cost of policing in this area by the SBPD. There has never been a written agreement between the tribe and city for these services.

With a 2006 amendment to the compact, however, the tribe no longer has to pay into the Special Distribution Fund.

“The tribe, in turn, decided to assist the city with the on-going costs of policing in the neighborhood and did so at a level that eclipsed previous funding through the grant,” Paresa said.

COPS Grant Funds Demonstration Tribal Community Policing Project

The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) has awarded $500,000 to the Mendocino County (Calif.) Sheriff's Office to fund a community policing demonstration project in collaboration with the Round Valley Indian Tribes, the Round Valley Unified School District and the U.S. Forest Service, according to a press release issued by DOJ on June 1.

The award will fund the hiring of two Mendocino County deputies who will reside on the Round Valley Reservation for 18 months and work with the tribes' leadership and community members on projects that address drugs, crime and school violence.

The award will also fund a technical assistance provider who will offer on-site training, conduct evaluations of the project and document promising practices.

Indian Country Police Forces Still Severely Understaffed

Indian reservation police forces remain understaffed, with some operating at levels as low as 50 percent, officials told members of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee at a hearing yesterday.

As reported by the Argus Leader today, approximately 3,000 police officers serve all of Indian Country, citing the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the source. Even Washington, D.C., has more officers on its force.

Reasons for the staff shortages are many. One of the biggest ones, though, is poor pay. It has made recruiting and retaining difficult. Some departments are so under-funded that they don’t have the money to hire new staff or to provide the training for certification.

11 Blackfeet Police Officers Furloughed

Eleven police officers serving the Blackfeet tribe have been furloughed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Great Falls Tribune reported on March 6.

At issue is the tribal department not conducting complete background checks, as required by the federal agency, on the officers, all who have been with the department since last January. The officers have been trained and certified but only passed preliminary background checks.

The tribal department is pointing the finger at the BIA. Henry Devereaux, the department's interim director, said the agency never adjudicated the officers with the more in-depth background checks.

Yet the BIA tosses the blame back. Elizabeth Hall, deputy special agent for the BIA in Billings, said: "That's not our responsibility. … The tribe is supposed to do the background checks."

Also, before January, the BIA had not conducted a review of the two-year-old program, which is under a three-year contract.

The furloughed officers have been replaced with nine BIA officers, who will remain in place until the background checks are done.

Dorgan Objects to BIA's Police Shuffle

Last week the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent 25 additional police officers to the troubled Pine Ridge Reservation to supplement the police force there. The problem is, according to North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, the agency took six of those officers from the Standing Rock Reservation in his state.

“The Standing Rock Reservation had a crime rate that was more than five times the national average," Dorgan told the Bismarck Tribune. "The additional police officers moved there by the BIA have substantially reduced the crime rate. This is not the time to reduce the number of police officers."

The BIA should use the $23.7 million appropriated last year by Congress for the Safe Indian Communities Initiative to put more officers in American Indian communities with high crime rates, Dorgan said.

Pine Ridge Police Officers Resign Following Council Meeting Brawl

At Tuesday’s meeting between Pine Ridge police and the tribal council, officers stood up one by one and told the council of the many ills that plague their department – overworked, understaffed, lack of training, lack of funding. But some on the council were having none of it. One council member told the police their testimony was hearsay and that they were just looking to lynch someone. According to a Black Hills Fox News reporter who was there, as police officers started to walk out, a fight broke out in the back of the room and when all was said and done, 30 police officers – more than half the force – resigned, leaving fewer than 20 police officers to patrol the vast reservation with its well-publicized crime problem. Tuesday afternoon the FBI sent agents to the reservation to patrol, according to the Rapid City Journal. The tribal council is meeting today to address the issue.

Tesuque Pueblo Police Department: Totally Wireless

It is a little unexpected, a small, traditional New Mexico pueblo with a police department as technologically advanced, maybe more so, than those of some major metropolitan areas. But that describes the Tesuque Pueblo Police Department.

The pueblo, consisting of 17,000 acres, is located in a very rural area of Santa Fe Country and has less than 1,000 residents, with 570 individuals living there tribal members. It is this rural setting that drove the Tesuque Police Department to technology. Chief Robert Frenier is known within his 11-officer force as being proactive, not reactive. He said he made developing the department a priority “so it could stand on its own.”

Before 2005, an officer taking a call in a remote area on the reservation could expect a lag in getting a response to an inquiry from dispatch. In some real remote spots, officers could not communicate via phone or radio at all. Fortunately, no officer was ever injured due to a lag or lack of communication. Read more about how Tesuque applied technology to address some serious and dangerous problems faced by police officers in Indian Country.