Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005 | 9:29 a.m.
CABAZON INDIAN RESERVATION, Calif. -- Cabazon police Sgt. Ronald Karr has nearly all of the privileges bestowed upon most other police officers in California -- except one.
He can arrest people, write tickets, carry weapons, and respond to emergencies in a patrol car that comes equipped with wailing siren and flashing lights.
But what Karr -- and every other tribal police officer in California -- can't do is tap into state and federal law enforcement databases allowing them to check for criminal records and outstanding warrants on the people they stop.
Without that access, routinely made available to nontribal police, Karr and other tribal officers say they can run into trouble gathering even such basic information as a person's home address.
"You just don't know what's going on. You don't know whether someone has just robbed a bank or escaped from jail," said Karr, 52, bouncing in the driver's seat of his sport-utility vehicle as he patrols the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians reservation in Riverside County, about 90 miles east of Los Angeles. "Without that kind of information, you're really in the dark. It's a scary feeling."
California, tribal officials say, is one of only a few states to deny such information to tribal police officers. State officials say they worry that if the information were used for nonofficial business, they would have no power to hold the tribes, which are sovereign nations, accountable.
"Tribes are sovereign, not bound by state law," said California attorney general spokesman Nathan Barankin. "So unless the tribe is willing to waive its sovereignty in some way or a state or local government agency wants to assume accountability on behalf of that tribe, there's no way to make a tribe bound by California law."
At least a few sworn, nontribal police officers in the state, Barankin said, have lost privileges for using the information for personal gain.
The California Tribal Police Chiefs Association, which has filed suit in Riverside County Superior Court to obtain information about arrests and convictions, believes discrimination might be among the reasons behind the ban.
"The potential for abuse exists everywhere, not just on reservations," said Michael Meese, police chief for the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians in Northern California.
Tribal officials say public safety is becoming increasingly important on reservations because the booming gambling industry has drawn more people to Indian-run casinos.
"In order to do our job effectively we have to have the tools," said Stan Kephart, police chief of the Cabazon tribe and a member of the Tribal Police Chiefs Association, which filed the lawsuit last May. "We just don't understand how California has a system that denies us what the rest of the tribes in the nation get."
With more and more people visiting casinos each year, it is important that tribal police be given every tool available to deter crime, said Carole Goldberg, a University of California, Los Angeles, professor who studies tribal law enforcement.
At the Cabazon reservation, total arrests are up more than 200 percent in the past five years to nearly 300 in 2004. The tribe, which has one of the largest casinos in the state and the largest tribal police department with 22 officers, says its officers often encounter dangerous felons without knowing anything about them.
"Casinos have brought more outsiders to reservations and the presence of more outsiders to reservations has made it more important for tribes to gain more information about those outsiders," Goldberg said.
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