By Alysa Landry
Farmington Daily Times
ALAMO, NM — When it comes to law enforcement, every second counts.
In the Alamo Chapter of the Navajo Nation, however, it can take as long as three hours for emergency personnel to arrive. The chapter, one of three satellite Navajo communities, is located 57 miles southeast of Socorro, but is served by the Crownpoint Police District, more than 130 miles away.
Police can spend more than six hours to arrest, detain and book one person, leaving other calls unanswered, Regina Roanhorse, Alamo Court administrator, said in a prepared statement.
The Navajo Nation’s judicial branch, hoping to streamline law enforcement services in the remote chapter, has trained seven Socorro County deputies to provide services on the Nation.
“This is a good collaboration with county law enforcement to address ongoing disparities in law enforcement services for frontier areas of the Navajo Nation,” Roanhorse said in the statement. “It will begin a process of addressing the crime rates in the community.”
Roanhorse could not be reached Wednesday for further comment.
The Alamo Chapter is home to about 1,200 people, including 42.5 percent of children living below poverty level and an unemployment rate of nearly 75 percent, according Navajo Judicial Branch data.
The training comes two years after former Gov. Bill Richardson signed an agreement with Socorro County and Navajo Nation officials to provide more law enforcement by cross-commissioning county deputies.
Deputies who are trained will have the authority to enforce criminal and traffic laws of the Navajo Nation and file cases with the To’Hajiilee-Alamo District Court.
The agreement is one of two signed by the state and the Nation. The other agreement is with McKinley County.
No such agreement exists with San Juan County, though the Nation sought one following a high-speed chase onto the reservation after which a deputy searched a subject, in violation of Navajo law.
The Nation prohibits searches and arrests of any American Indians within Navajo territory by state officers absent a cross-commission agreement, states a tribal act passed last fall.
“This act will prevent encroachment by outside law enforcement and prospectively compel counties and state law enforcement to negotiate cross-commission agreements with the Navajo Nation,” the resolution states.
County law enforcement agencies don’t always agree that cross-commissioning is the answer.
“The problem is there’s no way that we can go patrol and afford to do it the Navajo Nation,” San Juan County Sheriff Ken Christensen said. “We barely have enough people to cover what we have. To go out there and do that would be taking away from the county.”
For example, tribal crimes in San Juan County are prosecuted in Shiprock or Crownpoint. If the county sent officers to the courts, it would face issues of steeper travel costs and fewer deputies on duty in the county.
The county contributed $500,000 to a substation built last year in the rural community of Dzilth-Na-O-Dith-Hle, south of Bloomfield. The station was touted as a place where officers of various agencies could collaborate and tackle crime in the checkerboard area.
One sheriff’s deputy lives near the substation, Christesen said. No San Juan County deputies are cross-commissioned to make arrests on reservation land.
The checkerboard, so named because of its patches of land under jumbled ownership, is a jurisdictional nightmare. Parcels of land are owned by the tribe, the state, the Bureau of Land Management and private citizens.
“The checkerboard area is such a complicated issue that it’s really no man’s land for jurisdiction,” Christesen said. “The tribe has some jurisdiction, we have some jurisdiction, and it’s confusing at the very best. Every section that you hop in and out of is a different jurisdiction.”
Christesen, who said cross-commissioning is not the answer for areas like the checkerboard region, encouraged the tribe to take steps internally to build up its law enforcement capabilities. Such actions include recruiting and retaining more officers, he said.
Christesen also is calling for clarification from the Supreme Court on reservation jurisdiction. While county officers respond to every emergency, even on tribal land, their hands are tied when it comes to making arrests, gathering evidence or prosecuting crimes on the reservation.
County certification with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, however, would allow federal charges for crimes committed on reservation land, Christesen said.
“Those people, what happens is they are the ones that suffer because of the uncertainty on jurisdiction, and they deserve police services just like everyone else,” he said. “Those people out there, whether in the checkerboard area or on the reservation, they deserve to be protected.”
According to the agreement signed by the Nation and Socorro and McKinley counties, deputies must complete 16 hours of training to become cross-commissioned. Once the training is complete, they immediately can begin patrolling reservation communities.
Training includes federal Indian law, the federal Tribal Law and Order Act and Navajo Nation criminal code. It also includes laws on children and motor vehicles, as well as information on Navajo history, language, culture and clanship.
The agreement states it is “to prevent each jurisdiction from becoming a sanctuary for the violators of the laws of the other to prevent interjurisdictional flight and to foster greater respect for the laws of each jurisdiction by the more certain application thereof.”
Copyright 2011 Farmington Daily Times, a MediaNews Group Newspaper