Chiefs agree tribal police bill would not affect Fife

By Clare Jensen and Meghan Erkkinen

House Bill 2476 is creating quite a stir among Washington communities this legislative session.

It proposes that tribal police would be authorized to act as, and have the same powers as, any other “general Washington peace officer” to enforce state laws.

Bill supporters say it is necessary to keep tribal reservations safe and crime free, while some opponents believe it could infringe upon local law enforcement.

Regardless of what the legislative session brings for the bill, it will not matter on the Puyallup Reservation, according to Puyallup Tribal Chief of Police Joe Duenas, as tribal police have had equal jurisdiction in Pierce County, Fife and Tacoma for years.

According to Fife Police Chief Brad Blackburn, the House bill will not change the way the two police departments do business.

“What everyone else is trying to do we’ve already done,” he said. “It’s worked out pretty well.”

In 1990, the city of Tacoma, Pierce County and the Puyallup Tribe created a mutual aid agreement that outlines the cooperative relationship among the three overlapping jurisdictions.

In 2005, the tribe and city of Fife made a similar agreement, which applied specifically to the Emerald Queen Casino.

“The [mutual aid agree-ment] document doesn’t address who gets to arrest who…it was to address who’s going to respond first on trust land and how they’re going to respond to that,” said John Bell, director of the Puyallup Tribe’s Legal Department.

While tribal police officers have had the right to detain a non-Native until other law enforcement arrives, Duenas said the mutual working agreement between the Puyallup Tribe and its neighbors has adapted to the needs of the unique urban layout of the Puyallup Reservation.

“We used to do that,” Duenas said. “But after many years of going through the process, the working agreement has been [for tribal police] to go ahead and handle the whole call.”

Because of the reserv-ation’s urban setting and the “checker-board” status of the two Emerald Queen Casinos in Fife and Tacoma, as well as various smoke shops where many non-Natives congregate, the ability of the tribal police to handle whatever matters occur in such places just makes sense.

“If we called them (sur-rounding police departments) every time we arrested a non-Native at the casino, they’d have to have additional officers on all shifts,” Duenas said.

He added that some of the controversy arising out of Bill 2476 could stem back to some tribal departments not working well with city police departments and county sheriff’s departments.

“We haven’t had that. We have a good working rela-tionship with the county and the cities our reservation runs through. We’ve been able to solve those conflicts without having a bill run through the legislature,” Duenas said.

Another point of conflict for opposition of the bill is the belief that some tribal police do not have equal training to other police forces. While this may be true on other reservations, it is not in Puyallup.

Blackburn said one of the reasons the agreement has been successful is because of the level of professionalism within the tribal police.

Duenas said all his officers have equivalent training to

non-tribal officers, as well as tribal police officer certifica-tion from the state. The state certification is not required, but Duenas said because the Puyallup Reservation is in an urban area, they take that extra step.

There have been a few minor issues that have arisen from the Puyallup Tribal Police and city of Tacoma’s unwritten agreement, but Duenas hopes the mutual aid agreement, which was reached back in 1990, can be updated to solve any of the issues that may arise because of the document’s language. “What we do now isn’t exactly on paper, but it works now and we’re working on changing the language.

“Nobody wants to see a perp or a suspect commit domestic violence on a Native woman because she’s on a reservation. It happened here a long time ago: non-Natives coming on to the reservation to sell drugs, etc…because we (tribal police) couldn’t do anything.”

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