November 19, 2009 in Nation/World, City

Tribal police: Cartels drive reservations’ drug problems

Colville official among group testifying before Senate committee

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Audio slideshow: Marijuana grow

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Matt Haney, police chief of the Colville Confederated Tribes, has two officers by day and three by night to patrol the 2,275 square miles of reservation under his jurisdiction.

Even with those limited resources, in recent years his small department has seized more than 45,000 marijuana plants in outdoor growing operations he said are financed and directed by Mexican drug gangs.

Vast areas and small police forces are among the reasons drug cartels think reservations are “great places” to do their work, he said: “I’m not naïve enough to believe we’re catching anywhere near the total number of marijuana grows on our reservation.”

Haney was one of four witnesses who told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee Wednesday about increasing gang influence and drug smuggling on tribal lands all over the country. Mexican cartels also target Indian reservations because a poor populace can be recruited into their drug supply chains.

More than half a million marijuana plants have been seized in Washington state this year, most from outdoor growing operations thought to be operated by Mexican drug gangs.

Haney, who told senators he thinks tribal governments are barely making a dent in the cartel’s efforts, said expanding a federal program known as High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas could help coordinate drug control agencies in certain regions. Washington state was designated as a high-intensity area in 1996 but only certain counties, including Spokane, have task forces operating. Haney thinks if the federal government establishes one in the Colville Reservation, they could see a quick return on their investment.

“There’s never been a HIDTA in Indian Country,” he said. “What I’m saying is why not try one?”

The director of the program, Arnold Moorin, agreed Indian reservations are used by cartels because of their remote locations and poverty. The program has not designated a new drug trafficking area since 2001, he added.

Senators on the committee, while not considering any legislation, seemed receptive to the idea of expanding HIDTA to tribal areas. The program “could serve as a model for the development of a collaborative effort between individual tribes to provide law enforcement assistance to each other,” Sen. Maria Cantwell said in a statement.

The committee chairman, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D, said the government might have overlooked Indian Country’s needs when it designated the areas: “This question of dealing with drug use on Indian reservations and gang activity, it seems to me that’s been left behind a bit in terms of where the money has gone.”

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  empyrius on November 20 at 12:40 a.m.

  As usual, the government creates more problems than solves! Decriminalizing marijuana would not only be a massive boost to our state's economy, it would eliminate well over half of the illicit drug-trade, it would allow law enforcement to concentrate on combating the hard drugs such as cracked cocaine and meth, and, far more importantly, Americans would actually be free to smoke a joint. Plant a freedom plant, marijuana that is, today!

  Spokanites, rise up to the occasion my fellow God-fearing, freedom-loving, unjust big government hating fellow Americans, and just say no to governmental “social engineers” who strive to make us abide by their corporate-lobbyist informed notions of “right” & “wrong”! We must fight for our freedom to pursue our happiness; we harm not our fellow man, and yet “the man” throws us into their prisons and steals our property and land! Enough! Remember Breckenridge (CO)! The feds say, “no, marijuana is pure evil” (but we have the patent on it by the way), while WA state says, “yes, the green is good for some” …: fie upon their incompetent “justice”! Let freedom ring Spokane and outright decriminalize the green! Let us show this nation once more that freedom cannot forever be unjustly constrained, and let the tyranny of tyrants be washed away not with blood but with the beauty of God's green bud! Yeah baby, the green revolution is upon us!

  pax vobiscum
  

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