On this California Native American Day, we celebrate Native American contributions to this state and nation as well as their strength, resiliency, diversity and culture of the more than 100 tribes that call our state home.
Even as we celebrate the accomplishments of California’s First People, we also recall a past that continues to traumatize and haunt us. This week the Morongo Band of Mission Indians suffered the loss of a beloved member, Amy Porter. She had been missing seven days before the family found her body in a Yucaipa ravine. Loved ones suspect domestic violence played a role in her death.
Ms. Porter’s grieving family has raised concerns about the delays in responding to their requests for a Feather Alert – a public notification system similar to the AMBER and Silver alerts used when Native Americans are missing. Family members also expressed frustration with the time taken to initiate an investigation into her disappearance. After organizing a search party with friends and using social media, they located her body.
This troubling case, now under investigation, reinforces the need to grant peace officer status to tribal law enforcement and streamlining the Feather Alert process to make it more responsive to Native American communities. California ranks fifth in the nation for the number of unresolved cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP).
California Native Americans, legislators, and advocates are working to reverse our direction. Over the past six years, through their work as well as that of the governor and Department of Justice (DOJ), we have implemented the Feather Alert that I authored in 2022 and taken other steps to increase collaboration, data collection, and training among local, state, and tribal law enforcement. This year, I have a bill, AB 1863, on the governor’s desk to streamline the almost two-year old Feather Alert.
Yet, one vital piece is missing. Tribal communities and their law enforcement officers are not authorized to investigate cases involving their citizens off their lands. Additionally, federal Public Law 280 gave public safety jurisdiction to the state, without providing clear law enforcement authority to tribes. Tribal lack of authority creates delayed response times from other law enforcement entities because reservations are often located in rural or isolated areas. The safety gap also too frequently results in jurisdictional confusion: is city, county, state or tribal law enforcement responsible for first response and investigation? Slower response times can mean life or death and a resulting failure to apprehend a suspect or fully investigate a crime.
Earlier this year I authored AB 2138, also on the governor’s desk, that would create a three-year pilot program allowing tribal law enforcement under specified conditions to obtain state peace officer status for their officers.
I introduced the bill after many conversations with tribal leaders, law enforcement representatives, advocates working to confront the MMIP crisis and discussions with my colleagues including a roundtable with stakeholders and researchers.
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Increasing safety on tribal lands is critical to stemming the MMIP crisis and resolving cases. More than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence. Indigenous women are more than twice as likely to experience sexual assault, and homicide is the third leading cause of death for Indigenous women and girls. Nearly half of all Indigenous women have been raped, beaten, or stalked by an intimate partner.
Those engaged in combating this crisis know that these case statistics are likely much higher because Native Americans are misclassified as a different ethnicity or race or wrongly believed to have left their homes voluntarily. Evidence of a crime is not always found.
Granting tribal police state peace officer status and streamlining the Feather Alert process can bring greater safety to California’s First People. Let’s continue to move forward to ensure tribal safety. We have offered condolences to the Porter family, but let us also offer action.
James C. Ramos is the first California Native American elected to the Legislature. He represents the 45th Assembly district and chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee #6 on Public Safety.