Area police gear up for New Year's Eve,
Y2K
Jim Maniaci
Diné Bureau
WINDOW ROCK — The entire Navajo police force is being marshaled
not only for the normal New Year's eve celebrations but for the Y2K
standby.
In fact, officers will be stationed at major commercial centers and
other likely targets of vandalism such as Navajo Housing Authority
subdivisions if the electricity does go off, whether by accident,
Y2K computer failure or deliberate sabotage, the Public Safety Committee
of the Navajo Nation Council was told Monday.
Eugene Guerrito, director of the Department of Emergency Management
in the Division of Public Safety, also told the committee the emergency
operations center will open about 8 p.m. Friday. It is located at
the Navajo central emergency operations center at the Window Rock
fire station.
Navajo Tribal Utility Authority and Citizens Communications (Navajo
Communication Company) are setting up special equipment, and backup
generators have passed their tests, he said.
The DEM chief also said the United States will be looking at New Zealand
as an indicator of any trouble, since the Pacific Ocean island nation
is 16 hours ahead on the clock, he said.
Food distribution centers will be staffed with enough fuel to last
for several weeks, and the depot at Fort Wingate will be ready to
distribute enough food for two extra months, he said.
The Facility Management Department will be on standby to open any
necessary Navajo Nation buildings that it maintains, he said.
Although it will not be open to the public, the Window Rock Chevron
station will have a backup generator to run fuel pumps for Navajo
Nation emergency vehicles, he said.
The DEM director said the Bureau of Indian Affairs throughout the
country will shut down its equipment that weekend.
San Juan County, N.M., will have a shelter open at McGee Park in Farmington
that will be able to hold 6,000 in an emergency. Guerrito said he
did not know how many churches planned to open as shelters.
In McKinley County, the New Mexico National Guard will be on standby
with the BIA set up at the McKinley Metro Dispatch Center in Gallup,
he said.
Apache County in Arizona will feed information on conditions from
the county supervisors' field offices in Chinle and Ganado into the
county seat at St. Johns. He said contacts also are set up with Navajo
County in Holbrook and Coconino County in Flagstaff.
Tico Charlee, the Navajo Nation Y2K coordinator, was briefing the
chiefs of the three branches of government, Guerrito said.
Two of the chiefs, President Kelsey Begaye and Council Speaker Edward
T. Begay, came under criticism from Council Delegate Edison Wauneka
of the Crystal, Red Lake and Sawmill chapters for not activating the
Navajo Commission on Emergency Management, which he said was the official
agency to declare an emergency that would be recognized by the state
and federal governments.
Committee Chairman Edward Jim of the Sheep Springs and Newcomb chapters
said he will be at the Sheep Springs Chapter House, and residents
in need of assistance should go to their local chapter houses for
refuge, if needed.
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Chief: Fire crews will be working
Only two fire stations are closed
Jim Maniaci
Diné Bureau
WINDOW ROCK — Only the Indian Wells and Leupp fire
stations remain closed by the walkout of volunteers and paid staff
this month, the new fire chief told the Public Safety Committee of
the Navajo Nation Council Monday.
Tuba City, as of last Thursday, was an estimated 85 percent operational,
according to Acting Fire Chief Lawrence Garnanez, with 10 volunteers
working. The station is supplemented by the nearby Bureau of Indian
Affairs station.
The stations in New Mexico and Utah Crownpoint, Shiprock and Montezuma
Creek are being covered by paid staff assisted by McKinley and San
Juan counties in New Mexico and San Juan County in Utah, Garnanez
said.
Garnanez added that Window Rock also is 85 percent operational, with
five volunteers supplementing the paid staff. Window Rock is receiving
assistance from the Navajo Pine and BIA Fort Defiance stations.
Chinle, the exception to the recent massive walkout by almost all
volunteers and one-third of the paid staff, remains 100 percent operational
with one paid firefighter and six volunteers.
Leupp, in the extreme southwestern section of the reservation, is
closed and has no equipment. Indian Wells closed when two paid staff
walked out.
The fire chief said Tuba City would soon reach 100 percent readiness.
As of Christmas Eve, Garnanez said, the station had achieved 85 percent,
with 10 volunteers having returned and one placed in charge. The BIA
also has eight volunteers on standby, he added.
Coverage for Toyei, the location of the Navajo police training academy,
is being provided by the BIA in Keams Canyon on the Hopi Reservation,
22 miles away. Keams Canyon also will respond to fires as far away
as Steamboat and Bidahochi, east of Indian Wells, he said.
Garnanez said the written agreement with the BIA will
end on Jan. 15 but can be extended.
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Navajo Council will take on criminal
code again
Jim Maniaci
Diné Bureau
WINDOW ROCK — For the third consecutive time an attempt will
be made to make massive changes to the Navajo criminal code.
The decision to lump everything into one package except gambling as
an economic development project came Monday from the Public Safety
Committee of the Navajo Nation Council.
The alternative would have split the package into segments. That option,
presented by the Office of Legislative Services, is known to be favored
by the Office of Legislative Counsel, which sponsored the initial
changes that were aimed at crippling the profitable black market business
of selling liquor on the reservation.
Either way, the proposed changes will go to the council
for its winter session beginning on Jan. 24.
In July, the council adopted the wholesale changes, only to have Navajo
President Kelsey Begaye veto them because he believed they violated
family values by removing adultery and bigamy as criminal code violations
and allowing casino-style gambling. The council was not able to get
enough votes to override the veto.
In October, a new obstacle popped up: how to handle the use and misuse
of peyote, a hallucinogenic drug from cactus buttons. The powerful
drug can be used legally in Indian religious observances. The fall
session of the council also was complicated by four different versions
of the changes.
Delegates clamped a halt to the proceedings, ordering the Public Safety
and Judiciary Committees to hold public hearings on the proposed changes.
Committee member Freddie Howard said he favored giving it one more
shot as a package deal.
If the bundle of changes either fails to obtain the necessary votes
or is vetoed by Begaye and not overridden by the council, Howard said,
the council could return with a series of resolutions. Each resolution
would deal with a separate proposed alteration to the 21-year-old
criminal code that has not seen a major change since its adoption
in 1978.
Chief of Legislative Services Rose Graham also presented a report
summarizing public hearings on Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 in Chinle and Shiprock
on the proposed changes.
The summary covered nine areas of proposed changes to
the law:
Allowing civil prosecution in Navajo courts of non-Indians and non-Navajo
Indians who violate the criminal code. Penalties could include fines,
forfeitures, restitution and exclusion from Navajo lands.
Requiring prosecution for a crime, except embezzlement or falsification
of vouchers, to begin within three years as a statute of limitation.
Adding the Navajo common law practice of nalyeeh the open discussion
of an offense and the Navajo values that apply to that offense through
mediation and the assignment of liability along with the use of reconciliation
plus retroactive justice. This would, in most cases, replace the punitive
sentences and fines now imposed by Navajo judges.
Reserving jail time as a last alternative when a person causes serious
injury to a victim.
Leaving it to a judge's discretion, rather than requiring, what sentence
to impose.
Adding murder, arson and kidnapping as major crimes. Since they now
are not part of the code, they have to be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's
Office in federal courts.
Combining resisting or obstructing an officer and obstruction
of justice by interfering with the prosecutor into a single obstruction
of justice section.
Adding a "dram shop" provision in which those who sell liquor
might be held liable for damages caused by a person who consumes that
alcohol, along with allowing the confiscation of property obtained
with the bootlegging profits. The hearings raised a question about
the owner of the property not knowing that the illegal sale of liquor
was taking place. The forfeiture of property provision is aimed at
crippling the bootleggers financially.
Making it a crime to sell drugs and other controlled substances including
peyote, if not used as a sacrament in an Indian religious service,
which is allowed by federal law. Improper use would include taking
the drug in a sweat lodge. Disposal of confiscated peyote would go
to a roadman of the Native American Church instead of to a traditional
medicine man.
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Who wants gambling?
Jim Maniaci
Diné Bureau
WINDOW ROCK — Two in favor, one opposed and one to go. And that's
just the preliminary battle for making gambling possible in the future
on the Navajo Reservation.
Richard T. Begaye, a Shiprock Chapter council delegate, has been shepherding
a resolution that would make it possible for the eastern-most Navajo
island reservation, Tohajiileh (Caoncito), to go into casino-style
gaming. The resolution received the blessing of the Economic Development
and Transportation-Community Development Committees of the Navajo
Nation Council.
But when it reached the Public Safety Committee Monday, it received
a negative recommendation...
Navajo Police briefs
Jim Maniaci
Diné Bureau
2 die in Crystal fire
WINDOW ROCK — Two people died early Monday morning
in a house fire in the Crystal Chapter, Navajo authorities said Monday.
Neither their genders nor their identities were determined Monday,
the Navajo Department of Criminal Investigations said.
Their bodies were found after 3 a.m. by Navajo Pine
Fire Chief Sammy Legah III when he began looking through the charred
rubble of what had been the Robert Jumbo home about 3.5 miles north
of the old Crystal Road in the southwestern corner of San Juan County,
N.M....
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Pedro's closes its doors Feb. 1
Bill Donovan
Staff Writer
GALLUP — For most of the 1970s and 1980s, the place to go in
Gallup was Pedro's Restaurant.
But by the 1990s, as Pedro's core customers got older
and stopped eating out as often, the restaurant that had been profiled
in newspapers like The New York Times, began losing customers and
money. Eventually, it was converted into a lounge.
Tonight, the final nail is expected to be driven into
the establishment's coffin, and if things go as expected, Pedro's
will shut its doors for good on Feb. 1...
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Schools add 2 officers
Zarana Sanghani
Staff Writer
GALLUP — New police will take to the hallways in Gallup's schools.
A grant issued by the U.S. Department of Justice will allow the Gallup
Police Department to add two police officers to the group of four
already assigned to the beat.
"I'm just tickled that there is going to be some
additional help," said Angelo DiPaolo, assistant to the superintendent
of McKinley County Schools. "Having police officers has been
great for creating a safe school and preventive programs..."
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PD: Only slight rise in holiday violence
Sekai K. Mutunhu
Staff Writer
GALLUP - While police tend to see an increase in domestic violence
during the holiday season, local law enforcement officials say they
are experiencing only a slight increase in domestic violence calls
this year.
State Police Capt. Glenn Thomas said there is usually a minor hike
in domestic violence calls over Christmas. However, officers didn't
receive any calls over the Christmas weekend.
Thomas said money woes and an overindulgence of alcohol often lead
to increased violence in the home over the holidays...
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RECA wants audit of lobbying funds
Nancy Watson
Staff Writer
GALLUP — The Navajo Nation Council's Budget and Finance Committee
will hear a report today from Melton Martinez calling for an audit
of the tribe's use of $500,000 in lobbying funds.
Martinez' group, the Navajo RECA Reform Working Group, claims the
money is lining the pockets of a consultant, Phil Harrison, and the
legal firm of Cummins and Brown, lobbyists hired by the tribe.
He also contends the lobbyists are prolonging their efforts to make
more money from the tribe...
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