The Chemehuevi Indian Tribe has filed a federal lawsuit alleging San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies are racially profiling tribal members and targeting them for traffic citations on their reservation, without the jurisdictional power to do so.
The lawsuit was filed on July 30 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on behalf of the tribe and tribal members Chelsea Lynn Bunim, Tommie Robert Ochoa, Jasmine Sansoucie and Naomi Lopez. It names as defendants Sheriff John McMahon, Deputy Ronald Sindelar, District Attorney Michael Ramos, County Counsel Jean-Rene Basle, and Deputy County Counsel Miles Kowalski.
The Chemehuevi reservation spans 32,000 acres and borders the Colorado River near Lake Havasu, on the California side of the California/Arisona border.
According to the lawsuit, Sindelar pulled each of the plaintiffs over on Havasu Lake Road for various driving offenses including driving with expired registration tags, driving on a suspended license, and speeding.
In some of the cases, the vehicles were impounded and towed to Needles while the plaintiffs were left standing on the side of the road. Some of the plaintiffs had to pay hundreds of dollars to get their vehicles out of impound, according to the lawsuit.
Bunim was cited for driving with expired registration. She filed a motion for dismissal on grounds the Sheriff’s Department did not have jurisdiction to cite her.
In a motion opposing Bunim’s request, Deputy County Counsel Miles Kowalski said Bunim’s assertion was “untenable and legally indefensible.” He said the location where Bunim was pulled over and cited was not on the reservation and in a neighborhood where residents pay property taxes to the county.
“In this case, allowing the county to enforce basic traffic safety laws on county maintained roads within the reservation does not ‘impermissibly infringe’ on the Chemehuevi tribe’s powers of self-government, nor would it ‘result in the destruction of tribal institutions and values,’” Kowalski said in his motion.
In Sansoucie’s case, Sindelar stopped her for having an out-of-state license plate, but he wound up citing her for driving with a suspended license. Sansoucie was subsequently charged with a misdemeanor, according to the lawsuit.
“There is no California law that prohibits people from driving a vehicle in the state of California that is registered in another state,” according to the lawsuit. “Deputy Sindelar, thus, had no probable cause to stop Ms. Sansoucie.”
Sansoucie appealed to have the charge dropped on grounds the defendants did not have jurisdiction to cite her and prosecute her for her alleged offense. She also requested that county prosecutors voluntarily dismiss the charge on the same grounds, which they refused to do, according to the lawsuit.
On May 29, San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Lisa H. Rogan dismissed Sansoucie’s case on grounds the court lacked jurisdiction, according to the lawsuit.
“This Sheriff, District Attorney and County Counsel have decided they want to racially profile Indians on the reservation and impound their cars,” said Lester Marston, the attorney representing the tribal members. He said he is seeking a temporary restraining order preventing deputies from citing tribal members on the reservation for Vehicle Code violations, and he is also seeking monetary damages from the county including attorney’s fees and pain and suffering.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Jodi Miller said Monday that the department had received the lawsuit, and that the allegations are “merely representations made by one side in a dispute and do not constitute factual determinations made by a judge or a jury.”
“We are confident that at the conclusion of the litigation, the truth will be revealed with respect to the unsupported claims made in the plaintiff’s complaint,” Miller said.