Residents push for public safety in Piñon
By Noel Lyn Smith
Navajo Times
WINDOW ROCK, June 23, 2011
That she was just 7 years old did not faze her or her audience - the Law and Order Committee of the Navajo Nation Council.
Gene was one of six Piñon residents to address the committee Monday about the need for a jail, courts, and police station in the windswept crossroads community of 3,000.
"What do I have to say for you to listen to me?" Gene said. "You tell us little ones to speak out, that's why I'm here asking for something good from you. I want to help my community."
Supporters say the effort to build a public safety complex started 10 years ago as a way to address the growing problem of crime, drug trafficking, domestic violence, thefts and vandalism.
The building would house a police department, courts, and a 32-bed detention center.
Since Piñon is located 50 miles from Chinle, and the 911 system does not work in the area, access to police and courts is hard, at best. Police in Kayenta and Tuba City are even more remote, and to the south lays the Hopi Reservation, whose police have no jurisdiction on Navajo land.
The public safety facility would be centrally located to serve all of Black Mesa, including Blue Gap-Tachee, Forest Lake, Hard Rock, Kíts'íílí, Low Mountain and Whippoorwill chapters.
So far the Piñon community has raised $1.3 million for the project and hired a design company to draw up building plans, but there is no money to pay for construction, estimated at $23 million.
The need for a stronger law-and-order presence is acute, police statistics show. Council Delegate Dwight Witherspoon (Forest Lake/Hardrock/Kíts'íílí/Piñon/Whippoorwill), who presented the report to the committee, said 32 percent of arrests made within the Chinle Police District comes from Piñon.
As part of his presentation, he showed the committee newspaper clippings about the March shooting of a Piñon man in the Bashas' parking lot and about another man who was charged with burning down his mother's house.
"These are certainly things that have occurred in the last couple of months," he said. "We've certainly had murders, we have a lot of gang activity."
Witherspoon said he is a former high school football and wrestling coach and that many of his athletes did not want to stay after school for practice because they were concerned about the safety of their homes.
"We have a dire concern to improve our public safety," he said. "This facility would greatly benefit our seven communities and change the behavior within our communities."
Piñon Chapter President Bessie Allen said having a daily presence of law enforcement would prevent criminal activity.
"When you are driving down the road, if there's an officer on the road everybody slows down," Allen said. "It's like that in a community, if you see an officer around everybody kind of behaves themselves."
Chapter officials and community members have repeatedly approached the Council to fund the project, she said.
"I don't know what you have to do to convince your leaders that there is a need," Allen said.
Jonathan Nez, who was there representing the Navajo County Board of Supervisors (he represents District 1, which includes the Navajo end of Black Mesa), said the county has stationed a sheriff's deputy in Piñon, but the deputy cannot arrest anyone because the tribe and the county have not yet finalized a cross-deputization agreement.
"All he can do is wave," said Nez, who also serves on the Council.
He said traffic has increased in Piñon since the main roads were paved and some of those visitors conduct criminal activity.
"They're getting smart - drug dealers - they're using secondary roads where there's no police officers, where there's no public safety present and that's what these folks here are dealing with," Nez said.
Supporters of the Piñon public safety facility also questioned why their project did not receive any money from the $60 million loan from Key Bank to construct new jails.
Delores Greyeyes, Department of Corrections director, said the Key Bank loan was allocated to the design and construction of public safety and judicial buildings in three agency headquarters, Tuba City, Crownpoint and Chinle, based on a priority list developed by the previous Council.
In 2007, the tribe increased the Navajo Nation sales tax by 1 percent to pay for public safety and judicial facilities.
"One of my recommendations is, let's revisit that tax set-aside. We need to increase it. The public safety demands and needs are tremendous," Greyeyes said. "We need to increase that in order for us to move a lot faster in meeting our people's needs in building these facilities."
She commended the community for working on a solution but the same issues and needs are impacting many communities on the Navajo Nation, she said.
Committee member Alton Joe Shepherd (Cornfields/Ganado/Jeddito/Kin Dah Lichíí/Steamboat) supports the Piñon facility and asked the Law and Order Committee to examine where money can be found to build it.
Joe suggested to Witherspoon that he place the issue before the Resources and Development Committee for inclusion in a bond-financing proposal the committee is considering.
"They're looking to have shovel-ready projects and I think this is well and beyond towards that and farther along than some of the other projects being proposed," Shepherd said.
Law and Order Committee Chairman Edmund Yazzie (Church Rock/Iyanbito/Mariano Lake/Pinedale/Smith Lake/Thoreau) proposed revisiting the priority list compiled by the previous Council, and a work session involving the Division of Public Safety.
"They put us to the test," Yazzie said of the push from Piñon.
The committee accepted the report, 3-0, and scheduled a work session Tuesday, June 28, at 9 a.m.