‘Wino Round Up’ in Wolf Point sparks civil rights lawsuit
A civil rights complaint filed in federal District Court on Monday alleges that officers from the Wolf Point Police Department and the Fort Peck Department of Law and Justice engaged in a mass detention of Wolf Point’s “street people,” who were denied basic civil rights and were held in unsanitary conditions including prolonged exposure to the sun and rain and a lack of adequate bathroom facilities.
The mass detentions allegedly began July 12, 2013. The complaint alleges that anyone identified as homeless, a “wino” or a drug addict was forcibly taken into police custody but never charged with a criminal offense, was not read their Miranda rights, was never booked into jail and was not given the opportunity to consult with legal counsel.
The complaint, filed on behalf of 31 plaintiffs who were subjects of the mass detention, names multiple defendants, including the mayor of Wolf Point, the entire 2013 membership of the Fort Peck tribal executive board, former and current law enforcement officials and several other tribal officials. It details a coordinated effort to clear Wolf Point’s streets of any street people prior to the 2013 Wild Horse Stampede, an annual event in Wolf Point that draws large crowds from outside the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.
“The Law and Justice Committee told the police officers … ‘Do something about these homeless street people during the Wild Horse Stampede Rodeo,’” said Mary Cleland, a tribal court lay advocate who is assisting the plaintiffs in the case. “They didn’t even issue any paperwork. They verbally told the captain of the police, ‘Get them out of sight. Put them anywhere, and don’t charge them.’”
The complaint states that approximately 50 men and women were handcuffed and crowded into vehicles during the midday hours of July 12, 2013. Many were hauled 33 miles to the Fort Peck Adult Detention Center in Poplar and held there until the following morning.
“… The combined police forces of the city and tribe’s policing officers on the street did not charge, book or make records of their activities and therefore did not identify many of the persons incarcerated,” the complaint states. “The identity of the city’s arresting officers was likewise hidden.”
The complaint also states that during the “Wino Round Up,” some of the officers detaining Wolf Point’s street people openly referred them as “prairie n——.”
“They just went around grabbing people like they were animals,” Cleland said.
Fort Peck tribal officials did not immediately respond to a Tribune request for comment on the allegations.
Anna Rose Sullivan, city attorney for Wolf Point and deputy county attorney for Roosevelt County, said she could not immediately comment on the complaint because she had not yet reviewed a copy of it, but that both the city of Wolf Point and Roosevelt County officials take the allegations very seriously.
Reba Demarrias, a 55-year-old tribal member from the Wolf Point area, is the lead plaintiff in the case. Demarrias said she is not a street person or an alcoholic but was swept up with the first group of people who were handcuffed and forcibly taken just an hour or so before the start of the Wild Horse Stampede’s parade.
She said that she and 10 other people were crowded into a single vehicle and taken to the adult detention center in Poplar.
“We couldn’t breathe, and we could barely move around,” Demarrias recalled of the half-hour drive to Poplar. “There wasn’t no kind of windows or anything. I didn’t know where we were going or where they were taking us. No one would talk to us. I sat there with my head between my legs trying to get air, because were so stuffed in there.”
The sweep of Wolf Point’s streets was so successful that the tribal jail was quickly filled beyond capacity, overwhelming the facility’s physical and human resources, the complaint states.
The detainees were separated according to gender, then herded into two outdoor recreation areas enclosed by chain-link fences. Each measured approximately 20 feet by 20 feet and were without access to permanent bathroom facilities.
“Everybody was screaming and crying,” Demarrias said. “After a while they came in with two or three trays of goulash. There wasn’t very many. The older ones just gave the food to all the young ones and kind of sheltered them there – trying to calm them down.”
Demarrias said the jail staff told the women that were not being detained, that “they were just being held.”
“The incarcerated plaintiffs were kept without medical treatment, prescription medications prescribed by their physicians, water or toilet facilities,” the civil rights complaint states. “Women were provided a blanket and a pot in which to relieve themselves. Men were instructed to urinate through the fence. Some of the male plaintiffs will testify that they were unable to get near the fence and so were forced to ‘piss or s— their pants.’”
“That day was hot,” Cleland said. “People were passing out from heat exhaustion. They were not fed properly, they were not given mattresses or jail uniforms. They went in their street clothes and they just threw them in there like dogs in a chain-linked exercise court exposed to the elements.
“There was feces all over the basketball court because there were no bathroom facilities,” she added. “One man got heat exhaustion and laid in feces. It’s just an atrocity, and nobody wants to listen.”
Jail staff allegedly made a limited attempt to shelter the detainees from the summer sun, covering at least a portion of each of the exercise yards with large plastic tarps. But a thunderstorm blew in in the evening hours, tearing away the tarps and exposing the detainees to the wind and rain.
After nightfall, the women were taken inside the detention center. The men were housed in a small, windowless garage. The detainees were released the next morning beginning at about 6 a.m.
Reacting to numerous personal accounts of the “Wino Round Up,” Cleland sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder requesting the intervention of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and a formal investigation into the actions of the Fort Peck tribal executive board, the Wolf Point Police Department and the Fort Peck Department of Law and Justice.
In April 2014, Special Agent Angela King from the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Internal Affairs Division questioned many of the individuals involved in the “Wino Round Up.” King declined a Tribune request for additional information, saying that she is prohibited from granting any public interviews on the matter. She directed all inquiries regarding the IAD’s investigation to the BIA’s public affairs specialist in Washington, D.C.
However, the Tribune has obtained an abbreviated and heavily redacted copy of King’s report, which reveals that several police officers involved in the “Wino Round Up” expressed concerns about the action’s legality.
“On April 15, 2014, IAD (Internal Affairs Division) interviewed Lieutenant (name deleted),” King’s report states. “Lt. (name deleted) proffered that the corrections officers were told that they would be detaining the ‘street people’ for twenty-four hours. Lt. (name deleted) advised that she protested that this was wrong, that holding these individuals without formally charging them would be violating their civil rights. Lt. (name deleted) asserted ‘I knew this would come back and bite everyone in the ass.’”
King’s report goes on to say that the unidentified female lieutenant expressed her concerns to her immediate superior, but was told, “if I wanted to keep my job I was to follow orders.”
A second IAD interview with the shift supervisor on duty during the “Wino Round Up” reveals similar concerns within the Wolf Point Police Department.
“Sgt. (name deleted) related that he received a phone call from Captain (name deleted) advising that the council was asking the community be cleaned up for the upcoming Wild Horse Stampede. Cpt. (name deleted) informed that the ‘local wino’s/tree people’ were to be picked up, and that there was a resolution in place.”
The captain allegedly told his sergeant that “everything was OK” and that “both corrections and the prosecutor were on board.”
The sergeant subsequently called a police department lieutenant and told the superior officer “that this ‘round up’ did not seem right to him, that ‘it was wrong to just pick people up who are drunk and lying around.’ Lt. (name deleted) concurred that this did not seem right to him either.”
The IAD report goes on to state that the Wolf Point police captain told his concerned sergeant that he would not have to complete paperwork on the mass detentions because the people being picked up “were just being held to sober up.”
King’s report was filed with the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Bismarck, North Dakota, on Oct. 9, 2014. The civil rights complaint states that King “found in favor of the winos” but did nothing to remedy the abuses.
The case has been referred to U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris. No further court proceedings had been scheduled as of Tuesday afternoon regarding the complaint.
Filed under: General Problems
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