The tension between the border town police and Navajos is real. And these people are trying to change that. | FRONTLINE | PBS
In a relationship with:
The chase and shootout on a deserted desert road where Colorado turns into Utah ended with Montezuma County Sgt. Edward Oxley killing Fordell Hill, a Navajo man.
It started when Oxley ran over a car because of a broken taillight.
Oxley is now expected to be tried in April and charged with misconduct, not the 2018 murder, but his actions during the prosecution.
Jennifer Nez Denetdale doesn’t see Hill’s death as an isolated incident, but rather as part of a long story of tension between law enforcement and indigenous people. And she thinks the only twist that comes as a surprise is that the cop will be charged.
She chairs the Navajo Nation’s Human Rights Commission and has published research tracing the conflict between members of the Navajo Nation and the border town police back to the 1840s when white settlers began creating areas of Navajo land with easy access to water and occupy other resources. These outcrops became today’s border towns.
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Even border town police officers admit there are strained relationships with those living in the Navajo nation, which is located in southeast Utah, northeast Arizona, and northwest New Mexico, and borders Montezuma County, southwest Colorado. Tensions appear to be even more acute in the more populated areas of Arizona and New Mexico.
Over time, some members of the Navajo Nation became dependent on these cities for basic services and labor – especially after a US government program in the 1920s-1940s resulted in the slaughter of over half of the cattle of various Navajo tribes.
The border towns, on the other hand, are dependent on the expenses of the indigenous peoples, but can view them with suspicion. These suspicions lead officials to monitor these “outsiders,” Denetdale said.
“Law enforcement in border cities is about containing and monitoring indigenous peoples,” she said, “because we are considered out of place. We shouldn’t be in these border towns. “
In the Hill killing, the sergeant stopped the car with three men for minor violations, and the sergeant “got a pretty good feeling these are bad guys” because Hill was holding his backpack. After Oxley followed the car for a while, Hill drew a pistol and fired at the officer, starting the fatal chase.
Like Denetdale, David Correia is studying Frontier City Relations at the University of New Mexico. He was initially unfamiliar with the Hill shootings. But after learning of the series of events during that dramatic chase, he also focused on the initial interactions between law enforcement and indigenous people.
“If you walk down the street in a border town and are a native, you will be mugged by a police officer at some point,” he said. “They will ask for your ID, they will search you.”
Since the 1970s, the Navajo Nation Commission on Human Rights and the US Commission on Civil Rights have held hearings that began with a landmark hearing in Farmington, New Mexico following the murder of three Navajo men by white teenagers. Other hearings in 2004, 2008 and 2015 included testimony describing various types of police misconduct and poor relationships between residents of Navajo and law enforcement agencies. Fatal police shootings of Navajo citizens in Farmington, New Mexico in 2006 and Winslow, Arizona in 2016 are cited by some as examples of how small things have changed.
Police officers with helmets and batons in the street alongside a Navajo protest march in Farmington, NM, 1974. (Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries)
Leonard Gorman, the executive director of the Human Rights Commission, said he was focused on developing law enforcement best practices, including cultural education about Navajo customs. The Commission is committed to diversifying border town police forces and improving their interaction with Navajo people who do not speak English fluently or at all.
Law enforcement officials in some areas say they have started addressing their relationship with indigenous peoples. And some Navajo officials have said that things have improved since the 1970s. Duane “Chili” Yazzie, a former chairman of the Navajo Nation’s Human Rights Commission who has been an activist in the Farmington area since the 1970s, said: “Discrimination and the different ways we experience racism have decreased over the years … who want to project such attitudes and actions against our people are more selective. ”He also raised concerns about police interactions with Navajo people who have a language barrier.
Some cities have signed agreements with the Commission, although none of them are in Utah. The partnerships give Gorman some hope. Winslow – who has a history of violent interactions between police and indigenous peoples – has created positions for Navajo and Hopi citizens on its Citizen Liaison Committee. In addition, he said, Gallup, New Mexico has hired local police officers.
Steve Hebbe, the chief of the Farmington Police Department, was hired in 2014 primarily because of his experience as an Anchorage deputy chief of police working with Alaskan Native communities.
When he arrived he found not much bias among the Farmington Police, rather a lack of familiarity with the Aboriginal people.
“It has been an effort over seven years of continuous interaction and trying to do different things to show that Farmington PD is a collaborative partner … Navajo Nation Police and assistance to major events in Shiprock, the Navajo Nation Community , which is closest to Farmington.
To reduce confrontations and potentially violent encounters, the city has begun sending paramedics in place of officers to respond to “man-down” calls. Because the Navajo Nation bans the possession of alcohol, some tribesmen buy alcohol in border towns, many of which have large numbers of liquor stores.
Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin said he had an “open and professional, respectful relationship” with the two indigenous nations that border or are within this district of Colorado, which he attributed to a “cultural change.” who began when he took office. He fired Oxley after the shooting with Hill and said, “I did my job: protecting our community. Even when it comes to protecting our community from one of our own. “
“We are here to preserve, not to take, life,” he said. “We only ask for compliance when we enforce the law, but we do it in a professional and respectful way.”
However, Denetdale of the Navajo Nation’s Commission on Human Rights said there had been “no improvement” in relations between border town officials and Navajo citizens. “The police have immunity,” she said. “You can do anything, especially People of Color and Diné, with very little impact. We know that.”
This story is part of a collaboration with The Salt Lake Tribune through FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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