CLEARLAKE OAKS, Calif. – Sheriff's deputies, California Highway Patrol and Clearlake Police officers were on standby Friday afternoon as a court order was served allowing the Elem Colony tribal secretary-treasurer to access tribal records.
On Tuesday, April 19, Judge David Herrick signed an order giving access to the records to Sarah Garcia, who was elected to the secretary-treasurer's post last fall in an election that was recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs but which now is reportedly being appealed.
At around 3 p.m. Friday Sheriff Frank Rivero and several of his deputies accompanied Garcia and her supporters, who brought with them a large U-Haul truck, to the tribal administrative and community center offices, which Elem Colony member Jim Brown said have been closed since last October due to lack of grant funds to operate the building.
Garcia, her attorney Anthony Cohen of Santa Rosa and some other tribal officials from Elem were inside the building with a locksmith, who was trying to open doors to allow her to get access to tribal financial reports.
Lake County News requested permission through Rivero to enter the building in order to speak with Garcia and Cohen, but both sides in the tribal dispute stated they didn't have the authority to grant the entry.
Several residents of the Elem Colony stood outside, worrying about their personal records being seized and what would happen to the documents, which Rivero said Herrick had ordered be handed over to Garcia, who was to be allowed to copy them.
Jim Brown said the concern for many was that the U-Haul was there to remove all the building's equipment and computers.
At one point as many as 10 law enforcement vehicles were parked near the administrative office as the situation unfolded.
But in the end, all that was removed from the building were three boxes of financial records that Rivero took into custody and said he would safeguard until Herrick clarified how the documents were to be handled.
Herrick's order said that, no later than May 9, tribal leaders – including Geraldine Johnson, Robert Geary and Batsulwin Brown – were to provide Garcia with access to financial reports and documents, keys and combinations and other necessary records and information in any form for her “to exercise her rights and fulfill her responsibilities” according to the tribe's bylaws.
It was a ruling that has followed several months of court appearances, some of them heated, including one on Jan. 24 in which the two sides were separated by a bailiff while leaving the Lake County Courthouse in Lakeport.
Garcia and Cohen have taken their efforts to secure her authority within the tribe to the state level. Minutes from the California Gambling Control Commission from Oct. 21, 2010, showed that Garcia and Cohen went to the commission to ask that money from the Revenue Sharing Trust Fund – funds disbursed to tribes that don't have casinos – be released directly to her.
Elem generally receives as much as $275,000 from the fund on a quarterly basis, but the tribe's intergovernmental disputes led the state commission to rule that Elem's funds for the fourth quarter of 2010 wouldn't be disbursed until its tribal government was identified.
Rivero said Friday that tribal members were ordered not to interfere with Garcia as she retrieved the records.
Geary said they had been preparing to meet with Garcia and her group next week, and were surprised when the U-Haul showed up Friday.
The sheriff himself was going back and forth between the tribal members inside and those waiting outside, acting as an intermediary and speaking by phone with an attorney for the part of the tribe represented in the dispute by Johnson, Geary and Brown.
Rivero, his deputies and Lt. Dave Perry also were trying to deflate tensions outside the building, where several tribal members – who said Garcia and her supporters don't live at Elem – were criticizing the sheriff for being involved at all. One man said Rivero was, in essence, supporting “the Taliban.”
Rivero said he was trying to keep the peace. He told tribal members that he didn't want to see a fight, and wanted to prevent anyone from getting hurt.
When the locksmith wasn't able to open the lock on one of the doors inside the administrative offices, he went back to his vehicle for bolt cutters.
At that point – with Rivero and his deputies having been on scene for more than three hours – the sheriff stopped the locksmith, said he wasn't going to allow damage to the building and that the efforts inside the building needed to be wrapped up.
Rather than allow anyone to take the records in dispute, Rivero took custody of the documents himself. He and his deputies loaded three white file boxes of financial records into the trunk of his patrol car.
Rivero said he intended to lock the files in his office until Monday, when he would deliver them to the Lake County Superior Court in order for Herrick to decide the appropriate next steps.
Shortly before 6:30 p.m. Rivero and his deputies began leaving the scene after Garcia, her supporters and the U-Haul pulled out.
Tribal members then began attempting to lock up the building, which currently is being used mostly for community events, such as an Easter gathering planned for the tribe's children this weekend.
The heart of the dispute between the two factions appears to have a long history.
Tribal members on the scene Friday referred to the factionalism being at the heart of a violent armed uprising in 1995 that centered on the casino the tribe operated at that time. The incident saw several people shot and many tribal members leaving the reservation for their safety. It also resulted in the Lake County Sheriff's Swat Team and numerous other law enforcement officers being called in.
Garcia was reported to be the tribe's secretary-treasurer at that time as well, according to a San Francisco Chronicle article at the time.
Jim Brown said there also have been deep divisions since a part of the tribe, which called itself the Displaced Elem Lineage Emancipated Members Alliance (DELEMA), attempted to seek federal recognition to become a separate tribe in 1998.
While members of DELEMA – based in Sonoma County – are reported to have given up their tribal membership at Elem in order to seek federal status for a new tribe, Bureau of Indian Affairs records show that there is some dispute about whether or not they actually ended their membership. Jim Brown alleged that some of those same individuals are now fighting to take control of the Elem Colony.
A faction opposing Geraldine Johnson holding the tribal chair's seat also had attempted to take over the administrative offices and community center in December 2009, as Lake County News has reported. That incident involved alleged assaults and threats of fights.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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