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Some details that should be made clear (most of which were in the story that accompanied the video, BTW):
The Narragansett tribe's agreement with the state of RI, reached in 1978, did not exempt tribal lands from state civil and criminal laws. That's why there's no casino on Narragansett land (never mind that there's a Jai Alai facility in Newport with slot machines, we won't even go there). The selling of tobacco products without collecting state tobacco and sales taxes is illegal everywhere else in RI, so it's also illegal on the Narragansett tribal lands. This is the legal reality of the agreement that the tribe signed with the state.
The video did not show the plainclothes officers who served the warrant inside the shop before the uniformed officers moved in. Two officers were inside the shop, and told the staff there that they had to close their doors and discontinue doing business. The guys in the shop told them they had no intention of following the instructions of the warrant, and that's when the uniformed troopers moved in.
Now, I think this whole thing is pretty stupid. I think they should be allowed to have their damb casino. Bazillions of dollars of Rhode Islanders' hard earned money is being poured into Foxwoods in CT every year, why not keep it in the state? Why not let the Narragansetts raise their standard of living the way other tribes in the area have been able to do? The 1978 agreement should be abandoned, and a new one written allowing the casino to be built and the state to take a percentage. What are they worried about, that ORGANIZED CRIME might come into the state?!?!? (A little inside joke for residents of RI, where there's arguably more mafia activity than just about anywhere else in the country... couldn't get much worse).
Having said that, the tribe has handled this thing poorly. They basically dared the state to shut them down. When state troopers present you with a warrant and you tell them to fuck off, all bets are off. I'm not suggesting that the troopers handled this well either. I wasn't there, so I can't say who got violent first (although putting a state trooper in a choke hold is NEVER a good idea, no matter who started it). It's a shame that the confrontation got ugly, but get real folks, if this had been a bunch of Italian guys or Irish guys or Portuguese guys or African American guys or plain old American redneck guys, it would have gone down exactly the same. It's the same action troopers take when they have a search warrant for a home, and the guy in the house tells them to get off his porch. Well, they are going in. The warrant allows them to do that, and if they have to push their way in, the warrant allows them to do that too. It's a shame that they had to push their way into the smoke shop, but that call was made by the guys working in the shop when they refused the warrant. They could have chosen to fight their battle in court, but they chose to fight it with physical confrontation there on the spot. That is a bad decision.
I agree that the 1978 agreement is unfair to a group of Native Americans. It should be rewritten, and made more fair. But the action at the smoke shop had absolutely nothing to do with ethnicity, and everything to do with deliberate and confrontational defiance of a state law, coming on the heels of a warning directly from the governor not to open the shop. Again, what would anyone expect the state to do? What happens to the rule of law when the state ignores lawbreakers just because they are members of a minority group? The state law may be oppressive to that group, but the solution to that is changing the state law, not telling the state to piss off and committing the crime anyway.
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