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Our View: No one should be above the law

State Sen. Shannon Augare was apparently right when he said that Glacier County sheriff’s deputies had no right to arrest him for drunken driving when they stopped him on U.S. Highway 2 on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

County Attorney Carolyn Berkram said deputies have no such authority inside the boundaries of the reservation.

Who has what authority on the reservation has always been a complicated matter.

According to many authorities, if a white man is beating up a Native American on the reservation, tribal authorities can stop him, but can’t arrest him until off-reservation authorities get involved.

That seems to us to be ludicrous. If someone is beating up anyone, police ought to be able to march the perpetrator off to jail until justice can be done.

If Augure was driving drunk on Highway 2 — and that certainly has not been proven — he ought somehow face some kind of justice.

At the very least, he ought to provide a full explanation to the voters.

If the allegations are true, and he was endangering live by driving drunk on a state highway, he ought to ’fess up to the voters who elected him and the people of Montana who pay his salary. He ought to say what he is going to do to ensure people there will be no repeat of this incident.

Augure has a fine record and is well-respected in Helena. He has voted repeatedly to toughen drunken driving laws in the state. But this incident has tarnished his reputation.

He was apparently right that Glacier County authorities had no right to arrest him on the reservation.

But if he thinks this is the end of the matter, he is very wrong.

 

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