by Nadya Williams COVELO
Three men died in this northern Mendocino County community on the night of
April 14, two Indians and a deputy sheriff. The deputy's death unleashed an
unprecedented sweep by SWAT teams, helicopters, mounted police and white
vigilantes with pit bulls searching for a fugitive Indian suspected of
killing him. In the week that followed, the families of the Round Valley
Indian Reservation were subjected to a brutal house-to-house search by
dozens of local and state law enforcement agents. Tribal leaders insist
that deputy sheriff Bob Davis died in a fire-fight after police shot and
killed an innocent Indian man, Leonard Peters, 44. "We are being terrorized
because of a tragic case of mistaken identity on the part of the police,"
said tribal councilmember Ronald Lincoln, a cousin of the fugitive suspect.
"The police were looking for Arlis Peters in connection with the death
earlier that day of tribal member Reginald "Gene" Britton. Instead they
killed an unarmed man, his brother Leonard. "The man the authorities are
hunting is the only witness to the killing of Leonard," Lincoln said. "We
have scanners and we've heard the 'shoot to kill' orders the police are
putting out. The police say Leonard was armed and started the shooting, but
we do not believe that at all. That is not Leonard. It happened at night and
there was only one other deputy there. Now they are hunting the only other
witness, and isn't he innocent until proven guilty?" The Peters family has
repeatedly stated, "the violence is tragic and we sympathize with all the
families involved." But in a press release the day of Leonard's funeral,
April 23, the family reported, "The family members who dressed the body of
Leonard Peters for the funeral observed what appeared to be shotgun wounds
in the back of his head. Other wounds will be verified pending release of
the autopsy report." The troubles that led to Peters' death apparently
started when his 16-year-old son was severely beaten by three individuals in
early March. Father and son were "stood up" on three occasions when they
tried to file police complaints, according to Peters' sister-in-law Karen
Pickett. Several violent incidents followed, culminating in the shooting
death of Gene Britton late in the afternoon April 14, in the parking lot of
Round Valley High School. Two suspects were arrested immediately, and a
third, Leonard's brother Arlis Peters, 46, was being sought at around 10
p.m., when deputies Bob Davis and Dennis Miller apparently accosted Leonard
Peters and Eugene Allon "Bear" Lincoln, 51, on a dirt road. Minutes later
Leonard Peters and then Bob Davis were killed. Besides having nothing to do
with the Britton slaying, family members say that Leonard Peters, a gentle
father of six children, bore no significant resemblance to his brother. The
immediate and brutal onslaught by law enforcement was "reminiscent of the
white vigilante attacks more than 100 years ago chronicled in all their
bloody detail in the book 'Genocide and Vendetta in Round Valley'," wrote a
local paper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser. According to written testimony
from reservation residents, at least 50 homes were searched without
warrants, as were countless vehicles. Whole families, including elders and
small children were held at gun point. Bear Lincoln's 65-year-old mother,
who is disabled, said she was thrown to the ground by police and verbally
and physically abused. "We're going to plug up this town," Captain Berle
Murray of the Mendocino County Sheriff's Dept. promised three days after the
incident. "This County has not lost a law enforcement officer like this
since 1951, and they aren't going to forget it," he said. "I advised the
community to hire a lawyer immediately to conduct an independent
investigation," said Polly Montoya-Girvin, a lawyer who is the coordinator
of the Advisory Council on California Indian Policy in Sacramento. "They've
retained an excellent lawyer in Tony Serra. That is what the Black Panthers
did upon the assassination of Fred Hampton, and that is the only reason his
family saw justice, albeit 25 years after his murder by police," she said.
Priscilla Hunter, a tribal councilmember from the nearby Coyote Valley
Reservation, said she met with community leaders to help document testimony
and put out a press release. She and Montoya-Girvin plan to take the case
to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors and to the state capitol. "The
police presence is less visible now," said Ronald Lincoln. "Now they say
'Please' and 'Thank you,' but it took the police eight days to
come to my house and say they wanted to work out the hard feelings of the
community. "We contacted the Bureau of Indian Affairs and we've had
supporters in the outside community protesting the assault, so maybe that is
why they've let up. We had to send the children out of the valley so they
wouldn't be further traumatized. Now they're back home and we're doing daily
sweats to try to dispell the negativity," he said. The April 20 funeral of
deputy Davis was attended by upwards of 1,500 uniformed law enforcement and
military personnel, who marched five miles through the county seat of Ukiah.
Davis, who had been a Navy Seal before joining the sheriff's department, had
served three tours in Vietnam, saw action in Laos and participated in the
1983 invasion of Grenada. For info: Mendocino Environmental Center, (707)
468-1660. The family set up a fund in Leonard Peters' name to pursue the
investigation of his death. It is at Wells Fargo Bank, 7645 Covelo Rd.,
Covelo, CA 95428.
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