Drug court plans are taking shape

HOGANSBURG — The St. Regis Mohawk tribe's drug court is beginning to take shape.

The tribe received a $350,000 Department of Justice grant in August to set the court up and hire a coordinator and a caseworker. The coordinator position was filled last month and now the tribe is in discussions with both St. Lawrence and Franklin counties about establishing joint jurisdiction.

"We've been over to visit them a couple times," Peter J. Herne, the tribe's chief judge. "I think what we're envisioning now is if someone were to get charged and need us in a supervisory role, we could do that."

The tribe is waiting for word from the New York Federal-State-Tribal Courts and Indian Nations Justice Forum, an organization that works to improve administration and cooperation between the three court levels, about whether sharing jurisdictions between the tribe and counties is allowed.

The tribe hopes to have that approval in about a month and from there can begin planning how the joint jurisdictions would be set up.

"We certainly would be willing, once they get things up and running, to sit down with them on this," said Barbara R. Potter, a family court judge in St. Lawrence County. "That would be one more service we could share and I see no reason why that wouldn't happen."

Like all drug courts, the tribe's would help people arrested on drug charges who have addiction issues, officials said.

It will use Mohawk traditions and cultural methods to help rehabilitate offenders.

"We get a rap for a lot of things and there's a good percentage of people here who don't do those things. We're not talking about what appears in the papers, the 100-pound seizures," Judge Herne said. "We're more worried about what happens in the wake of these events. We have families with substance addictions and we're just trying to get them help."