NYC targets Mastic Indian smoke shop owners

The City of New York Wednesday asked a federal judge to hold three Poospatuck Indian Reservation smoke shop owners in contempt of court for selling untaxed cigarettes to non-tribe members in violation of a late-August injunction.

A lawyer for the shop owners denied the charge.

The motion accuses Jesse Watkins, Rodney Morrison and Wayne Harris, all of whom were covered by a previously issued injunction barring them from selling untaxed cigarettes to nontribe members, with engaging in the sales through entities not covered by the injunction.

On Aug. 25, a federal judge in Manhattan issued an order barring eight smoke shops on the Poospatuck Indian Reservation in Mastic and 11 affiliated shop owners, including the three men, from selling untaxed cigarettes to nontribe members.

Harry Wallace, an attorney who is chief of the Unkechaug tribe on the reservation, said Wednesday he'd not yet received the motion, but that the men "absolutely" denied the city's charges.

He accused the city - which is seeking several hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages - of "trying to destroy our ability to make a living" and called the city's lawsuit "classic scapegoating in its highest form."

The city alleges Watkins turned to an entity named Smoke Warehouse to sell untaxed cigarettes, after the injunction barred him and Monique's Smoke Shop, which he managed, from the sales. Likewise, the filing accuses Harris and Morrison of selling untaxed cigarettes through an entity named Princess Rainbow Smoke Shop, after the court barred the Peace Pipe Smoke Shop from untaxed sales to non-tribe members.

Though New York law bans such sales, the state has declined to enforce tax collection because of past violence. Tribes say the laws don't apply to sovereign Indian nations.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former smoker, has waged a high-profile campaign against smoking, banning it in public places and levying a hefty $1.50-a-pack tax on sales. The city argues untaxed cigarettes shipped in bulk from the Poospatuck reservation undercut the anti-smoking intent of the tax, while reducing city revenue.

The Poospatuck reservation, a poverty-stricken enclave of 55 acres in Mastic, has seen a level of prosperity through cigarette sales, and members view the city crackdown as discriminatory.A 2008 study of life on the reservation by Stony Brook University found two-thirds of surveyed residents lived in trailers or mobile homes. Half reported serious home repair issues, and more than a third described their health as poor or very poor. A third had less than a high-school diploma, and 42 percent of residents lived on an annual income of $20,000 or less.