Metro Police see bigger role at schools

By Emily Richmond

Friday, Sept. 19, 2003 | 11:15 a.m.

Metro Police have increased their presence at campuses in West Las Vegas as part of a new outreach program, but the plan caught the Clark County School District's police chief by surprise Thursday.

Officers from Metro's Bolden Substation -- near Martin Luther King and Lake Mead boulevards -- have been assigned to each of the 28 Clark County schools and five private schools in the area. The officers are expected to visit at least twice a month.

But Elliot Phelps, chief of the school district's police force, said he was unaware of the Metro liaison program until contacted by the Sun.

"I wish they would tell us about stuff like this," Phelps said. "It sounds like a great program, and I'd love to have their help on community issues. What I don't want is school personnel to have Metro's phone number in one hand and ours in the other and not know who they're supposed to call."

Metro Police Capt. James Owens, who is coordinating the liaison program for the Bolden Substation, said he didn't call Phelps because he didn't believe there was a need.

The liaison program shouldn't interfere with the on-campus work being done by school police, Owens said.

"There was no intended slight," Owens said Thursday after meeting with administrators from the surrounding schools. "They have total authority on school grounds, and we respect that. We aren't looking to take over the school police role. We're more interested in developing relationships with the students."

Owens said the idea for the liaison program was in response to the ever-growing population in the Las Vegas Valley.

"We're getting 4,000 to 6,000 new people a month but we're not adding police officers," Owens said. "We realize that we need to work smarter and make the best use of the manpower we have now, instead of falling farther and farther behind."

The program isn't a response to the 311 Boyz, an alleged gang charged with staging fights and attacking victims in neighborhoods around Centennial High School in the northwest, Owens said.

"We have our own gang problems here, very serious gangs, and our gang task force addresses that," Owens said. "The liaisons are more about telling schools what services are available to them on a more preventative level."

Bolden Station covers an area bordered roughly by Cheyenne Avenue, Rancho Drive, West Lake Mead Boulevard, Interstate 15, Desert Inn Road and Jones Boulevard.

Officers based out of the Bolden respond to more homicides and gang-related crimes than officers at any other Metro substation, Owens said.

At the midday meeting at the substation, Owens told administrators from 20 Clark County schools and two private schools that they should contact their liaisons with questions or concerns about anything happening in their community, whether it's a quarrelsome neighbor or recurring graffiti.

But Phelps said he has told principals to call school police first and let them contact Metro. The liaison program appears to skip that step, Phelps said.

Phelps said he's aware that Metro is the primary law enforcement agency in the county, with school police serving a supporting role. At the same time, Phelps said, there are occasions when the two agencies overlap.

"There are going to be issues we know about that Metro wants to know about, and vice versa," Phelps said. "That's why we need to keep working to reduce these kinds of miscommunications."

Ron Rogers, a dean at Clark High School, said he welcomed a closer working relationship with Metro. Occasionally there are situations off campus, such as rowdy groups at the convenience store across the street, that the school police officer can't address, Rogers said.

"When I go out there and stand on the corner, sometimes they disperse," Rogers said. "When a Metro car rolls by, they always take off. It's definitely a deterrent."

Crystal Helm, principal of Gibson Middle School, said fights often start just beyond the school's boundaries and then spill onto campus. Many of the altercations involve students from Western High School, which gets out an hour earlier, Helm said.

"We already rely on Metro to diffuse those situations for us before they reach our property," Helm said. "Having a liaison assigned to Gibson will help us do that even more quickly."

The primary goal of the liaison program is to improve Metro's image among students, particularly in younger grades, Owens said.

"A lot of these kids have had almost no positive contact with police," Owens said. "Any time they've seen us we were taking someone to jail. We want there to be some positives, even if it's just an officer visiting their classroom to read a story or taking a tour of the station."

Terance Miethe, professor of criminal justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said such liaison programs have become popular in other communities but for the most part have had little impact.

"It's a nice idea to try to partner with the community and be a friend, but for most teenagers Metro is still going to be viewed as 'the man,"' Miethe said.