Fighting crime vs. housing criminals

By Joe Schoenmann

Friday, April 3, 2009 | 2 a.m.

With money getting tighter by the week, Clark County commissioners, for the first time, are trying to tell Metro Police how to spend the windfall that is the department’s forfeiture fund.

Police departments have the right to seize and keep the ill-gotten cash and property of criminals. The cash and proceeds from the sale of the property go into the forfeiture fund.

Metro has two categories of forfeitures, one for seizures that spring from investigations of state crimes, and another for seizures tied to federal crimes. The difference is important because the Legislature in 2001 enacted a requirement for the state fund that 70 percent of the end-of-year balance above $100,000 has to be given to the school district in a police department’s jurisdiction. Since 2002, the Clark County School District has received about $710,000 as a result of that law.

The federal forfeiture fund, however, has no such requirement, and Metro has been able to build up a balance of $10.3 million as of the end of last fiscal year.

At a budget meeting of the Clark County Commission on Tuesday, Steve Sisolak, one of two commissioners who sit on Metro’s Fiscal Affairs Committee, was adamant about considering the possibility of using that money to open a new, $128 million low-level offender jail near Nellis Air Force Base. Clark County will lease the 200,000-square-foot jail for 10 years for a total of about $113 million, then buy it at market value.

On Tuesday, county Chief Financial Officer George Stevens told commissioners that keeping the jail mothballed for one year would save the county about $16 million. Most savings would come from delaying the hiring and training of 79 people for civilian jobs and 45 for corrections officer jobs.

That’s when Sisolak suggested using Metro’s forfeiture fund to offset the cost of opening the jail. On Thursday he added that if the county is forced to foot the entire opening with money from its general fund, it will be forced to lay off employees.

But Metro already has plans for the forfeiture money. The department wants to buy a $2.7 million patrol helicopter to replace one that is 20 years old and has about three times its recommended limit of flight hours. And Sheriff Doug Gillespie has budgeted about another $6 million for furniture, equipment and moving expenses for Metro’s soon-to-be-built headquarters.

So as it turns out, that little-heard-of fund is rapidly becoming the pivot point of competing scenarios pitting employee against employee. In one scenario, the money could help staff the new jail, while helping to preserve the jobs of potentially dozens, maybe hundreds, of county employees.

Or it could buy a much-needed helicopter and cover expenses of the new headquarters. Then, however, if the jail were opened, that project would eat up millions of dollars from elsewhere and the county would have to lay off workers.

Or, if the jail opening is delayed a year, the forfeiture money could be used for Metro’s purchases and those other county jobs might be saved.

The sheriff could not be reached for comment late Thursday. But Karen Keller, Metro’s executive director of finance, said the predicament is that if the forfeiture money is used to open the jail, Metro will still need to come up with money for the headquarters and helicopter at some point. And the county pays for about 60 percent of Metro’s budget.

To the officers who fly Metro’s patrol helicopters, the need for a new chopper is dire. The one they want to replace is one of seven. The newest is 2 years old. Then there are two Huey 400 HH1H’s, which are 40 years old. The MD 500D that Metro wants to replace is 20 years old and has 33,000 flight hours. Lt. Joe Ojeda, chief of the Air Support Search and Rescue Section, said the standard is to replace helicopters after 10,000 to 15,000 flight hours.

He ran through a litany of statistics attesting to his section’s use. The helicopters fly 13 to 15 hours a day at a cost of about $400 an hour. Last year they responded to 14,021 calls, up from 13,598 the year before. Of those, the air patrol unit was the first to spot a suspect 3,235 times; of those incidents, 782 resulted in arrests. Hours in the sky now total about 7,000 per year.

The helicopter’s speed and ease of movement is its biggest asset, Ojeda said. During one hour on a recent Friday night, Sgt. Steve Meriwether and Officer Bud Willson flew one of the police helicopters on a half-dozen calls, including a stabbing and two robberies. Flying from the south valley to the north valley at more than 100 mph, Willson spotted a car driving without headlights. After watching for a few minutes to see whether the driver showed signs of impaired driving, he shined a spotlight in front of the car to see whether the driver would respond.

He didn’t, but the helicopter had to speed away to a robbery near H Street and Doolittle Avenue.

With Meriwether turning tight circles in the air, Willson used a mounted infrared camera to search for hidden suspects, while directing patrol units on the ground to set up a perimeter.

By the time the helicopter landed 15 minutes later, three suspects were in custody.

“When you’re a cop on the ground, you can immediately sense a change in a suspect’s attitude when air patrol is overhead,” Ojeda said. “If they were thinking about getting happy feet, that whole attitude changes.”

If Ojeda’s section doesn’t get that new helicopter soon, he said, officers will keep doing what they’ve always done: replace parts and keep the thing airborne.

“But at some point, when do you say enough is enough?” he said. “When do you say the thing is just old and worn out? At some point, it’s just cheaper to get a new one, even though it is expensive, but it’s cheaper than to keep replacing engines and parts.”

Ojeda could not be pulled into the budget debate. But County Commission Chairman Rory Reid said this decision will be difficult because “it’s not just about whether the jail should open.”

“If it does open, who should pay for it? It’s a complex issue and those discussions we are still having with the sheriff,” he said.