Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Constable’s office: Why didn’t warrant for deputy’s arrest surface sooner?

Las Vegas Township Constable's Office

Sgt. Patrick Geary of the Las Vegas Township Constable's Office gets paperwork prepared before heading out in to the city to perform his duties, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011. Launch slideshow »
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Lou Toomin

An encounter between a Las Vegas Township Constable deputy and Metro Police at an MGM Grand nightclub early Saturday morning led to the deputy’s arrest on forgery charges and her subsequent resignation from the department.

Deputy constables Allison Lear and Jason Watkins were attempting to serve a warrant to an employee at the Hakkasan nightclub Saturday morning when hotel security called Metro, according to constable spokesman Lou Toomin.

When police arrived around 4:30 a.m., they arrested Lear for outstanding warrants for perjury, forgery and filing a false instrument, plus a new charge of possession of drug paraphernalia.

“Security requested police because they felt the circumstance was suspicious. Our officers assisted security and that’s how Ms. Lear was contacted and subsequently arrested,” Metro spokesman Officer Larry Hadfield said.

The warrants for Lear’s arrest were issued in December over charges that she lied about being married to Alexander Djordjevic, who was killed in a 2010 road race accident in Northern Nevada.

According to court documents, Lear allegedly forged a marriage certificate showing she had wed Djordjevic shortly before his death to gain control of his estate.

Djordjevic’s father has maintained that his son could not have married Lear in Las Vegas on the date included on the marriage certificate because Djordjevic was in California at the time working for a family business.

Lear resigned her position in the constable’s office Tuesday morning, but Toomin said the department is conducting its own investigation into what transpired Saturday morning.

“This whole thing stinks. It just smells bad,” he said.

Watkins, who was not arrested, and Lear were both at the nightclub on official constable’s duty to serve a warrant for a wage garnishment or other civil proceeding, Toomin said.

“They went to serve a warrant on a person employed by the club. When they got there he had not gone to work yet, so they went to a restaurant and had dinner. When they went back to the club is when Metro got involved,” Toomin said.

Lear was background-checked three times since being hired by the constable’s office in September, Toomin said, including one within the past few months when she bought a handgun.

Toomin said it’s unclear why the warrants didn’t show up during the background checks and why Metro Police waited to arrest Lear until Saturday morning.

“The warrants were cleared by the justice court in December. They could have contacted us immediately. They could have arrested her the day the warrant was issued because they would have known where she was,” Toomin said. “There had been three background checks and they all came up clean. The warrants were not in the system where they should have been. If they had been there, we would have caught her the first time.”

Lear’s arrest is another in a long line of negative incidents that have in some way involved the Las Vegas constable’s office.

County commissioners voted in March to abolish the office entirely starting in 2015, but the decision is currently being challenged in a lawsuit before the state Supreme Court filed by Constable John Bonaventura.

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