Police showdown with VFW post postponed

By Joe Schoenmann

Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008 | 6:05 p.m.

A showdown between roughly 100 neighbors and members of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10057, in the city’s older West Side neighborhood, and Las Vegas police, who say the post has become a too-frequent cause of police calls, was postponed today.

Albert Young, the VFW’s manager and retired employee of the Las Vegas police department, told council members that it took his side a long time to find an attorney to voice their arguments against potential city discipline, which could include yanking the post’s liquor license.

“No one wanted to go against City Hall,” he said.

Only recently, long-time local attorney Rex Bell agreed to be the post’s attorney. But he couldn’t be at today's meeting because of a funeral.

Mayor Oscar Goodman assured Young that he was not going “against City Hall."

"I’m hear to listen to the facts," he said. "I don’t have any

predetermination one way or the other.”

Councilman Ricki Barlow, who came under withering criticisms from West Side residents after he approved an apartment complex in the area that some fear will become a crime-infested project, perhaps defused some of the lingering anger by agreeing to postpone the hearing until Jan. 28.

The post, on H Street west of Interstate 15 and north of City Hall, has been the source of numerous police calls over the past two years. Those include a 20-person brawl in July 2007 and an incident last month when a man robbed in the post parking lot was forced to undress and left naked.