Friday, April 12, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
Bicycle cops are no longer policing Meadows Village, and that has residents of the low-income neighborhood surrounding the Stratosphere Tower concerned about safety.
The bicycle squad assigned to Meadows Village, once dubbed Naked City, was disbanded and put into patrol cars when the downtown substation opened on Las Vegas Boulevard in February, officials said.
But while the Meadows Village bike squad was disbanded, the downtown bicycle patrol doubled its force in December to 32 officers.
Las Vegas City Councilman Michael McDonald, a Metro bike cop whose ward includes Meadows Village, said he is looking into the reason for the move.
"Is the neighborhood being jeopardized?" McDonald asked. "That's what the police department has to answer for and justify to the neighbors. You can't forget about the citizen."
He said he wants to know if the Meadows Village bike patrol "is gone forever."
McDonald, who said he hadn't been in that neighborhood until he drove through it recently, said: "I was surprised. There was so much effort in the past to clean it up. Now there are people standing around in alleys and street corners again."
Residents are worried.
"You used to see police a lot, especially on Friday nights," Corrine Sheridan said. "They'd wave at the kids and talk to them. They had a good rapport with them, but they're gone. I notice a lot of weird people hanging around since the cops left, especially at the park."
Cynthia and Tony Brown, who live in the 300 block of West Baltimore Avenue just west of the park, said they miss seeing police.
"When I first moved here last November, I saw a lot of cops here," Cynthia Brown said.
There would be two to three bicycle cops in the area at any given time. Now there are none.
Tony Brown said they try not to walk outside at night because "it can get dangerous out here."
Deputy Chief Dick McKee, who described Meadows Village as "a transient area," said there is only so much Metro can do.
"This could be a crime-free community if we could put cops on every street corner, but we have to move on," he said. "There is a point where the community has to come together and take charge."
Barbara Buckley, a state assemblywoman and Clark County Legal Services attorney who helped displaced Meadows Village residents find housing when buildings were demolished to make way for the Stratosphere Tower resort, said disbanding the bike squad "is outrageous. Where did they get the money to pay for those cops?"
The money for the bike patrol was funded in part by a federal grant for the Weed & Seed program, which targets criminals and starts social programs.
But McKee, who sits on the Weed & Seed steering committee, said the program there "expired."
"The bikes were purchased on the Weed & Seed grant," he said. "When that program is done, those items are ours to use as we see fit. The weeding of Meadows Village is finished."
Meadows Village received one-third of the $668,000 federal grant that was allocated in 1995 for three areas of the valley.
State Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, whose district includes Meadows Village, said neither she nor the residents were informed of the pullout.
"What I'm fearful of is that we started to turn the area around," she said. "We were cleaning up the streets. The community was taking charge. They knew every bike cop. Now they they don't have anybody to call."
She said she believes the disbanding of the squad was done to "put more manpower downtown" with the opening of the Fremont Street Experience redevelopment project late last year.
"They're doing everything downtown for the tourist and nothing for the community," she said. "We need that visibility of cops so citizens can take back their neighborhoods."
Capt. Greg Jolley, who made the decision to disband the bike squad when he opened the downtown substation in the old Fifth Street School, said that because 25 percent of the neighborhood in Meadows Village was torn down for the Stratosphere hotel-casino, slated to open at the end of this month, Metro needed to realign patrols in the area.
"There are officers who have told me they think bicycle officers could be better utilized in other areas," Jolley said. "Another aspect is the construction in the area. There's going to be a hotel there and some of the businesses west of the boulevard are no longer going to be there. We needed to reevaluate it."
But he said it may not be the end of bike cops in Meadows Village.
"I'm not saying Meadows Village doesn't need attention, but right now I can't afford to put a number of officers permanently in that area," Jolley said. "We're working on getting them down there intermittently in the future."
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