Douglas hopes to learn from Reno's Hot problems

Douglas County is no stranger to crowd control. Pierini is a veteran of 20 New Year's Eve celebrations at Stateline, where as many as 50,000 people fueled by alcohol routinely take over the highway through the casino corridor just east of the California state line for a couple of hours.

Fire hoses have been used in the past to chill out rowdy crowds, but Pierini said his department has found it's best to let the people jam the highway, then disperse. Booze is not allowed outside the casinos, drunks are arrested and officers are taught restraint.

"We have a real nonadversarial role with the participants. If something happened - if there is a fight in the crowd or a ruckus - we deal with it as a safety measure but we don't try to aggravate the crowd," he told The (Gardnerville, Nev.) Record-Courier.

"You really have to do something to get arrested. We don't have time to deal with minor infractions," he said.

About 125 people are arrested every New Year's Eve and stations are set up to process the defendants immediately.

Douglas County also recruits help from surrounding law enforcement agencies from both sides of the state line. Pierini said no Washoe County agencies asked for his help or for his officers to be on standby.

"The key to our success is planning," Pierini said. "We start planning immediately after the event happened every year. Our philosophy is that we know this event is going to happen. We talk about if there is anything we can do differently."

Sgt. Lance Modispacher, who has been on the New Year's Eve detail since 1982, said an officer's mental discipline is crucial to keeping the crowd under control.

"When you see a male intentionally strike a female with a beer bottle, you just want to rip his face off. But our job is law enforcement and not punishment. We just keep telling them to keep their cool and reminding them that it's all on videotape.

"I remind them, 'You don't want to pull your nightstick out and start waling on somebody. That could be the end of your law enforcement career in Douglas County."

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