Downtown plight grabs leaders' attention

City officials gathered Thursday evening at the Fremont Villas apartment complex, on 15th Street near its intersection with Fremont Street, to pledge support to the area's residents in their efforts to clean up downtown crime.

Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, District Attorney Stewart Bell, City Councilman Gary Reese, Metro Police Downtown Area Commander Capt. Frank Barker and Sheriff Jerry Keller all signed the anti-crime agreement that the Downtown Central Development Committee put together.

"I was really happy with the turnout and the commitments that we got from the city officials," DCDC Chairman Kenneth Glover said. "It's good to see words changing into actions and people doing something to help."

The agreement calls for a stronger presence and sense of cooperation from the mayor, attorneys and police. It also mandates that the "order out" ordinance be expanded to include drug dealers and loiterers as well as prostitutes.

The ordinance allows a prostitute to have a sentence suspended if that prostitute stays out of the downtown corridor. Those prostitutes who return to the corridor after taking the deal can be arrested.

Gary Peck, director of the Las Vegas American Civil Liberties Union, said he appreciates the community's efforts to stop crime but is worried about the inclusion of loiterers in the agreement.

"When the community members came up with this proposal, they had the intention of removing drug dealers from the neighborhood," Peck said. "But when you use the word loiterers, you criminalize the homeless.

"We are already living in a community where it is inappropriate and criminal for a person to be homeless, and that is wrong and unconstitutional."

Trying to remove the homeless from neighborhoods is not the solution to the problem, Peck said.

"It seems like there is a police effort to confine the homeless to a smaller and smaller section of town," Peck said. "The thinking of 'if we hassle them enough they'll leave town' is wrong.

"I don't oppose the efforts put forth by the community, but some of the specifics in its plan need to be revised. We have to be respectful of people's constitutional rights."

Reese said he felt that he and many in the community have been tolerant of the downtown area's homeless population.

"We've tried to be sensitive to the problems of the homeless," Reese said. "We've tried to provide them with a basis to get help."

Teri Galardi, a resident who owns two bars downtown, said the agreement is not meant to target the homeless.

"We haven't had a whole lot of problems with the homeless," Galardi said. "The focus is on the drug users and the prostitutes, and the homeless are not an issue for us at this point.

"We don't see a lot of people sleeping behind Dumpsters, but we do see a lot doing drug deals in front of them."

The agreement also calls for the widening of the corridor from its boundaries of Stewart Avenue on the north, Charleston Boulevard on the south, Eastern Avenue on the east and Main Street on the west. The new boundaries would substitute Bonanza Road for Stewart Avenue on the north.

Allen Jacobson, a homeowner in a 20th Street neighborhood, said he was glad to see Barker and Keller in attendance and signing the agreement.

"This took some doing," Jacobson said. "We decided that we needed to set up some type of partnership with the police. We'll do our part with neighborhood watches and communication, and now they have to do their part."

Jacobson and others from the area singled out the need for more officers to patrol the area.

"As the city adds more personnel, we will be able to add more patrols," Barker said. "Right now we have 70 people in field training, and in September the academy will have 150 recruits working toward joining the force."

Beatrice Garcia, an area resident, said the addition of bike officers has made a difference in the area, and she would like to see more bike patrols.

"Right now we have 32 officers and four supervisors assigned to downtown bike patrol," Barker said. "We have 50 bikes available, and when we redirect some personnel, we'll have more patrols."

The addition of officers, along with better communication between the different branches of city government and downtown community members, is a good start to cleaning up the area, Reese said.

"It is great, and I hope that everyone here today is as serious as I am about the agreement," Reese said. "These people know that they cannot tolerate crime and drugs in their neighborhoods and they got everyone important to attend, so hopefully it will be a positive agreement."

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