Jewish Defense League challenges NLV police

The Jewish Defense League of Nevada is accusing the city of North Las Vegas of violating a Jewish police officer's rights and threatening to picket City Hall and the police department.

Officer Mike Thomas, who has been on paid leave since Dec. 22 after he was involved in a scuffle in the department's detective bureau, has been subjected to anti-Semitic comments for the past two years, the league said.

"The Jewish Defense League views the actions of the city of North Las Vegas as an extremely serious violation of Officer Thomas' civil rights," league director Bill Maniaci wrote to the city in a letter dated April 16. "Unless this situation is resolved in a fair and rapid fashion, without further civil rights violations and obvious anti-Semitic bias, the Jewish Defense League will be forced to take a proactive roll to call public attention to this situation."

Mayor Mike Montandon said Friday he could not comment on the letter, which was addressed to the mayor, city council members, police chief, city attorney and city manager, because he had not seen it. Neither could City Manager Pat Importuna, who as of this morning, had not seen a copy.

Thomas said a former North Las Vegas chief of police told him he would have not been hired if department officials had known he was Jewish.

While he admits he is nonpracticing in his faith, Thomas said he has been submitted to numerous anti-Semitic comments during his years on the police force.

"It's not like I woke up on Tuesday and said, 'Hey, I'm Jewish,' " he said. "It reared its ugly head before. I didn't appreciate the comments."

Thomas claims he was told by a fellow officer "not to be an uppity Jew" among other remarks.

"At first I blew it off, because they weren't trying to take my job," Thomas said. "They can hate me because I'm Jewish. I can work in a hostile environment. But now they are trying to take my livelihood."

As a result of the Dec. 22 scuffle, Thomas, a Drug Abuse Resistance Education officer, faces two counts of misdemeanor battery. Thomas was being questioned about a separate incident involving the president of the North Las Vegas Police Association.

Thomas said his troubles in the department stem from a lawsuit he filed against the union after it failed to represent him in arbitration.

For the past two years, Thomas said he documented and sent memos to his superiors and City Hall about the anti-Semitic comments, but never received a response.

He took the complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year, "but I have yet to receive a response because they are backed up," he said.

He decided to take the issue to the Anti-Defamation League, which subsequently sent him to the Jewish Defense League, because "most of the comments were anti-Semitic," Thomas said. "No one else wanted to touch this."

Maniaci said one of the JDL's major concerns is that no retaliation take place against Thomas for contacting the organization.

"We get involved whenever and wherever racism presents itself," he said. "It would have tweaked our interest if a black person or Hispanic had told us the same thing."

Maniaci said as long as the police department and the city give Thomas "a fair shake" and the same type of investigation they would anyone else, his group will stay out of it.

"But we could conceivably picket the police department or City Hall," he said. "This is of national JDL interest. We don't want any department to get away with this. We want to send a message."

The last time the Jewish Defense League was involved in an issue in the Las Vegas Valley was in October 1988. That's when Irv Rubin, then the head of the Jewish Defense League in Los Angeles, was among those denouncing Imperial Palace owner Ralph Englestad for his collection of Nazi memorabilia at the Strip hotel-casino.

Englestad publicly apologized a few days later and subsequently disbanded his infamous "War Room" collection.

The Jewish Defense League on its Internet web site describes itself as "the most controversial, yet the most effective, of all Jewish organizations."

The activist group was founded in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane with its motto, "Never Again," that opposes the opinion that Jews shouldn't fight back when they are under attack.

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