Tuesday, May 6, 2003 | 11:17 a.m.
A handful of ailing veterans picketed the Addeliar D. Guy III Ambulatory Care Clinic Monday, saying they are too old and too sick to fight their way through the "gang combat zone" at Nucleus Plaza to get services.
But a businessman at the Nucleus Plaza on Owens Avenue countered that the fears expressed by the ex-military servicemen are unwarranted and perpetuate the stereotype that predominantly black West Las Vegas is unsafe.
The Guy clinic is scheduled to close in June. Last year the Department of Veterans Affairs broke its lease on the 6-year-old facility after engineers said structural damage could not be repaired. The Nucleus Plaza is the site of one of 11 temporary clinics and will house post-traumatic stress disorder and mental health services.
Attempts to reach local VA officials for comment Monday and early today were not successful.
Alvin Friedman, president and national service officer for National Veterans Organization of America Chapter 2, said: "They are using us PTSD patients and mental health patients as guinea pigs to go into a combat zone to test how safe it is.
"It is a high crime area according to police reports ... and a place where ... gangs are," Friedman said. "It is not safe."
Metro Police Lt. Cindy Galindo, who is in charge of the gang surveillance unit, said that while gangs are everywhere in the United States "they absolutely are not waging a war at the Nucleus Plaza."
Nucleus Plaza burned during the 1992 riots after the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers in the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney King, but today it is home to numerous major service-oriented businesses.
They include Wells Fargo Bank, a Clark County School District office and city of Las Vegas Neighborhood Services.
One business operator in the plaza said the veterans' protest reflects a prejudice.
"This isn't about the Nucleus Plaza, it's about the west side," said the manager of the Heritage Lounge, who said his name is M.C. "This has gone on for a long time.
"A big part of the reason for that is you guys (reporters) only come around when bad things happen here. You're never around when we do things at the bar like Halloween for the kids and cookouts for the community."
M.C. said gangs are everywhere, not just in West Las Vegas, and that his establishment sometimes is patronized by members of as many as seven rival gangs on a busy night. He said those customers cause no problems and commit no crimes.
Friedman and other protesters said their fears aren't the gangs fighting each other, it's being targeted by thugs who prey on the elderly.
"The VA cannot provide security for a place that is so wide open as it is at the Nucleus Plaza," said Friedman, a PTSD sufferer.
Reminded that a many local veterans years ago protested the clinic being built at the corner of Martin L. King Boulevard and Vegas Drive, claiming it was unsafe, Friedman, a Las Vegas resident of 23 years, said those protests might have inspired the good security that has been provided at the Guy Clinic. He said he hoped the protest forces the VA to change.
"We want them to give us fee-based private psychiatry," Friedman, a Vietnam War Marine veteran, said. "I've talked to a number of veterans and they have said they will not go there (Nucleus Plaza) for treatment."
Other protesting veterans had similar thoughts.
"I've never been to the Nucleus Plaza, but the things I've heard concern me," said Milton Duran, 77, an Army veteran of World War II and Korea.
Chester Whitley, 71, an Army Airborne veteran of the Korean War, called the VA's decision to rent temporary space in the Nucleus Plaza "a real bad move. There were a lot of better places they could have picked."
M.C. said the veterans fears are misdirected.
"Older people are always going to fear things," the 33-year-old bar manager said. "But they should be concentrating on making sure the VA is providing the services they are entitled to and not where they are getting those services."
The VA has said that while the offices are temporary, it could take at least three years before a new, larger clinic is built at a yet-to-be-determined Las Vegas location. A free shuttle services from one temporary clinic to another will be available, officials have said.
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