War may widen on downtown’s crime problems

Tuesday, Sept. 1, 1998 | 10:46 a.m.

Saraah Cobb wants to tear down the 10-foot wall that surrounds her downtown business, but says she can't because of the crime and the ugliness on the other side.

Monday a Las Vegas City Council committee chipped away at the wall when it recommended that the full council amend the city's Order Out Ordinance, thus expanding a downtown corridor of no tolerance for prostitution and adding drug dealing to the crimes that won't be tolerated.

The recommendation will be considered when the council meets Sept. 14.

Bernard Little, chief of the criminal division in the city attorney's office, said prostitutes and drug dealers would not be allowed in the corridor unless they have court-ordered exemptions for such reasons as medical treatment, legal proceedings and social services.

Anyone who is exempt from not being allowed in the area would have to carry the court order authorizing that exemption, otherwise they might be arrested.

The new ruling would mandate six months in jail for a third violation of the ordinance within three years.

Little released a survey conducted on the number of prostitution and drug arrests during the past three-to-four weeks.

Of 65 prostitution arrests and 200 misdemeanor drug arrests city-wide, more than 50 percent were in the proposed corridor.

Nevada's director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Gary Peck, commended city officials for creating an ordinance that seem to take into consideration the constitutional rights of individuals.

"But the concern I have is the continuing expansion of the order out area and of expanding the offenses," he said.

Peck said he realizes the ordinance is a tool to be used to help solve a problem of deep concern to residents and business owners in the downtown area.

"But in the final analysis, this is not a way to deal with the problems, it just moves them around," Peck said.

Cobb, co-owner of the Margaret Rose Residential Care Service, 100 S. 14th St., an 88-bed facility that cares for the elderly, told the three-member committee that downtown businesses are being hurt by prostitution and drug dealing in their area and that business owners want to revitalize the district and make it a destination location.

"The only way to make it happen is to make it safe," Cobb said.

She was among 40 downtown-area business owners and residents at Monday's meeting who urged passage of amendments to the Order Out Ordinance.

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.

The amendment, which adds misdemeanor drug offenses to the "order out" law, 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 of the corridor would be Main Street on the west, Washington Avenue on the north, Charleston Boulevard on the south and Eastern Avenue on the east.

It also would expand the Strip from Charleston Boulevard to Bonanza Avenue.

The existing corridor is a meandering border in the area.

"This squares it up," noted Helena Garcia, co-chairwoman of the Downtown Central Development Committee (DCDC), a non-profit organization she co-founded to work for development and commercial revitalization of the downtown area.

DCDC has played a dynamic role in getting the amendments to the Order Out Ordinance to the council and in receiving help from Metro Police in fighting crime in the area.

Garcia, born and reared in Las Vegas, says she remembers what downtown used to look like and she wants it to look that way again, even if it means shutting down some businesses that appear to cater to prostitutes and drug dealers.

"DCDC is a first step," she said.

"Maybe this isn't the ultimate answer," said Terri Galardi, owner of two businesses downtown and co-chairwoman of DCDC, "but it is a step in the right direction.

"We need more tools to get the drug dealers and prostitutes off the streets so people will feel comfortable."