New police unit assists Las Vegas’ homeless

Jace Radke

Friday, Sept. 17, 1999 | 11:34 a.m.

A Metro Police officer has admitted to a string of robberies in downtown Las Vegas.

Officer Eric Fricker's latest theft involved a young family of three whom he met outside of the Salvation Army before the sun came up Wednesday morning.

"I steal people from the Salvation Army and other facilities," Fricker said. "I keep a lookout for families, the elderly and the mentally ill and then I steal them. If I can get my claws into a family in the morning I know it will be a busy day."

Fricker "steals" homeless people and tries to find them low-income housing and services as one of two officers stationed at the new MASH Village substation.

Fricker is part of Metro's Homeless Evaluation Liaison Project, or HELP team, that is now focusing on getting the homeless off the streets through shelters and services instead of through the Clark County Detention Center.

Just before 6 a.m. on Wednesday Fricker spies the Rodriguez family: Alvaro, Dorthey and their 6-month-old son, Nathan, as they huddle waiting for breakfast to be served at the Salvation Army, 33 W. Owens Ave.

Alvaro tells Fricker he lost his construction job and couldn't afford to make payments on the family's car, which has been repossessed by the owner.

Alvaro doesn't know it as he sits down to a breakfast of coffee and what looks like ham on toast in a white gravy, but meeting Fricker will change his family's life by the end of the day.

After Fricker calls in some favors, works the telephone and does a little pleading, the Rodriguez family has a permanent spot at MASH Village, Alvaro gets a lead on a new job, a payment plan is worked out for the car and Nathan has fresh diapers.

"It tickles me to death to see this guy with a gun doing social work," MASH director Ken Robinson said of Fricker. "This new substation is really taking the HELP team to new levels. It is really starting to resemble the vision Sheriff Jerry Keller had when he started the program."

Keller began HELP in 1991, when he was captain of Metro's northeast area command, shortly after the American Civil Liberties Union won a suit against the department over the enforcement of loitering laws and vagrancy statutes.

At the time, Keller wrote of HELP, "This team will not be another two-officer foot patrol ... paddywagon team. It will foster a philosophy of helping people rather than herding people."

Fricker and his partner, Officer Bill Stockdale moved into the new substation at MASH, 1559 N. Main St., on Sept. 1, and have taken the sheriff's philosophy to heart.

"We give them a lot of freedom, because they are creative officers that are helping people who need it," Downtown Area Command Capt. Dan Berry said. "They are able to balance enforcement and intervention."

Stockdale handles most of the criminal calls in the homeless corridor, which runs along Main Street from downtown to Owens Avenue and includes the Union Pacific railroad tracks.

Fricker, meanwhile, goes about his stealing.

"The reason we split up enforcement and intervention is because it's hard to build a relationship with people if they think you're there to arrest them," Fricker said. "How's a person going to trust me at all if we meet in the bushes and the next thing they know they're being arrested?"

Fricker and Stockdale eat lunch at the major shelters -- MASH, Catholic Charities, Salvation Army and Shade Tree -- almost every day, and the homeless community's response is evident as the officers patrol the corridor, getting waves and smiles from people.

"It's great to see them doing the waving," Fricker said. "It hasn't always been this way. People used to see us coming and make a run for it. Now they stay and talk because they know we are here to help get them to the services they need."

Jerry Johnson, 41, greets Fricker every morning at Salvation Army, where Johnson works as a cook and supervisor.

Johnson, who lost his job in a Chicago research company and moved to Las Vegas looking for work five years ago, believes the HELP team is a step in the right direction when it comes to dealing with the valley's homeless.

"I stayed in a shelter in Chicago for awhile, but there is nothing there like this with all the facilities crammed in such a tight space," Johnson said. "With such a high concentration of homeless in such a small area you can't help but have a high crime rate.

"But by having (Fricker) here and people knowing who he is and not just that he is a police officer it minimizes any manure that might pop up."

Early start

Fricker and Stockdale usually start their day at the Salvation Army at about 5:30 a.m. From there they make a patrol through the railyard that runs just west of Main Street.

"There are some regulars who sleep out by the tracks behind the Salvation Army and we try to treat them as a community," Fricker said. "We try to keep track of who's out here and get them into one of the shelters, and we don't allow them to build any shanty towns or structures.

"It's like 'Field of Dreams'; build it and they will come."

The officers have made 166 contacts in the last month and have started taking photos, names and birth dates from the homeless in the area for easy identification.

"We hope to incorporate the photos into a database, so we can quickly check the homeless against any suspect descriptions we might have," Fricker said.

The process is already coming in handy when the officers are asked to serve warrants to the homeless.

"We are starting to have a lot more contact with the robbery and sexual assault details because many times the suspect information reads, 'could have been homeless'," Fricker said.

The partners still make about 20 arrests a month in the homeless corridor, the majority of which are for warrants. They also hand out about 50 citations a month, mostly for trespassing.

"We try not to make arrests on trespassing unless they are chronic offenders, because it takes a lot of time to go down and book them, and we could be using that time to help someone else," Fricker said. "We concentrate our enforcement on the people who become chronic nuisances or are part of the criminal element."

Program innovations

Other HELP program innovations Fricker and Stockdale are working on include producing a resource card that can be given out to people they meet on their rounds. The cards will have the homeless services providers' phone numbers and locations on them.

"We run into a lot of people sleeping outside in the dirt only a few blocks from a shelter," Fricker said. "Sometimes they get the shelters mixed up and don't realize there may be one they haven't been to or that some space may have opened up for them."

The partners are also coming up with a manual for the HELP team for future officers who may be assigned to the post, and have proposed adding another police code just for calls involving the homeless, so crime statistics in the corridor are easier to track.

The officers are in and out of the substation all day, but they make sure that one of them is there from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. daily.

"Homelessness may not seem like a police problem, but it becomes one at 4 a.m. when these people are out on the street," Fricker said.

Fricker came upon Stacie Foote and her three children, ages 4, 5 and 7, at about 4 a.m. a few weeks ago on the sidewalk in front of MASH.

"We were out there because we wanted to be first in line when MASH opened, so we could see if there were any vacancies," Foote said. "I got a blanket from the Salvation Army and we stayed on the sidewalk so we could have a chance to get in MASH.

"When Eric first approached us I thought he was going to take us to child protective services. Instead he just came over and started talking to me. He made calls for us and always checked on how we were doing."

The family stayed in a motel for a week and then moved to the Salvation Army, before finally getting into MASH on Wednesday.

Foote's daughter, Amy, celebrated her 7th birthday on Wednesday with a new home and a big lunch.

"They have good food and bunk beds here that are fun to bounce on," Amy said through a mouthful of cantaloupe at lunch Wednesday.

When Fricker gets up to leave the lunch room Amy, her sister, Katlin, 5, and brother RJ, 4, all run up and hug him before he can get out the door.

"When Capt. (Dan) Berry called me and told me about this assignment last May I didn't know if I wanted it but he told me to give it a try," Fricker said. "Each time I see one of these families getting their lives back together, I'm glad I gave it a chance."

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