Two suspended UNLV police are reinstated

Jace Radke

Tuesday, April 11, 2000 | 10:40 a.m.

As a university search committee gets closer to hiring a new director of public safety, two suspended UNLV Police supervisors were reinstated this morning despite an incomplete investigation into their actions in a March 9 dormitory drug raid.

The five finalists for the director's post, which includes the responsibilities of police chief, will be at UNLV beginning Thursday for final interviews, and one is expected to be chosen for the position by the end of the month.

Raymond Sparks, retired deputy director of the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, is the only in-state finalist for the job leading the 22-officer department that was founded in 1972. The department is responsible for public safety in and around the UNLV campus as well as the coordination of security at sporting events, concerts and special events at university facilities.

The other four finalists all have backgrounds with university and college police departments or community policing. They are Dexter Yarbrough, a community policing liaison in the Chicago Police Department; Ronald Seacrist, director of public safety at Cal-State Northridge; Jose Elique, director of public safety at the City University of New York; and Stephen Baker, a Mesa, Ariz., police commander responsible for an Arizona State satellite campus and Mesa Community College campus.

The new chief will be charged with instituting comprehensive policies for a department that from all accounts is suffering from low morale and a lack of direction.

Acting chief Ed Verkin, who recently agreed to take over the department until a new chief is found, believes that reinstating former acting chief Sgt. Don Drake and Sgt. Paul Harris from paid administrative leave may boost the department's morale.

"I've been in contact with the Nevada Division of Investigations and their formal report on the actions of the two suspended supervisors won't be submitted for another two to three weeks," said Verkin, who ran the Las Vegas office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from 1990 to 1998. "At this time there is no indication that there has been any criminal act committed.

"Reinstating them could improve morale and maybe take away a dark cloud that has been hanging over the department."

Drake and Harris were suspended in the aftermath of a drug raid on Boyd Hall, where a campus housing coordinator claims he was frisked and handcuffed. The Nevada Division of Investigations has been looking into the incident, but Robert Ackerman, UNLV director of student services, said the investigation may point to the problem of the department's weak policies.

"I haven't seen the report, but I think ultimately it will say that while errors may have been made, the department's policies are so vague that the proper police procedures are unclear," Ackerman said at Monday's meeting of the UNLV public safety advisory committee. "If the policies are at fault, you can't hold a person responsible for doing something when you haven't told them how to do it.

"We are short on manpower, and I don't know what we'll get out of this (continuing the suspensions) besides having these two officers suspended for two or three more weeks."

Advisory board chair Rick Bennett worried about what kind of message bringing the two sergeants back would send to the university community.

"I'm a little disturbed by the administration's decision on this," Bennett said. "The report may or may not support the allegations against the officers, but I think it sends a poor message to the community to reinstate them before the report comes out."

Joey Cohn, a student member of the advisory board, said putting Drake and Harris back on active duty before the investigation is complete will result in a backlash from students and further erode what little trust is left between the department and the rest of the university community.

"Students are going to be concerned with this," Cohn said. "They will look at the decision as another move away from a student-centered university."