Las Vegas, Hawaii share tourism safety solutions

Wednesday, May 17, 2000 | 11:07 a.m.

Tourist victims

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department says crime in which tourists are victims was down 28 percent from 1998 to 1999 in Clark County.

Metro reported 3,788 crime reports involving victims whose addresses were not in Nevada in 1999 compared with 5,259 in 1998. Crime was down in all but five of 19 categories. Crime incidents were up in credit-card crime, forgery, sexual assault, threats and miscellaneous crime categories.

Metro said the figures are not 100 percent accurate -- out-of-state property owners may be listed as tourist victims in some cases because they did not list Nevada as their home in police reports.

Larceny remains the top crime reported by tourists, 1,947 incidents, while there were 780 burglaries reported in 1999. Homicides involving tourists were down from 10 in 1998 to four in 1999, while sexual assaults climbed from 117 to 135 during the same period.

Now that crime has fallen off in Honolulu, the city's police chief is addressing other public safety issues that gnaw at the 900,000 residents of Hawaii's largest city.

They're issues with which Las Vegas law enforcement officers and Metro Sheriff Jerry Keller are familiar, since Las Vegans have been pressing local leaders to do something about some of the same issues -- the distribution of handbills and the monitoring of the homeless population.

Honolulu Police Chief Lee Donohue discussed policing in paradise Tuesday at the ninth annual Tourism Safety and Security Conference at the Tropicana hotel-casino. The three-day conference, attended by about 200 law enforcement and private security professionals worldwide, wraps up today.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman greeted the gathering, sponsored by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Metro and the Las Vegas Security Chiefs Association, in a keynote address Monday.

Goodman explained some of his unorthodox approaches to municipal government and gave a plug for some of the themes of his administration -- attracting professional sports teams and high-tech businesses to the city and trying to build support within the casino industry to participate in developing stadiums and cultural facilities.

Keller, who introduced Donohue at Tuesday's event, said even though Las Vegas gets about seven times the number of tourists who visit Honolulu, he still feels he can pick up some pointers from Donohue.

Like Las Vegas, Honolulu's crime rates have dropped dramatically in the past four years.

"But we found that it's not enough to reduce crime," Donohue said. "So we went out into the community and found other public safety issues of concern to our residents."

What Donohue found was that the public wanted the police to do something about the proliferation of prostitution, handbilling and street performers. Donohue said he decided to attack the problem the same way he tackled other crime problems -- by forming a task force and involving the community in developing solutions.

Donohue explained that a few years ago, an organized group of criminals began targeting tourists in purse-snatchings and pickpocketing. His community task force worked with the police department to focus more attention on the thefts and the word went out that those crimes would be vigorously prosecuted.

"We basically told criminals if you're going to target tourists, be prepared to do some time," Donohue said.

The strategy worked.

Now, the focus is on the other problems. Donohue said his department is working with Hawaii's Institute for Human Services and the Veterans Administration for help to prevent crime involving homeless people and prostitution.

Donohue said the number of homeless people has dwindled, thanks to counseling from the social services agency. The veterans group is influential on prostitution issues in the area because of the large numbers of military personnel stationed at Pearl Harbor and Hickam Air Force Base, minutes from Waikiki, Honolulu's center of tourism.

On the handbilling issue, Donohue said local ordinances have been passed to limit the locations where pamphlets can be distributed.

Keller noted that Honolulu's tourism safety issues run parallel to Las Vegas'.

He said Metro is trying to develop solutions to the distribution of handbills, which in Las Vegas take the form of peddling adult literature. Appellate courts have struck down local ordinances because they violated free speech guarantees. He said local officials are trying to focus attention on public safety concerns and not free-speech issues in their efforts to curtail the distribution of handbills.

He said social service agencies also have been involved in helping the homeless in Las Vegas. He said that while the homeless sometimes represent a "visual blight or an odoriferous blight," homeless people more often are the victims of crimes, not the perpetrators.

Richard N. Velotta

is a business writer for the Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4061 or by e-mail at velotta@lasvegassun.com