Strip mall businesses object to police raid

Adrienne Packer

Thursday, Nov. 16, 2000 | 11:12 a.m.

Cue Club manager Trish Roberts was busy at the crowded billiards hall a month ago when 50 police officers and inspectors flooded the Commercial Center strip mall and blocked its entrances.

The code inspections were thorough and came in waves -- first health, then building and electrical. Within an hour the Cue Club, which had passed its routine inspections a month earlier, was shut down for excessive demerits.

The raid triggered questions about the legality of Clark County's 18-month-old County Multi-Agency Response Team (CMART), and landed the case in District Court Judge Michael Cherry's courtroom Wednesday.

County officials contend the team is a network of agencies whose goal is simply to clean up blighted properties that pose a danger to the public. Metro Police had responded to the center 387 times in six months.

But Al Marquis, who represents Commercial Center, holds a contrasting opinion.

"This is unreasonable search and seizure," said Marquis, who noted that it was the targeted businesses which called for police help. "The raid looked like a siege by an invading army."

Marquis said he believes CMART's raid was in retaliation for a lawsuit Commercial Center has filed against Clark County. The suit claims the county has violated an agreement that says the government will maintain the shopping center's parking lots and sidewalks.

Marquis said business owners welcome routine inspections at reasonable hours, but it is unconstitutional for multiple agencies to descend unannounced on a property. He also questioned the timing -- a Friday night.

The attorney urged Cherry to disband CMART because there is no lead agency that takes responsibility for the team's actions, and there is no legislation that authorizes the creation of CMART.

"We do not necessarily attribute ill motives to the police department and others who participated," Marquis said. "They may have thought somehow going out and conducting a raid would help clean up a center that has a lot of crime.

"Regardless of the motive, if the conduct is unconstitutional, and it is unconstitutional, it must stop."

Cherry denied Marquis' request to dissolve CMART, but ruled that the team must run future projects by him before it acts. He set a Dec. 6 "status check" hearing.

The judge, a longtime resident of Las Vegas, said he was sensitive to both CMART and the business owners and encouraged them to meet and work out an agreement. Cherry said the county needs to focus on protecting small businesses as much as it does the gaming industry.

"We all suffer when things like this happen," Cherry said.

Commercial Center was part of the county's urban renewal program in the 1960s. In exchange for developing a strip mall, the county agreed to pay for the upkeep of parking lots and sidewalks for the life of the project.