McDonald is relieved those tailing him weren’t stalkers

Keith Paul

Friday, Feb. 23, 2001 | 11:52 a.m.

Las Vegas City Councilman Michael McDonald said he was relieved to learn he was the target of a law enforcement surveillance.

The alternative was being stalked.

"Those (law enforcement) officers are just doing their jobs," McDonald said. "They are just investigating a lot of lies about me."

McDonald contacted Metro Police in the first week of February after he said he received several threats, and he started noticing the same cars following him.

But Metro found McDonald wasn't being stalked, but he was being staked out by a legal surveillance by a law enforcement agency, Deputy Chief Mike Hawkins, commander of the special operations division, told the Sun.

Hawkins said Metro was not following McDonald. He contacted another law enforcement agency that confirmed McDonald was the target of the surveillance. Hawkins would not reveal the name of the agency.

Hawkins said officers will inform McDonald he was not being stalked but that he is the target of a law enforcement surveillance.

Special Agent Daron W. Borst, a spokesman for the Las Vegas FBI office, refused to confirm or deny FBI agents had McDonald under surveillance.

The FBI does have agents responsible for investigating political corruption, Borst said.

McDonald said Thursday that he didn't mind being the target of the surveillance. Instead he recounted how easily it was to spot surveillance, and said it was almost like they wanted him to see them.

"I was driving around, and the same couple of cars were always behind me," he said. "When I stopped, one parked up the street and one parked down the street."

He said the same cars followed him to his parents' house, to his girlfriend's and home from a restaurant.

"At one point they were following me, and we were all in a line," said McDonald, a former Metro officer. "It looked like a parade."

McDonald started videotaping the cars. One time he said he walked up to the car parked near his house and taped the man behind the wheel.

"I put the spotlight (of the camera) inside the car, and the guy covered his face and hit the car panic alarm," McDonald said. "I saw cameras and binoculars inside."

McDonald turned over the videotape to Metro when he made the police report. Hawkins said since no crime was committed, the tape and report will be returned to McDonald.

McDonald had been the target of a recent Metro investigation into councilman's actions involving the financially troubled Las Vegas Sportspark and allegations he was trying to thwart a tavern license for political consultant Sig Rogich.

Police said they found enough probable cause to support criminal charges, but county prosecutors determined they couldn't prove the case in court and didn't pursue the matter.

However, a city and state ethics board each found McDonald violated local and state ethics laws. The city ethics panel instructed its counsel to file a malfeasance petition in District Court seeking to remove McDonald from office. A judge has scheduled a hearing on the petition for next month.

As far as seeing cars following him, McDonald said it stopped soon after he made the videotape and contacted Metro.

But he did say before he learned it was law enforcement officers, the men lurking around, concerned him.

"I was a cop for 10 years and put a lot of people in jail and a lot of them are getting out now," McDonald said. "I'm very high profile and easy to find if someone had a vendetta against me. The cars following me scared my mother and father."

Now that he knows the men following him were law enforcement, McDonald said he's not worried about any possible investigation into him.

"A lot of times they do investigation to find out if a rumor is true. I'm not concerned because I don't do anything wrong," he said. "All I know is that I was relieved it was law enforcement and not someone trying to kill me or my family."