Williams wants to expand ‘order-out corridor’

Adrienne Packer

Thursday, March 1, 2001 | 11:05 a.m.

Two years after Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams introduced the county's first "order-out corridor," she is looking for support to expand the program into another troubled area.

The county's first ordinance, which was passed in 1999, allows a judge to offer misdemeanor drug offenders arrested in the designated corridors a suspended sentence if they stay out of the area for six months to a year.

Williams acknowledged at the time that the program would clean up only one neighborhood saturated with drugs -- an area west of Maryland Parkway, east of Paradise, south of Sahara and north of Russell Road.

"How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time; this is a step," Williams said when the ordinance was first passed. "I'd like to see the whole county be an order-out district, but we can't start with the whole county."

Williams is now prepared to expand the program onto Boulder Highway, a region notorious for drug-related problems.

The county's newly proposed order-out corridor along Boulder Highway would extend from Charleston Boulevard -- where the city's program along Boulder ends -- and continue to Russell Road.

The amended ordinance that will include the Boulder section is scheduled to be introduced Tuesday without discussion. A public hearing on the ordinance will be held during the commission's March 20 meeting.

While Metro Police have been in support of the program, the American Civil Liberties Union will likely be present to protest the ordinance. ACLU representatives have continually argued that the order-out programs are ineffective because they simply push drug users and dealers to other areas.