Police to fight gangs with federal laws

Keith Paul

Friday, March 9, 2001 | 12:01 p.m.

Police plan to use harsher federal gun and drug penalties as one way to quash a three-week surge in gang violence that left six people dead.

Local agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Drug Enforcement Agency will share information with police. If gang members are found to have violated federal gun or drug laws, those cases could proceed to the federal courts.

"There is no parole in the federal system," said B.J. Zapor, resident agent in charge of the Las Vegas ATF. "These federal (gun) laws were designed to pick out the most violent people and get them away from our communities where they are being such a threat."

The violence may not be abating with the increased attention as 27-year-old Marquet Hayes was in critical condition this morning after being shot several times about 3:50 a.m. Thursday on West Owens Avenue, not far from the scene of the recent gang-related shootings.

"He may have picked the wrong time to wear a red shirt in the wrong neighborhood," said Lt. Art Redcay, a North Las Vegas Police spokesman.

One of the warring gangs' colors is red and the man may have been spotted by members of the rival gang. Police are still investigating the shooting to determine if it was gang-related.

North Las Vegas and Metro Police are putting more officers and detectives in the area of Martin Luther King Boulevard between Carey Avenue and Lake Mead Boulevard, ironically the area of the new FBI building. In that area six people have been killed by gunfire, including a church deacon and an 18-year-old woman, caught in the gang cross fire.

"There are going to be more officers in the area," North Las Vegas Police Chief Joey Tillmon said. "We will do what we can to stop this. An 18-year-old girl lost her life. This has got to be stopped."

North Las Vegas and Metro have been sharing information and have been working together in the area that touches in both jurisdictions.

But Tillmon said, contrary to what others have reported, the police will not just stop people at random.

"That's ludicrous and any police officer knows that is totally illegal," Tillmon said. "We will not be doing that."

What will be done, police say, are legal stops such as for traffic violations and talking with people on the street in what police call "consensual contact."

"We will walk up to people and ask them if we can talk to them," said Lt. Jim Owens of Metro's gang unit. "If they don't want to, they can just walk away. We want to be as visible as possible in the area."

But that practice still worries officials from the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.

"The American Civil Liberties Union appreciates the police departments' effort to deal with the escalating violence, but we are also concerned that they do not violate people's rights in the process of doing so," said Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada. "The so-called consensual stops are also disturbing because anytime the cops stop someone there is a power dynamic and an element of coercion involved."

Peck said the increased police presence in the area might be seem more as an "army of occupation" because of a breakdown in trust of residents.

Several residents have claimed the police aren't doing enough to stop the rising gang fighting going on in the area in the past few weeks. Police claim they have had problems getting witnesses to give them information to solve the slayings.

The reasons for the rise in violence between the two gangs is not known, but rumors range from retaliation for a murder of a gang member in 1999 to turf disputes to something as stupid as an insult.

In recent years there have been other times when two gangs started shooting at each other as often, but no recent rifts have caused this many deaths, Owens said.

In 1995, Metro reported 527 drive-by shootings during a year with a high amount of gang violence. In recent years the number of drive-by shootings has decreased.

Gangs often fight among themselves, but as seen in the recent bout of violence, it is not always the gang members who are hit by the gunshots.

"They may prey on each other, but the victims always ended up being the innocent people," Zapor said.