Keller seeks plan to erase work card records

Keith Paul

Friday, Sept. 7, 2001 | 11:27 a.m.

Sheriff Jerry Keller said Thursday he will erase the work-card records of people no longer required to have them but not until a plan for the time-consuming and potentially costly project is approved.

Metro Police will offer several plans within two weeks to the Las Vegas City Council and Clark County Commission. Metro Police, which has long maintained the work-card records, is funded by the city of Las Vegas and Clark County.

For the protection of Las Vegas tourists and consumers, work cards have for decades been required of people who fill numerous job categories. Yet as people left those jobs, the individual records remained on microfilm, fingerprint cards, and photo files, creating a privacy issue. Now, more than a million records stored in separate places qualify for destruction.

Deputy Chief Richard McKee said he is drafting several plans. Some will include an increase in workers, which would mean an increase in funding. Other plans will be the slower-paced removal of files by removing information during the upgrade of computer and archival systems.

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said work-card information should be removed from Metro Police's database as quickly as possible regardless of the cost.

"People's basic right to privacy doesn't come with a price tag," Peck said. "You can't say it is too costly to properly respect the rights of privacy."

Keller said the only issue for him is how best to eliminate the records.

"My commitment has been clearly stated. I have no desire to maintain the records and will eliminate them," Keller said Thursday. "I would love to flip a switch and remove all the records, but this is going to a multi-year effort."

The County Commission and the Las Vegas City Council voted recently to no longer require that thousands of workers obtain work cards. The job categories removed from the work-card requirement included gaming service workers, such as maids and bellhops.

The Las Vegas City Council, however, went a step further this week, eliminating the need for work cards for all casino workers within the city limits, which includes downtown.

The city still requires work cards for 19 job categories, from carnival workers to acupressure practitioners, and the county for 36, from advertising specialists to vacation certificate salespeople.

Several county commissioners this week wanted police to start removing the entries from the statewide database -- SCOPE -- and deal with removing the fingerprint cards, photographs and microfilm archive of the work cards records later.

Keller said he will not start removing the computer records without removing the other records at the same time. The records are considered police records and are maintained by Metro.

"I respect the county commissioners and want to work with them on this issue," Keller said.

But when asked if he would follow whatever directive that comes from the commission, such as starting to remove computer files immediately, he answered, "I don't work for them."

Metro must get approval from the state before any of the records can be destroyed. By state law, Metro is required to keep a record of the work cards issued for at least 10 years. There is no requirement for removing old files after the 10 years has passed. McKee said he is in the process of getting the state approval and doesn't expect any problems.

An information and archival expert said the computer listing of files should be the last record erased, not the first.

"Getting rid of just one part is kind of pointless," said Helen Tibbo, a professor in the School of Information and Library Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "You shouldn't get rid of the computer files first. They are the most accessible and make locating the other files (photographs and fingerprint cards) less time consuming. Getting rid of the computer files first, that would be a nightmare."

McKee added the removal of the listing in SCOPE would not eliminate the police access to the work-card information because the microfilm archive is indexed.

The removal of the work-card information has also led Peck to question why Metro has the files mingled with criminal records and investigative-related files.

"The work card information was meant for a narrow purpose and I doubt few people understood that information would be used by Metro to identify and track members of the public," Peck said.

Allen Lichtenstein, an attorney for the ACLU of Nevada, said people did not give up their constitutional right of privacy because they needed to get a work card for a job.

"It is not simply a matter that they take the work card information for one very specific purpose and that information belongs to them and it no longer belongs to you," he said.

Keller said the work card information, like other government-collected data such as information collected to get a driver's license, is used during some investigations and to locate identified suspects or witnesses.

"We are doing nothing illegal," Keller said. "They say state law provides that we don't use that information, but they have never named a specific state law and we know of no state law that states we cannot use the information."