Editorial: Expand task force on crime

Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2002 | 9:03 a.m.

Meadows Village, an area near Industrial Road and Sahara Avenue, has been troubled by crime for at least a decade. Things started to change for the better in 1997 after Metro Police and the city of Las Vegas created a task force to try to rid the area of drug dealing and prostitution. The joint effort did make some inroads in reducing crime there, but lately the problems have reappeared. So in July the city made the right decision to reactivate the task force and see what could be done to get rid of the blight.

At a City Council meeting last week, Mayor Oscar Goodman said he would like to see the task force become a city-wide effort, so that it covers more than just Meadows Village. As the Sun's Diana Sahagun noted in a story about efforts to expand the task force's scope, there has been a dramatic increase in gang-related murders in the vicinity of Martin Luther King and Lake Mead boulevards, an area that borders North Las Vegas and Las Vegas. There have been 15 killings in that area since January 2001, a period of time that also saw innocent bystanders get killed because they got caught in the crossfire.

The task force isn't only about beefing up increased patrols by Metro Police, although that is a significant part of it. The Meadows Village task force also has the objective of improving other living conditions in the area, which includes creating an active neighborhood association and improving the children's park. Experience has shown that crime tends to increase as a community gets run down. But if there is a crackdown on crime and at the same time homes and businesses are restored in an area, then there is a real opportunity to turn things around. So the city also has worked to identify the abandoned buildings and vacant lots in Meadows Village, and either gotten the owners to clean up the vacant lots or shut down the buildings until they pass city codes.

Metro Police and the city of Las Vegas should take the same approach that's being used with Meadows Village and apply it elsewhere in the city where it's needed. Besides, if a crackdown on crime is initiated in one part of the city, crime will pick up and move where the police aren't as concentrated. And law-abiding residents wherever they live should have the expectation that they won't have to worry about drive-by shootings, sidestepping prostitutes or whether their children have to dodge drug dealers on their way to school.

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