Columnist Susan Snyder: Trumpeting a turn for the better

Friday, Aug. 30, 2002 | 4:19 a.m.

Before she heads off to work Tuesday mornings, Beatrice Turner places a foam cup filled with paper and water on the curb in front of her West Las Vegas home.

"Every Tuesday the city is supposed to sweep my street," Turner said. "If the cup's still there when I get home from work I get right on the telephone, and I call city hall."

The telltale cup is knocked over by street-sweeping machines more Tuesdays than not. If there's one thing Las Vegas city officials don't need it's another call from Turner. But society can't have too many like her.

Turner, a 41-year-old home health-care aide and single mother of three, was born and raised in what has become one of the valley's toughest neighborhoods. She remembers when Jackson Street had businesses, few houses were vacant, and teenagers didn't shoot each other.

She is a regular at Las Vegas City Council meetings, where she uses the public comment portion to raise awareness about her community's issues.

"Every other Wednesday I always make sure I don't have a patient, and I tell them at work, 'Don't call me on city council meeting days,' " she said.

On Aug. 14 Turner figured she'd have to wait a while. But a lawyer withdrew Wal-Mart's proposal to build a store in Summerlin, and Turner had the floor long before her parking meter ran out.

She asked council members for help in changing the culture that has made her neighborhood a veritable war zone with drive-by shootings.

"For us, it's becoming an everyday occurrence," she said. "Everyone must play a part -- our councilmen, our ministers and our parents."

Turner isn't new to speaking her mind. She was among those who filed a 1997 complaint that resulted in the resignation of the local NAACP office manager.

In 1998 she joined public criticism of new state welfare control measures, and joined a federal lawsuit alleging the county's plan to redraw election district boundaries was unbalanced.

She made an unsuccessful bid for Clark County School Board in 2000, and was among those outraged in July over the heart attack death of embattled Las Vegas Housing Authority Executive Director Frederick Brown.

Lately, Turner has been fighting a proposed park at Carey Avenue and Lake Mead Boulevard. The area has too much crime, she says.

"What're they going to call it? 'Tombstone Park?' " she said. "We don't need a park right there, right now."

Turner's most recent council plea was a result of the Aug. 7 drive-by killings of two men, ages 18 and 20. She says she knew them, along with a dozen others who have been gunned down over the years.

"Where's our role models?" she says. "Some of these kids got nothing -- no fathers, mothers, grandmothers. They've haven't got anybody but their homeys."

Events that typically raise money for band uniforms or school club trips in other towns, pay for funerals in Turner's neighborhood.

"Every other week we're doing car washes and selling chicken dinners to bury a child," she said. "How many are we going to be able to do?"

Turner says she tries to practice what she preaches. She's helping raise her first grandchild, born two months ago.

"And I'll be damned if he'll grow up to be a thug on the street," she said.