Cops mount Fremont St. crackdown

Jen Lawson

Thursday, Dec. 12, 2002 | 11:18 a.m.

Downtown prostitutes, drug users and other alleged offenders were being rounded up this morning by law enforcement officers in an effort to make the Fremont Street area safer for tourists and residents.

But civil libertarians said the crackdown was creating more of a police state than a safe environment.

About 20 Metro Police officers, Las Vegas marshals and municipal court marshals were patrolling the area of Eighth and Fremont streets and detaining pedestrians for minor offenses, such as jaywalking or panhandling.

"If we see someone commit a crime, we're going to stop him, talk to him, see what he's all about," Lt. Jeff Dufrene of the Las Vegas City Marshals Service said. "We're trying to address this area and the problems that are plaguing it."

Once an offender was in custody, officers checked to see if there were any outstanding warrants.

About 8 a.m. a scruffy-looking man was walking down Fremont Street in the area of Metro's Downtown Area Command substation. Officers saw him cross the street against a pedestrian light and detained him.

Officers brought him into the substation and handcuffed him while they checked to see if he had any outstanding warrants or prior arrests. They discovered he did have a warrant for a minor offense, as well as a prior arrest for second-degree murder.

Such arrests by using jaywalking or other minor offenses as an excuse to check someone's background violate citizens' civil rights, officials of the American Civil Libertarian Union said.

"This situation is very troubling," Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel of the ACLU of Nevada, said. "This is a practice that is blatantly unconstitutional, and it should cease immediately."

"The job of the police is not to be a promoter of tourism," he said. "Their job is to enforce the law in an equal manner."

More than 1,000 people have been arrested in the downtown area since June during crackdowns. Downtown crime has been reduced by about 40 percent since then, Dufrene said.

Alisha Martino, a Las Vegas Municipal Court marshal, said the crackdowns help unclog the court system because they're able to clear many warrants.

The municipal court announced last month that a holiday moratorium on warrants, held the past 15 years, would not be held this year.

Court officials said at the time that they feared residents were taking advantage of the system, waiting until the moratorium to take care of tickets.

Past crackdowns have been "very successful," Metro Police Officer Robert Williams said.

"Believe it or not, we are the tourist capital, and people from other states don't want to venture down Fremont Street," he said.

"But tours are starting to come down here now."