Columnist Jeff German: More cops will be tough sell

Wednesday, March 26, 2003 | 11:28 a.m.

We shouldn't be surprised to hear that Sheriff Bill Young has scaled back his budget request for more officers.

When Young first presented his budget for the 2003-04 fiscal year a month ago, he proposed a 25 percent funding increase that would put 389 new cops on the street.

It was an unrealistic request given the uncertain economic conditions in Southern Nevada, and Young knew it.

The sheriff acknowledged that he was setting the stage for a ballot initiative next year to raise property taxes to hire more officers. Privately, he was hoping to get money from the Las Vegas City Council and Clark County Commission for 175 of the 389 positions.

But that was before war broke out in Iraq, University Medical Center became a larger financial burden and a legislative proposal surfaced to shift millions of dollars in local tax revenues to the state.

This week, following meetings with stern-faced city and county leaders, Young was persuaded to reduce his $400 million budget request to $364 million. That left him with room to hire only 117 new officers, far below his bottom line a month ago, but still 47 officers more than what the police department was authorized to hire last year.

If Young can get all 117 officers when the City Council and County Commission vote on his budget in June, he probably will feel fortunate.

"This is a weird budget year," Young said Tuesday. "The Carson City fiasco has left all of us in local government in the dark about our future."

Still, Young said he's going to be working with local officials in the next couple of months to find room in his budget for more cops.

"Everybody's on the same page," he said. "We're looking for ways to save money."

Young has maintained that he needs 389 new officers to raise the department's ratio of 1.7 officers per 1,000 citizens to 1.97. The national ratio, according to Young, is 2.7, and some cities, such as the tourist community of Orlando, Fla., have 3.54 officers per 1,000 residents.

But comparing Las Vegas to other cities may be misleading because the statisticians don't take into consideration about 7,000 private security officers who help keep the peace on the Strip and downtown.

If those officers are included in the Las Vegas ratio, the city isn't behind the national average at all.

As for the ballot question, Young is starting to see that it may be harder than he thought to persuade the voters to give him money for the rest of the 389 cops he wants.

The war in Iraq is creating more uncertainty about our local economy.

President Bush this week told Americans he expected the conflict would last longer than expected, which means a greater chance for a decline in tourism and layoffs on the Strip.

If layoffs occur, Las Vegans will be more concerned about putting food on the table than more cops on the street.

But the sheriff isn't letting the war get him down.

"In a general sense, public safety is at the top of everyone's list of priorities," he said. "I have a lot of faith when it comes to funding law enforcement."

He's going to need it.