Arrests increase following sweep of homeless camp

Friday, March 4, 2005 | 9:31 a.m.

An analysis of Metro Police arrest records and conversations with Municipal Court judges show that arrests for charges such as trespassing, jaywalking and pedestrians failing to obey traffic signals skyrocketed following a recent cleanup of a homeless camp.

A longtime homeless advocate said the numbers show that the homeless, after they are moved along, wind up scattered into more public areas, which often causes trouble for more members of the community, who then call police.

"It's like hitting a pinata," said Linda Lera-Randle El, director of Straight from the Streets, a nonprofit organization that works with the homeless.

"The sweeps force them from where they're stationary and then they get in other people's hair, on other people's property."

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said the data and statements "suggest that police went out of their way to cite and arrest homeless people as part of the sweep."

But Sgt. Eric Fricker of Metro Police said that Metro "is adamant" in its stance that "homelessness is not a crime," and would not comment on the arrest records or comments made by the judges.

He also said that Metro had been targeting crime in the downtown area under an initiative in place during the last year that has produced "significant results."

Fricker directs a team of officers whose job is to work with the homeless.

The cleanup of the camp -- which included up to 100 homeless people -- took place Feb. 16 on Owens Avenue across the street from the Salvation Army and involved North Las Vegas Police and other agencies from that city.

But the south side of Owens is in Las Vegas and the area in general, known as the "homeless corridor," has been more overrun than usual by homeless men and women wandering from one place to another in recent months, after two camps were broken up and a third was threatened with the same.

The day after the cleanup, 100 of 290 charges leveled or found under bench warrants -- or 34 percent -- were so-called "nuisance crimes" such as pedestrians not obeying traffic signals, trespassing and jaywalking.

On three days surrounding the cleanup, and the day of the cleanup, such charges were never more than 17 percent of the total.

Las Vegas Municipal Court Alternate Judge Dayvid Figler said he saw a "noticeably higher" number of cases on the weekend after the cleanup.

"Clearly there was a lot of law enforcement going on in the last week," he said.

Judge Betsy Kolkoski, who worked the Monday after Figler, said she had "never seen a stack (of cases)" as big.

"There were double the normal number of cases ... most of them charges like trespassing, misuse of a public bus bench and immodest behavior."

She said the homeless people who who have been causing "legitimate concerns" for business owners downtown -- many of whom then complain to police -- also had underlying problems such as mental illness.

"The court system is ill-equipped to handle these social problems."

Lera-Randle El said that being displaced by sweeps "doesn't give them (the homeless) the right to violate laws like trespassing."

"But it also doesn't give them an alternative."