Friday, March 11, 2005 | 11:05 a.m.
William Finley estimates that in the five years he has lived on the streets of downtown Las Vegas, he has been arrested by Metro Police at least 350 times.
"They've all been petty crimes -- misuse of a bus bench, getting into the flight path of a pigeon, defacing a hamburger -- everything," he said Wednesday.
Last week, after another arrest, the 62-year-old longtime alcoholic was offered the chance to go into Metro's Habitual Offender Prevention and Education program.
The program, launched two years ago this month, allows certain offenders to be given a suspended jail sentence if they agree to spend at least 90 days in the Transitional Living Center, a halfway house, where they get counseling, employment assistance and treatment for drug and alcohol abuse.
Finley is fortunate to be getting into the HOPE program now, since Metro and other officials involved are focusing it only on "chronic inebriates" -- those who commit minor crimes because they abuse alcohol, not because they are criminals.
Also, Metro is partnering with Westcare, Clark County Social Service, Las Vegas Neighborhood Services and other agencies to provide more care and case management for chronic inebriates after they successfully complete the HOPE program.
"If we want to fix them forever we need case management and long-term assistance," said Sgt. Eric Fricker, who oversees a team of officers trained to work with the homeless.
Fricker said the program costs Metro nothing. He also said the program's new focus borrows a little from a San Diego program that has had success with chronic inebriates -- but noted that the California city has more agencies to help with such a program than Las Vegas does.
Still, Linda Lera-Randle El, director of Straight from the Streets, a nonprofit organization, said that the chronic inebriates in the program, many of whom are homeless, also suffer from mental illness and often drug addiction.
Her organization put together a presentation on the San Diego program last month for Metro and other agencies. That program treats mental illness and addiction.
She said a more comprehensive program put together with other services to treat those other problems would be more useful in the long run.
When Metro's program started two years ago, police came up with a list of 25 people who had been arrested 8,114 times for misdemeanor crimes.
Officers identified four categories of repeat offenders: chronic alcohol abusers, chronic drug offenders, mentally ill offenders and chronic petty thieves.
The program isn't equipped to help the mentally ill, and police haven't arrested any chronic petty thieves on their list since the program began, police said.
This leaves the chronic inebriates and chronic drug offenders.
As the program rolled along, police found that only the chronic inebriates cleaned up their lives through the program, police said.
"The chronic inebriates were arrested for being inebriates, for their lack of judgment, for not being able to control themselves," Officer David Fricker, community policing coordinator for Metro's Downtown Area Command and Sgt. Fricker's brother.
"The other folks are ex-felons with addictions. If you take away the narcotics, they're still going to be beating old ladies over the heads with sticks.
"We're going to take some people off the list who are never going to be helped and we're going to be able to target a larger group that has a greater success rate."
He pointed out, however, that they won't turn away drug offenders who want to be a part of HOPE.
Lisa Morris of the City of Las Vegas Neighborhood Services said her agency's Educational and Vocational Opportunities Leading to Valuable Experience program (EVOLVE), which helps former felons reacclimate to society, will also be expanded to include chronic inebriates.
Neighborhood services will be helping Metro with case management and care for HOPE program participants, she said.
Westcare indicated they would help screen participants, and David Fricker said he hopes other agencies will hear about the program and join in.
Since the program began, participants have had a 74 percent reduction in arrests, David Fricker said. Seven have not been arrested from March 2004 to date, he said.
Currently five people are in the HOPE program and are living at the halfway house.
Every week they appear before Municipal Judge Cedric Kerns for "HOPE Court" so he can see how they are progressing.
Finley, who has long brown hair, black-frame glasses and a tattoo on his hand, stood before the judge, wearing a black, long-sleeved West Coast Choppers T-shirt and leaning on a crutch.
"I think this is the first time in years that you've been sober for more than a week," Kerns said to Finley. "I'm at lunch and I see you drunk off your butt by the trash can."
Kerns was afraid Finley wouldn't make it through the first few days, but he said he looked good and encouraged him to stay clean.
Finley said he was skeptical about the HOPE program at first, but not anymore.
"I know these guys care," he said. "It's really changed my head around."
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