Monday, Aug. 14, 2006 | 7:26 a.m.
After dark, police say, lawlessness was the norm at the Emerald Breeze apartments. And that was before the gangs took over.
During the last two summers, police say as many as 60 members of three teen gangs - Squad Up, Piru Blood and HTO (Hustlers Takin' Over) - have gathered on any given night at the housing complex at 908 W. Monroe Ave. to socialize, deal drugs and, increasingly, to settle scores.
The problems intensify during the summer, police say, when teens are out of school. There were two shootings at the complex last year from May to early August. During the same stretch this year, the number rose to 11.
As this summer approached, police formulated new tactics: First, they decided to strictly enforce the city's curfew law by regularly raiding the Emerald Breeze and surrounding area to issue citations. The curfew law forbids children and teens under 18 from being outside and unsupervised after 10 p.m. on school nights, and midnight on weekends and during summer months.
But police - knowing that curfew citations rarely have been taken seriously by anyone in the system, from prosecutors to the offenders themselves - also realized they couldn't solve the problem alone, says Officer Robert Hubbard of the Bolden Area Command.
"We were wondering what we could do to stop this," says Hubbard, who serves on Metro's problem-solving unit. "We decided we needed to come at it from a different angle."
Along with prosecutors, defense lawyers, probation officers and Family Court Judge William Voy, they devised Curfew Court, a pilot program they hoped would help.
Before Curfew Court, violators who were not on probation or parole almost never went to court, officials say. Instead, the cases usually were dropped by a probation officer before they reached a prosecutor or judge.
Now, however, youths from 12 to 17 who break curfew and who commit trespass violations must appear in Curfew Court within one week of the citation. It is held Thursday afternoons at the Family Courts building on North Pecos Road.
They are obliged to show up with a parent, and must pay a $110 fine. If they can't pay, the youth has to show up every week for a status check until they do.
If the youngster skips his court date, the judge sends a summons letter to his parents. After a second no-show, an arrest warrant is put out.
Since police first decided to target curfew violators on May 11, Hubbard says, they have issued 126 citations at the Emerald Breeze and surrounding areas. That includes 43 citations issued since the Curfew Court program began on June 28.
Of those 43, Hubbard estimates that about 30 youths have so far shown up in court. In 18 cases, Hearing Master Stephen Compan has issued bench warrants for those who ignored the citations and summons letters.
Hubbard says nine bench warrants have been resolved, most often when the offender and a parent or guardian came to court on their own. Three teens were arrested off those warrants and released the same day to their parents. Nine warrants are still outstanding.
If the youth shows up in court and pays the fine, and was cited only for a curfew violation, he is not charged with a crime.
Curfew Court, which ends when school starts next month, is unique in that it targets offenders from a specific neighborhood.
And that has drawn criticism.
"There's a fundamental unfairness that they're targeting this low-income neighborhood," says Michael Yohay, a Clark County Deputy Public Defender who has observed some of the court's sessions. "It builds up disdain for the police among the kids being targeted because they know that if they were in Summerlin or Seven Hills, they wouldn't face the same thing."
Police and prosecutors respond that they're targeting the Emerald Breeze and other areas near the corner of West Martin Luther King Boulevard and North Lake Mead Boulevard precisely because crime there is rampant. For their own protection, teens there need to be encouraged to stay off city streets during late hours.
"We're using it to get their attention, to have them stay out of dangerous neighborhoods at night," says Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Neil O'Callaghan. "We're trying to educate these people without hurting them."
Some Emerald Breeze residents say it's the police who are stirring up trouble by constantly raiding the complex.
"It ain't never been like this until this summer," says Andre Smith, 26, outside the tan, two-story buildings that contain about 100 apartments. He says he's lived at the Emerald Breeze for 15 years. "The police come, and sometimes they use excessive force, too."
Smith and his friend, DeMarlo Clark, another Emerald Breeze resident, deny gangs are a serious problem at the complex.
Emerald Breeze owner Frank Hawkins, a former Las Vegas city councilman, could not be reached for comment.
Police say the program is focused to help kids not fully caught up in gang life - or who are simply innocent bystanders just hanging outside too late.
The urgent need for the program can be seen, officials say, by the teens who have shown up in Curfew Court. One wore a cast after being shot in the arm. Another, who also had been shot, had a leg brace.
None of the few teens who attended last Thursday appeared injured, although one did show the scars over a bullet wound in his arm to a reporter. In the first afternoon calendar, for those who have already had summons letters sent to their homes, five curfew violators came with an adult or two in tow.
In the second grouping for new citations, just two of eight teens on the docket appeared - including one girl who was already in custody on an attempted murder charge.
Six uniformed Metro officers sat silently behind Deputy D.A. O'Callaghan. Chief Deputy Public Defender Susan Roske also attended, as she has every week, as an observer.
One boy in the first group, Davione Lee, 13, conceded that he had committed a curfew violation. On May 20, Lee and some friends were caught by police leaving a basketball game near Doolittle Park at 10:30 p.m., after the park's closing time.
Police say they also found a small amount of marijuana on him. Lee - a compact boy with close-cropped hair and a direct gaze - claims that the pot wasn't his, that police only found the baggie on the ground near him.
Because Lee's urinalysis came back clean, and because he otherwise had no criminal record, prosecutors dropped the pot violation and let him go on the curfew citation, with a promise from his grandmother and legal guardian, Willean Brown, that she would pay the fine.
Compan, before he would adjudicate Lee's case, ordered the teen to remove a bright red undershirt. Red is a common gang color, the hearing master said.
"If you come in with colors next time I'm going to give you jail time," Compan told Lee after he had removed the shirt.
Following the court appearance, Brown, 56, and Lee denied the boy belonged to any gang. Lee said the red and black shirts he had been wearing matched the colors of his sneakers - which, in fact, they did.
Brown and her grandchildren recently moved from their home near the corner of West Carey Avenue and Revere Street because of crime nearby.
"I don't have a problem with a curfew law," Brown says. "They need to be in the house at a certain time."
It is unclear if Curfew Court is working. Crime has gone up in the Emerald Breeze area since last summer.
Shootings, knifings, assaults and robberies have more than doubled - from 16 in summer 2005 to 38 this summer.
Still, most of those involved with Curfew Court believe it is helping, at least to some degree. Hubbard says gang activity in the Emerald Breeze area is diminishing, for example, in part because of knowledge that curfew citations now can result in a fine, parental involvement or even jail time.
Just as importantly, say others, the program is helping to make sure parents are better aware of what their kids are up to.
"Basically, this forces parents to be better parents, and that's something," says O'Callaghan.
Hearing Master Compan says there's a strong possibility that Curfew Court will become a permanent Family Court fixture during future summers, depending on how the rest of this pilot project goes. He's also thinking about expanding the program by setting up a mentoring program.
"It's like Lebanon over there," Compan says of the targeted area. "If it saves one kid from getting shot, or from getting into the delinquency system, then it's worth it."
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