Youth program may return

By Ed Koch

Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2006 | 11:45 a.m.

Six years after a juvenile justice work program was ended by a tragedy in which six teens picking up roadside trash were killed by a motorist, Clark County officials are considering reinstating the program.

Although discussions are in the early stages, juvenile officials are looking at using young offenders to clean up graffiti at area parks - nowhere near highways, to avoid a repeat of the March 19, 2000, incident when six teens were killed as they cleaned up a median on Interstate 15 north of town.

The idea on one possible way to reinstate the juvenile justice work program came from Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's suggestion last December that the thumbs of convicted graffitists should be cut off. The mayor made that controversial remark - which drew national headlines - after one teen defaced a $35,000 concrete tortoise statue at the Spaghetti Bowl.

"The statement by the mayor about the tortoise tagging and the high-level private citizen/business leaders meeting as a result of that statement created a heightened sensitivity about the graffiti issue," said Fritz Reese, assistant director of Clark County's Juvenile Justice Services Department.

In addition, Cheryln Townsend, who came to Las Vegas in January to run the 400-employee department that oversees the detention and probation of juvenile delinquents, previously operated a graffiti abatement program through Phoenix's juvenile system and believes one like it would work in the Las Vegas Valley.

However, Reese cautioned Monday that the department is in the early stages of discussions with Clark County Parks and Recreation officials, stressing that no such work program has been approved - or even established.

If, however, the plan is approved, it would mark the return of a juvenile justice work program that operated for 11 years, teaching young offenders responsibility by performing community service and permitting them to earn money to pay restitution to their victims.

That program ended abruptly in March 2000 when then-20-year-old motorist Jessica Williams fell asleep at the wheel, drifted onto the median and struck the six teens, who were picking up trash as punishment for their petty offenses.

Killed that day were Scott Garner Jr., 14; Anthony Smith, 14; Malena Stoltzfus, 15; Rebeccah Glicken, 15; Jennifer Booth, 16; and Alberto Puig, 16. Williams was sentenced to six prison terms of three to eight years each and will be eligible for parole in April 2007.

The crash also led to a lawsuit that resulted in Clark County paying the teens' families $3.25 million. Republic Services of Southern Nevada, which contracted with the county to pick up the trash, also paid an undisclosed sum.

Williams' auto insurance carrier, Farmers Insurance, split $110,000 among the six families - $80,000 more than the policy's limit.

Teen offenders had been cleaning local road and highway medians for five years without major incident at the time of the Williams crash, county officials said.

"One concern has been liability even in a constrained area," Reese said.

Another concern about starting up a juvenile-sponsored graffiti abatement work program, he said, is possible duplication - in particular, competition with a gang intervention graffiti abatement program already run by Clark County.

That program, which started last April, is overseen by Clark County Juvenile Probation Officer Kevin Niday, who is assigned to the Parks and Recreation Department. The offenders in that program, many of them convicted taggers, work alongside members of the Clark County Graffiti Abatement Team.

"Their POs (probation officers) send them to us and we give them rollers on long sticks to clean up the walls," Niday said of his program. The program provides only the court-ordered community service component of sentences, but not money to pay restitution to victims.

"We've had about 150 kids in the program, and we make sure we stay way off roads, sticking to areas with vacant lots."

Niday said a juvenile department-sponsored work program that would pay the youths' restitution money would not necessarily harm his program, in part because there are so many walls to clean in Southern Nevada.

"There are skate clubs and church groups and other volunteers out there doing what we do," he said. His program also provides one of three community service projects required for teen offenders to be released from the Nevada Youth Training Center, the state's boys' reformatory, in Elko.

"It takes a real community effort to clean this up."

Ed Koch can be reached at 259-4090 or at [email protected].