NLV Police criticized over handling of complaints

Tuesday, March 21, 2006 | 8:17 a.m.

Veronica Dunn puts in night shifts as a nurse and helped build the West Las Vegas house she lives in.

She has passed her work ethic onto her 15-year-old son, Chris, who rings up groceries three afternoons a week at a neighborhood market.

Dunn had hoped to also pass on a respect for authority, but things have gotten muddled on that score. On their way home from school one day, Chris and four of his friends wound up getting handcuffed, and the boy says, roughly treated, by North Las Vegas Police officers.

She followed with a complaint on behalf of her son to the police department, running into a stumbling block earlier this month when the police barred her attorney from accompanying the two in a follow-up interview. Her attorney, Allen Lichtenstein of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, says he "had never heard of such a thing."

Legal representation during the complaint process has acquired additional importance since the 2005 Legislature passed a law making it a crime to knowingly file a fraudulent complaint, he said.

With the new law, "anything said against a police officer can be used against the person making the complaint ..." so having an attorney becomes "a very serious process matter," Lichtenstein said.

North Las Vegas is the only one of the Las Vegas Valley's three police departments with a policy against allowing attorneys to attend investigative interviews.

Officer Tim Bedwell, a department spokesman, said "the purpose of the interview is to gather facts ... (and) the bottom line is this - we want the witness or complainant to talk to us without distraction."

An attorney who "wasn't at the scene adds nothing," Bedwell added.

Not only that, he pointed out, the new law would only be invoked in an "egregious" situation, and not in a case such as this, where a minor is involved.

But the ACLU argued against the law last year, noting a 2001 case involving then-Assemblywoman Kathy Von Tobel, who reported that she and her boyfriend saw six Metro officers beat a man. Police investigated and said the complaint was unfounded and an officer at the scene wanted his department to file misdemeanor charges if she didn't retract her comments.

Ironically, Von Tobel had voted in favor of the original law in 1999.

That law was declared unconstitutional in 2002 by a federal judge. The Legislature reworked the law last year at the behest of police unions. Law enforcement lobbyists, who said that even a complaint against a police officer that is found to be false can hurt his career, wanted to have something they could use to stop such complaints.

Lichtenstein noted another sticking point - the officer who took the complaint from Dunn turned out to be one of the officers who was on the scene, a situation he said was inappropriate.

The ACLU attorney said the North Las Vegas Police have displayed "a cavalier approach to people coming in and making complaints," an attitude he says makes an already-intimidating process more so and less competent.

But Bedwell said there are "common sense" explanations for both points, and that his agency welcomes dozens of complaints each year.

First, he said, "it's the supervisor who's on duty (who takes complaints) and because we're a small police department, it may be someone who was at the scene."

In any case, the complainant can always ask to speak to another officer, he added.

But Lichtenstein said that "anyone who was part of or witness to an event shouldn't be in any way a part of the investigative process - they should recuse themselves."

The subject of Dunn's complaint occurred Feb. 8. Chris was walking home from school along West Brooks Avenue with some friends when they saw a car that had flipped over in a drag race on a dirt lot. They ran over to the car and saw it was empty. A cell phone lay beside it. The boys tussled over the phone, Dunn said. Then they ran.

Just then, the police pulled up. They exchanged words with the boys, with one officer, according to Dunn, saying "Why don't you hit me." Chris was put in handcuffs for about 30 minutes. The run-in ended just as suddenly as it began when an officer told the boys to leave.

Six weeks later, that half an hour is still with Chris, as he and his mother work through their complaint, which they filed Feb. 11.

In early March, Dunn got a call asking her to come in with her son for a follow-up interview. She said she wanted to bring her attorney. The officer told her that was against policy. She did anyway. The officer repeated the policy and Dunn decided not to go through with the interview.

Bedwell said the investigation is a "civil proceeding," and there is no need to have an attorney present.

Not only that, he said the complainant has "no constitutional privilege" to have an attorney and the department's policy "doesn't do any disservice to anyone's civil rights."

Lichtenstein noted, though, that since the new law was passed, "to say that the complainant is not accused of anything is not completely true."

David Kallas, executive director of the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, testified to the Legislature that 89 percent of the complaints to Metro were found "without merit," a fact underscoring the need for the law.

In testimony, Kallas said while some number of those might be valid but police could neither prove or disprove the claim, he figured that investigators spent 50 percent to 60 percent of their time looking into "baseless allegations."

That suggests that police departments will be looking to invoke the law whenever they can, Lichtenstein said.

Both Metro and Henderson Police have no problem with allowing attorneys in interviews. Sgt. Mike Ault of Metro's Internal Affairs Division said, "We would assess whether it would disrupt the proceeding ... (but) I can't remember declining permission."

For now, Dunn's case is on hold, Bedwell said, but not closed.

As the nurse prepared for another night shift recently, she summed up her experience with the police.

"It bothers me that this is happening to my son," she said.

"It has changed his view of police, and now they're not an authority figure, but somebody coming after him."