Editorial: Stay off the sidewalks?

Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007 | 6:53 a.m.

The Las Vegas City Council has agreed to turn over the sidewalks in the city's planned Union Park development downtown to private ownership - a thinly veiled attack on the homeless and the First Amendment.

Nonetheless, the move is being billed as a way to free Metro Police from having to patrol the area. Private owners will be charged with policing the area and keeping the streets clean.

As reported by Joe Schoenmann in Wednesday's Las Vegas Sun, Mayor Oscar Goodman proclaimed, "This is the way people in that location will be able to regulate the cleanliness, health and safety of their neighborhood."

But given the city's long-running and costly battle to rid public streets of "undesirables" - such as activists, people passing out handbills and the homeless - this is nothing more than a way to continue the fight to usurp people's constitutional rights.

Goodman grew irritated when asked if Union Park security guards would be able to run off the homeless.

"That could very well be a byproduct of it - and if you ask me if I want the homeless over there, I'll look you right in the face and say absolutely not," he said.

That is sadly not surprising consider ing the shameful war against the homeless the city has waged. Under Goodman's leadership, basic constitutional rights have become negotiable if they run contrary to the city's wishes. The City Council has tried to implement unconstitutional ordinances to bar the homeless from parks and has continued to back bans on activism, a blatant violation of the First Amendment, in the Fremont Street Experience.

The Union Park sidewalk plan is just another disgraceful example of the city's disregard of constitutional rights and should be scuttled.

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