Thursday, April 03, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Familiar faces

Metro focuses on habitual offenders to clean up Fremont Street

By Larry Wills

East Fremont Street at Las Vegas Boulevard may be the best place in town to get busted.

And the manager of Don YeYo Cigars, who calls himself Scud, likes it that way. Scud's store is just a few yards east of Neonopolis, the glitzy new shopping complex for tourists. But on Scud's side of the street, there have been no civic improvements. The area is poorly lighted, making it a haven for prostitutes, drug dealers and muggers. Some of them spilled over into Scud's business.

"On any seven days, three of those days you were in a physical fight," he says. Scud is a stout, well-tattooed man who doesn't look like he lost many of those fights.

Last year the merchants and Metro Police had enough. Police patrols were beefed up and officers began looking at the records of those arrested.

"We took 25 names and did full background checks," Metro Sgt. Eric Fricker recalls. "They had been arrested 8,000 times over 17 years."

Municipal Court judges typically see five to 10 offenders a week with more than 100 previous arrests. On Fremont Street alone, three to five individuals a day end up in court.

Last month, Metro put together a program called HOPE--Habitual Officer Prevention and Education--to get these people off the street. Fricker says the idea is to encourage offenders to get help or face more jail time.

That program supplements a daunting police presence over the past year. On one recent Friday afternoon, two Metro vehicles were parked at the 7-Eleven at Fremont and Las Vegas Boulevard, giving the place the look of a police substation. One suspect was carted away in a van.

"It's not the arrest capital, but it's pretty heavy out there," Fricker says. "From June 22 to Dec. 31 last year, we made 1,300 arrests."

The sergeant says offenders were classified into those abusing and selling drugs, chronic inebriates and those committing crimes inside casinos.

"If officers make an arrest, they take the biggest, baddest guy and hit him first." That sends a clear message to the others that they're next, he says.

"They were not getting enough jail time," he says.

Now, city prosecutors will flag a suspect as a HOPE offender and the judges will be asked to order more jail time if the individual doesn't seek help. "We're forcing someone who can't fix themselves to get fixed," Fricker says.

The offenders are referred to programs such as Transitional Living Communities and Women in Need, which are run by ex-addicts.

Fricker thinks HOPE will effectively deal with the most dangerous individuals. "We've identified those groups responsible for the majority of crimes on Fremont. These are gateway crimes, the same guy dealing dope is the same guy knocking over the little old guy and the same guy who is falling down drunk."

Chief Municipal Judge Toy Gregory says he and other municipal judges are receptive to the HOPE program. "Anything we have to do to reduce recidivism, that's our goal," he says, noting that he sees many of the same faces in court in a parade of citation and arrest warrants.

Gregory says similar programs for DUIs, larceny, battery and prostitution have been successful over the years, giving offenders alternatives to jail time if they clean up their acts. In the prostitution program alone, recidivism has dropped to 1 percent.

"We need to educate them to stop their illegal behavior," he says. "We're hoping the HOPE program will accomplish that."

Fricker says the individuals are targeted because of their behavior, while the homeless are not taken in if they don't commit crimes. Actually, very few of the offenders arrested on Fremont Street are homeless, Fricker contends.

If the homeless are found in the area and not committing crimes, they are not arrested, he says. The sergeant also works with Metro's HELP team that gets assistance for the homeless.

"We have intervention teams to get them some help," he says. "If I take a dope dealer, someone will want to take his place, but nobody wants to be homeless."

The police sweep seems to be working. Figures for the first two months of the year show officers may be running low on people to arrest.

From January to the beginning of March, there are 181 misdemeanor and 23 felony arrests, making Fremont a safer place.

"We're taking it away from dope dealers, gang members and prostitutes. Now you see a huge increase in the elderly. The mentally ill are now comfortable going to downtown. The victim is the one who has to live there."

Fricker insists the crackdown was not the result of pressure from City Hall, but that the crime rate was the sole impetus. "My job is not to make Fremont Street pretty. My job is to make Fremont Street crime free."

Scud agrees Fremont is a better place these days. "The police are doing the best they can," he says. "They do a lot of roundups. It's a lot better than it used to be."

Says Fricker: "What's changed is that citizens are coming to us, saying thank you, things are better."