Knappster: Consolidating police agencies won't cure cop shortage

By George Knapp

So, the next time you get carjacked, are you going to frantically dial 911 and ask the operator to send over the park police? If your wife and kids get terrorized during a home invasion, would it make you feel more secure to know that the school cops were on the case? If there's a homicide in your neighborhood, would you want city marshals to take the lead in the investigation?

I write this with all due respect to the marshals, park police and school officers. I know a lot of these guys and think they do a fine job generally. But to suggest that they are on a par with Metro officers is incredibly misleading. Worse than that, it amounts to political gamesmanship that could have direct consequences for public safety.

Astute readers know that a non-binding ballot measure is going to ask voters if they would be willing to pay a slightly higher sales tax in order to hire hundreds of new police officers. Sheriff Bill Young says the officer-to-public ratio in Las Vegas (1.69 per 1,000 residents) is one of the lowest in the country. It means that our town has far fewer officers than it needs to combat rising crime rates.

Disingenuous tax opponents say the above numbers don't take into account all of the school cops, park police and city marshals, and that if all of these other officers were roped into the total or were consolidated under the Metro umbrella, it might obviate the need for a sales tax increase.

The suggestion that we might wave a magic wand and, presto, 124 school cops, 55 marshals and 18 park officers are miraculously transformed into Metro detectives is--how shall I put this--stupid. It seems as if someone wants to cloud the issue with false impressions as a way to torpedo the ballot issue. Why?

It is true that many of these other officers attend the same police academy as Metro cops. They get the same initial training, that's true. But that's where the similarities end. For a Metro officer, the police academy is only step one in the training regimen. The real training comes from doing the work, investigating cases and tracking down the bad guys. On occasion, school cops and park police do come into contact with gangs, drug dealers and troublemakers. But they don't investigate any of these matters. In fact, they are prohibited by law from doing so. For that reason alone, they lack the basic knowledge of what it means to be a full-fledged, everyday Metro cop.

Now, could they be trained to be Metro officers? Of course they could. But this suggestion is also grossly misleading. We have officers in our schools and parks and city buildings for a good reason--they are needed there. We need officers patrolling the hallways of our schools to keep a handle on drugs, gangs and violence. If we take those officers out of our schools to have them pursue felony criminals, if we turn them into Metro cops and ask them to investigate homicides and organized crime, then who the hell is going to be on campus to make sure that little Billy doesn't have a machine gun in his locker? The same is true for park police and city marshals. We have them because we need them to do a job. Declaring them to be Metro cops doesn't solve anything at all. It doesn't add a single officer to the overall fight against crime, and it would potentially make our schools and parks less safe than they are now. Stupid.

As Sheriff Young told the R-J, the only antidote for a rising crime rate is police officers patrolling our neighborhoods. "That's what we are lacking," Young said. "To count them in as part of our police department is...apples and oranges."

Those who propose consolidation of these various agencies into Metro as a solution to our low ratio of cops conveniently overlook some legitimate numbers concerning our dire situation. The already low cop-to-public ratio here doesn't even include tourists. Las Vegas attracts, what, 35 million visitors a year?

That means at any given moment there are hundreds of thousands of extra bodies in town that are not counted against officer ratio. Stan Olsen, the executive director of intergovernmental services for Metro, estimates that 17 to 19 percent of all local crime involves tourists, either as victims or suspects. If these numbers were factored into the overall picture, Metro's officer ratio might drop as low as 1.1 per 1,000 residents, which is absolutely shameful. What's more, it's dangerous for those of us who live here.

The current ratio of 1.69 per 1,000 is determined by the FBI. It's the FBI that figures out how many cops a given community has. In no other jurisdiction does the FBI add in school cops and park police into the equation. The FBI also does not factor in visitor volume. The self-appointed experts who now suggest we already have enough cops should perhaps take their argument to the feds and see how far they get.

If you wonder why there isn't more traffic enforcement or why Metro can't devote a lot of time to auto thefts or stolen identity cases, it's because the department is already stretched by our relentless population growth. It's only going to get worse as we continue to grow.

There really is no argument. We need more cops. The ballot initiative would be non-binding, but could eventually lead to a modest, quarter-cent increase in the sales tax, which would cost the average resident about $12.50 a year. (Much of the revenue raised through the sales tax boost would be paid by visitors.) This seems a small price for the safety of our loved ones and a little peace of mind.

If politicians want to score brownie points by arguing for consolidation, that's fine. If consolidation makes sense for other reasons, then take a look at it. But voters should not be fooled or confused by anyone peddling a deceptive pile of crap.