Point made. The officer is giving me the business about my December 1 Weekly story ("Campus Safety"), which reported five shootings at high school football games last season. There were easily twice as many, the officer says, but the perpetrators had bailed by the time cops got there.
"They [shootings] happen more than you hear about."
I'm thinking about this last Friday as Lt. David Jacks, of the North Las Vegas Police Department's Special Operations unit, pulls a thick, Kelly green, Army-style shirt over his black bulletproof vest, checks his weapons and readies for our ride-along. We're in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart on Craig Road near Martin Luther King, half a football field away from a Del Taco and other fast-food restaurants whose parking lots are routinely overrun by young people looking for something to get into after Friday night games at nearby Cheyenne, Mojave and Canyon Springs high schools. My escort is North Las Vegas police spokesman Tim Bedwell and my assignment is to chronicle a two-week-old initiative into a five-year-old problem: quelling crime at schools after football games.
"The last couple of years, we've had real big problems with shootings after games and with large after-parties and gatherings in the Craig Road corridor. These crowds have caused so much trouble and have drained police resources," says Jacks, who helped create a force to patrol the home games of North Las Vegas high schools. "Now we're devoting time to what happens after the games—the fights, parties, shootings, drug use, the gangs that show up uninvited [at these parties] and cause trouble."
The ride-along starts at Legacy High School where, on September 9, a 16-year-old boy was arrested for shooting in the parking lot during the game. To get to the school, on Simmons Street and Centennial Parkway, you zig-zag by brand-spanking new subdivisions in the almost-brand-spanking new, master-planned Aliante community. If you get lost, which is easy considering some streets are too new to be Mapquested, you'll hit dead-ends and dirt roads and will have to follow the stadium lights which, once you get there, will seem like the only lights for miles around. There's an edge-of-the-world feel to the school; like it's teetering and, any second now, could fall off the side of the earth. This is the last place you'd expect a thug to pop off a pistol.
After the security pat-down, Bedwell and I and a sparse crowd of 150 (which may be stretching it) watch Legacy, a first-year school without seniors, get shellacked by bigger boys from Needles, California. Nothing happening here, so we head to Cheyenne, where hundreds upon hundreds are watching (and not watching) as the home team whips Arbor View. If there's going to be any trouble, Bedwell says, it'll probably be at Cheyenne, a safe bet considering several of the last year's shootings involved Cheyenne: gunfire at an October 7 contest between Shadow Ridge and Cheyenne and a drive-by during a November 10 game between Cimarron-Memorial and Cheyenne.
"That's new," Bedwell says as we pass by the school police's shiny, trailer-like substation set up outside the entrance to Cheyenne's stadium. The crowd passes through a metal detector, but we go through a side gate. The hundreds upon hundreds in the stands are matched by the hundreds milling about near the concessions and the dozens upon dozens outside the stadium, watching through gates, chilling in the parking lot or massed up by the first entrance off of Alexander Road.
Nothing too eventful, so we head to Canyon Springs to double check. No game there. So we circle back to Cheyenne. Bedwell says the first two weeks of patrols have gone fairly well. Games were packed last week and the only incident occurred at Legacy. "Now we have dedicated units and the time and personnel to handle problems," Bedwell says. "We can roll through with patrol cars and the kids disperse. We can prevent things from happening whereas before, if it was already happening, it was too late."
The call comes in over the radio as we park across from Cheyenne: 434. Shots fired at Legacy—that's two consecutive weeks. The call has a domino effect. Bedwell's radio begins crackling with activity. Reports of 30 cars in the parking lot at the nearby Silver Mesa community center. Of a maroon Cadillac in the Cheyenne parking lot; the driver has a gun. Of two large groups fighting at Tropical Parkway and Pecos, not from Legacy. Over the radio, cops are organizing extra personnel and trying to figure out priority calls. Bedwell says the 150 cops North Las Vegas police will get over the next three years via the quarter-cent sales tax will help the nation's second-fastest growing large city (194,500 residents), and are a godsend but not a panacea. The city has a 1.35 to 1,000 officer-to-resident ratio; the national average is 2.5 per 1,000. "As a city grows, so does crime. We'd like to get to 1.65 or 1.7," he says. "We've had 21 traffic fatalities so far this year. The most we've ever had was 18, so we're on pace for 28. These are very personnel-intensive so that takes away resources." The police eventually hit all the calls—including one for domestic violence in progress. They clear out cars at Silver Mesa. When police get to Tropical and Pecos, everyone's gone.
Bedwell and I are drawn to flashing lights in the middle of Cheyenne's parking lot. When we get there, he chats with the school district police. Gun found. Three young men are cuffed and seated on the side of a gold Pontiac. More flashing lights to the left. Cops have the maroon Cadillac and are questioning the 19-year-old driver, who says the car is his aunt's, claims he found the gun and that he's not a gang member in spite of the car's telling color and interior—everything is red. Similar story around down the street: Cops have detained some young people. There was no gun found.
We cruise the blocks surrounding Cheyenne, Bedwell keeping his eye out for the groups of teenagers walking home and commenting on successfully recovering two guns; he says it's likely that someone tipped school police that the guys were strapped. Getting weapons off the street is a victory, he says. "If you save one life tonight and continue saving lives, they add up," he says.
One last swoop around Cheyenne. As we leave, school district police Lt. Ken Young rolls up and tells Bedwell his force has retrieved another gun, this one at Cimarron. Back at Wal-Mart, the teenage crowds are massing. So, too, are the cops.
The cat-and-mouse game continues.