The police are the first to say it: The Valley needs more cops. For, as Clark County continues to grow at unmanageable rates, so too does crime, both petty and major. It’s only natural.
Hence, tales of frustration with the police’s response to crime—either too slow or not effective enough—have become rampant among Las Vegas Valley residents. While the crime rate per 1,000 residents rose 6.8 percent in Las Vegas from 2000 to 2006, police officers per 1,000 residents rose by only 0.04 percent in that same time frame.
So what’s a fellow to do? As it turns out, both the old law of the land and new technology allow citizens to empower themselves. Here’s a look:
Point, click, report a crime
By Damon Hodge
The Internet’s made so many things easier—shopping, traveling, friending, social networking, booty calls. And it’s already a potent law enforcement tool: cops have tracked fugitives via MySpace and YouTube and snagged pedophiles, à la Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator, using names like bigdaddy14. (Now if they only could nab senders of those damn Nigerian oil scam e-mails.)
So using it as a crime-reporting tool was a logical next step, one followed by more than a dozen police departments across the nation. Earlier this month, North Las Vegas police launched Epolice, allowing citizens to file police reports and submit tips from the safe confines of a keyboard.
What’s to stop someone from abusing the system with trivial complaints? Or people turning into type-point-click activists, filing countless reports and siphoning cops from emergency calls? Reportable crimes include burglary, embezzlement, property destruction, larceny and theft.
NLVPD spokesman Mark Hoyt doesn’t fret: “We’re not going to get overloaded, because civilian police service representatives take the reports [assigning them case numbers and funneling them to the appropriate bureau], and community service officers go to the scene of a crime and take information. They can do everything but take fingerprints and get a bad guy. This frees up officers.”
As Nye County Sheriff Toney De Meo tells it (the department implemented the service three years ago), online reporting contributed to a 21 percent drop in crime in 2005-06, this despite a 32 percent population increase and a 40 percent spike in calls for service. “We’re able to get officers to sites quicker.” A typical mailbox-bashing consumes five hours—from the deputy’s arrival to the filing of the report. The online system reduces the time to minutes. “We provide free copies of the report. And you can e-mail the link to your insurance company to help close your claim faster.”
Sacramento Police Department spokesman Konrad Von Schoech says users appreciate the ability to complete informational reports (they don’t involve crimes) about, say, the strange habits of a neighbor or the license plate on a suspicious car.
“These reports aren’t filed, but we look at them.”
Hoyt says Internet tips have sparked investigations and arrests. “A lot of people don’t want to be seen talking to police in a high-crime area.
“There’s no such thing as a frivolous crime. It can be a piece of paper that was stolen. That paper meant something to somebody. We’re never going to deny a report [they must be completed and approved within 30 days], but that doesn’t mean we’ll take action on everything we get.”
www.cityofnorthlasvegas.com/Departments/Police/ePRIndex.htm
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Arrest your neighbor
By Joshua Longobardy
Citizen’s arrests happen all the time. “Totally legal—totally fine,” says Metro spokesman Ramon Denby. The most common situations involve petty larcenists and trespassers, typically detained by casino security or private business owners. In those cases, says Denby, the police merely provide the citation forms and the transportation to the Clark County detention center.
The less common type of citizen’s arrest, however, is the dramatic kind. That is, when a private person stops and detains someone he witnesses committing a felony. “We don’t see that very often,” says Denby. But make no mistake about it: That type of vigilantism is totally legal, too.
According to state law, not only does a citizen possess the authority to arrest another person reasonably believed to have committed a felony, but Nevada Revised Statute 171.178 also allows the arresting citizen to “break open a door or window of a house structure or other place of concealment” to catch the suspect. After, of course, having demanded admittance and explained the purpose for entering.
Moreover, NRS permits “any person making an arrest [to] take from the person arrested all dangerous and offensive weapons which he may have about his person.” Such as Anthem resident William Edwards did in November of 2005, when he patted down mass tree-murderer Douglas Hoffman and confiscated Hoffman’s wood saw. Hoffman received 18 months to five years in prison earlier this month.
But that doesn’t mean the police advise it. Keith Paul, of the Henderson police department, says police work ought to be left to the cops. “That,” says Paul, “is what we’re trained to do—arrest people.”
Because arresting people can be a tricky affair. There is a very thin line between lawful and unlawful detainment, says Denby; and, as demonstrated by the strange case of the Las Vegas man arrested and prosecuted for shooting his roommate in the leg while attempting a citizen’s arrest in January 2006, the difference between a vigilante and a criminal is tenuous in the eyes of the law.
“Just be a good witness,” says Paul. “There’s a lot of potential for harm to occur, and you don’t want to put yourself in that situation.”