Down and Out in Las Vegas

By Christian Probasco, 12-29-06

Lost your job? Living on the streets? Don’t come to Vegas. Lately, according to an article by Lynette Curtis in Las Vegas’ Review-Journal, the police have been seizing the shopping carts homeless people use to transport their clothing, blankets and medication. Metropolitan Police Sergeant Damian Walburn said the individuals involved have been allowed to retain their possessions, but they say otherwise. Said 64-year-old Dane Jensen of his involvement with the police, “…Metro came up. They said, ‘these are all stolen. You can’t remove anything from them. If you do, you’ll be prosecuted.”

Some of the indigent near Jaycee Park, where the carts were seized, are refugees from Huntridge Circle Park. Visitors there were forbidden by law from feeding anyone “who a reasonable ordinary person” might suspect was eligible for public assistance. That ordinance was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge, however, and subsequently, the park, which had recently undergone a 1.5 million dollar renovation, was completely closed, ostensibly because a homeless man was killed there. Other locales within Vegas city limits where killings have occurred not been closed to the public.

Associated Press writer Kathleen Hennessey writes that Las Vegas Mayor and former mob attorney Oscar Goodman calls advocates who have been feeding the homeless in the parks, “enablers crying like bleating sheep,” adding, “I’m trying to get these people to a shelter; that’s where the services take place, not in a park. I won’t coddle them.”

Clark County homeless services coordinator Shannon West holds a similar view. In a City Life article by Matt O’Brien, she was quoted as saying, “I guess folks who are homeless are not making the greatest choices in their lives, because they are either in the throes of addiction or the throes of mental illness. Perhaps that’s part of what’s making them stay on the street.”

Again, the homeless tell another story. According to O’Brien, they compare checking themselves into the shelter to going to prison. You can’t smoke, they say, and you can eat only at 7 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. and there’s a curfew. Says Jon Benson, a resident of the cardboard “condos” near the shelter, “That’s why I choose to stay out here: the freedom of being able to eat and move around if I want to…Their theory is that we’re all just crazy or alcoholics or druggies, but most people out here don’t even drink and could probably pass a drug test.”

Las Vegas continues to pioneer unique approaches to the homeless problem. City marshals jailed three homeless men in December for violating an ordinance prohibiting sleeping within 500 feet of a deposit of feces or urine. Trouble was, the City Council repealed the illegal ordinance in September. Nevada Highway Patrol trooper Angie Chavera has also come up with a novel solution: shooting the homeless. After she confronted Donald O’Day, a 5 foot 5 inch, 115 pound indigent man who suffers from mental illness, in a vacant lot, he started chucking rocks at her. Chavera responded by shooting him in the face. Chavera’s account, that O’Day was about eight feet away from her and advancing, rock in hand, at the time of the shooting, was contradicted by that of Nevada Deputy Attorney General Thom Gover, who happened to be in the vicinity and witnessed the incident and said O’Day, who has since recovered, was 20 to 25 feet away and standing still when Chavera fired.

Currently, according to Review-Journal reporter David McGrath Schwartz, Las Vegas officials are mulling over the possibility of transforming Huntridge Circle Park into a veteran’s memorial. Political activist Peter Christoff says gating the park would discourage the homeless from hanging out there because “99.9 percent (of the homeless) don’t like to be in a closed area with a fence.” No word yet on whether homeless veterans, who make up about a quarter of the homeless population, have been consulted about the idea.

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