Metro Warns Tourists of Thieves on the Las Vegas Strip

Video Link
 

 8 NEWS NOW (LAS VEGAS, NV)-- Metro Police are cautioning visitors to the Las Vegas Strip of increased crime in the tourist corridor.

Police Capt. Todd Fasulo said officers have noted an increase in robberies and burglaries on the Strip within the last month.

Tourists are commonly seen walking, talking, texting and snapping photos on the Strip.

The problem, Fasulo said, is that thieves are watching. He said thieves are stealing iPhones, iPad, wallets or whatever else they can get -- snatching them right out of people's hands.

"The robberies are up a little bit, the burglaries are up a little bit," Fasulo said. "Burglaries are up about 16 percent. It's still lower than what it was last year, and even our robberies, even though those are up a little bit, those are still down (over) last year as well."

Thieves are targeting vulnerable tourists such as Jason Moss.

"We were just walking, trying to have a good time out here and they just grabbed it out my hand and ran off," said Moss, whose iPhone was stolen.

Moss said he tried to chase down the thief, but he got away.

"I'm going to guard my stuff from now on," he said. "I mean, you've got to have a back-up plan."

Last week, police officers busted a large group of street thieves targeting tourists on the Strip.

Metro officers have also seized 26 firearms from people on the Strip since January. In Nevada, people who have not been convicted of a felony are allowed to openly carry a firearm or obtain a permit to carry one concealed. However, according to Metro, the firearms seized were taken from people who were either drunk, using the firearm to commit a crime or not legally permitted to carry one.

"That is 26 people that had a weapon that could have been used in a violent act and it didn't," Fasulo said.

So far, no major violent incidents have been committed on the Strip this year -- a trend Fasulo said the police department hopes will continue.

To protect yourself, Fasulo said to be cautious, aware of your surroundings and not take any unnecessary risks.

Strip businesses, including casinos, nightclubs and shopping centers, are working together with Metro Police to gather information on the street thieves.

Metro met on Thursday with the heads of security on the Strip to exchange information in an effort to keep the tourist attraction
--Lauren Rozyla

Date: 09/20/12

Las Vegas, the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Las Vegas Is Ground Zero for Child Sex Trafficking, Metro Officer Says

LAS VEGAS SUN (LAS VEGAS, NV)--The number of Nevada children dragged into prostitution is on the rise — a scary reality that will take a community effort to reverse, a Metro Police lieutenant told an interfaith group Wednesday.

The Las Vegas Valley Interfaith Sponsoring Committee hosted a discussion at the Islamic Society of Nevada about child sex trafficking.

Karen Hughes, a lieutenant in Metro Police’s vice section, asked the attendees, who represented diverse religious backgrounds, to spread the word about the existence of child sex trafficking in the valley.

“I consider Las Vegas ground zero,” Hughes said. “The landscape of Las Vegas brings those who traffic young women and boys into this hideous life to Las Vegas because there’s spending that occurs here … very discretional income.”

Last year, the department rescued 131 children in Las Vegas who had been forced into prostitution, Hughes said. Nearly three-quarters, or 74 percent, of those children were from Nevada, which Hughes said was an increase compared with previous years.

“These pimps and traffickers are recruiting out of our schools, out of our churches, out of our homes,” she said. “They’re everywhere.”

The cycle results in scores of children subjected to beatings, torture, gang rapes and sexual assaults, Hughes said. The youngest victim discovered by Metro last year was 13 years old.

One particularly brutal case involved a 15-year-old girl who suffered second- and third-degree burns across her back and arms after attempting to flee a pimp.

“These are our kids,” she said. “These are lives that are of value and need salvation.”

To that end, Hughes called on the faith community to help find safe housing for victims and to support proposed legislation that stiffens penalties for pimps.

Michon Martin, chief deputy attorney general for Nevada, said criminals have realized they often face harsher sentences for trafficking drugs than trafficking humans.

“If a pimp is turning out one of our babies, one of our children, that is the same as him raping that baby,” Martin said. “The penalty needs to be the same.”

A proposed bill addressing that issue and others related to sex trafficking will be introduced during the upcoming legislative session, Martin said.

Preventing child sex-trafficking is the interfaith group’s latest focus, said the Rev. Dennis Hutson of Advent United Methodist Church, who is on the group’s board of directors. The interfaith group meets monthly to discuss various issues plaguing the community.

“We are very concerned about child sex trafficking in particular,” he said. “As people of faith, we are mandated by our holy texts to be concerned about children.”
--Jackie Valley

Date: 09/20/12

I Love That Dirty Water

Are National Parks Becoming Crime Havens?

ABC 20/20 (LAS VEGAS, NV)--"Just about any type of crime that goes on in any urban environment happens out here," said Dale Antonich, chief ranger at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, located in Nevada and Arizona.

"We've had rapes, we've had murders in the park, we've had bodies dumped in the park," Antonich said.

An hour outside of Las Vegas, Lake Mead is one of America's busiest parks. Rangers also considered it to be one of the top 10 most dangerous parks. <---Great, we've made yet another dubious top ten list, I love Las Vegas.

At Lake Mead, 36 rangers try to safeguard some 8 million visitors a year, policing more than 1.5 million acres of land, including historic Hoover Dam, and nearly 750 miles of shoreline.

Last year, rangers responded to more than 20,000 incidents — ranging from drunken driving, to boating accidents, to assault, to suicide. Nearly 1,400 were criminal investigations.

20/20 rode along with rangers over the busy Memorial Day weekend. In one instance, they responded to an assault call in which a man, recently on parole after serving time for carjacking, was assaulting his mother. His mother, rangers learned, is a convicted felon times two, for child molestation and kidnapping.

Family Vacation Nightmares

Elsewhere in the park, we and the rangers met the Klasing family, who came to Lake Mead looking for the serenity of nature, but wound up witnessing an ugly scene involving some other campers.

"The woman was screaming, 'You're hurting me,' and the tent was flying all over the place. … Never dreamed we'd run into that. That's why we bring our kids here," said Sue Klasing, describing the incident to the rangers.

The rangers sorted out the domestic disturbance, only to find the troubled family has other problems. They're homeless and had been staying in the park for about a month.

The vacation is one the Klasings will never forget, but not for the right reasons. "This is not how you build family memories," said Bill Klasing.

"You want to be able to come out here and camp at a beach and feel safe and we can't assure that anymore," Antonich said.

Antonich, who's been chief ranger at Lake Mead for 12 years, says crime in the parks is not new, but having fewer rangers to fight it is.

Antonich isn't alone in his assessment. An Interior Department audit from five years ago tells the whole story. It recommended a substantial increase in rangers here to fight growing crime. But since then, Lake Mead has actually lost 16 rangers, roughly a third of the ranger squad.

"You get 5 [million] to 10 million people visiting, you're going to have problems, and if you're a bad guy or you're trying to hide from the law, what better place to go?" Antonich said.

Lake Mead isn't the only major park with these kinds of policing problems, Antonich says. To varying degrees, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the Great Smokey Mountains, and Yellowstone are all in the same boat. <---Which is insanity considering how small and insignificant Lake Mead is compared to those behemoths.

Source: ABC News
Date: 7/25/2012

Frustration, Depression Plague Longtime Unemployed

Frustration, Depression Plague Longtime Unemployed

LAS VEGAS SUN (LAS VEGAS, NV)--She was a productive member of the community, held casino industry jobs for most of her professional life.

Now, Donna McQuinn senses that people look past her, an invisible character in a country where self-worth is often measured by the jobs we fill.

She is a high school graduate but has no college degree. She hasn’t had a job for two years.

She’s eight days late in paying the $158 weekly rent at a rundown residential hotel near Maryland Parkway, and could find herself homeless any day. After 99 weeks of unemployment benefits that expired months ago, she’s down to her last $70, surviving on $200 a month in food stamps. Night after night, she eats just noodles.

“I’ve lost my sense of self-esteem,” McQuinn said. “I call it being a person, and I’ve lost that. I used to have hope. I still want to hold onto it, but it’s very hard to feel hopeful. I cry every night. I couldn’t make it on the streets if I had to. It’s scary out there.”

The former casino cage worker at Strip and Lake Tahoe casinos was one of an estimated 400 people checking job postings Friday at Nevada JobConnect on Maryland Parkway, one of several operated by the Nevada Employment, Training and Rehabilitation Department.

She had not heard the newest numbers, released Friday, which placed the state’s unemployment rate for August at 13.4 percent, up from 12.9 percent in July. Both were better than the statewide figure of 14.9 percent recorded in August 2010.

The depressed construction industry continued to be a chief contributor to the state’s worst employment environment since the 1930s, a dynamic that was intensified by California’s worsening jobs market, which saw its unemployment rate climb to 12.1 percent last month. The Nevada neighbor is the chief driver of this state’s tourism economy.

No matter, McQuinn and the other job seekers do not require an economics degree to grasp the depth of the ongoing collapse. The state agency had more than 200 positions posted on its jobs board Friday morning, ranging from minimum-wage sales positions to $36,000-a-year marketing jobs.

Like many of those scouring the job listings, McQuinn has applied for hundreds of jobs during the past two years, rarely getting a call for an interview. “Age is playing a big role,” noted Debbie Kirkland, a 56-year-old former elementary schoolteacher who sat two chairs over from McQuinn, who nodded in agreement.

“I wish I had more training. I might be old but I can still learn,” the ex-casino worker said. “Back in the day I could fill out an application and always get the job I wanted.”

She’s not comfortable working on a computer, never had to when she was changing cash for casino chips at the Mirage and Caesars Palace and Caesars Tahoe, and can’t afford a laptop or broadband service to search for jobs from home. The JobConnect office has computers and Internet service, so McQuinn muddles through as she fills out online applications, but she finds the process dehumanizing. Corporate human resources departments never call back or send letters explaining whether or why they chose others for the jobs.

“The HR world is very cold,” said Ben Daseler, office supervisor at the Nevada JobConnect location on Maryland Parkway.

A year ago McQuinn was jumped by a group of teens as she walked along a downtown Las Vegas sidewalk. She was bloodied and bruised, further shaking her shattered confidence. “When I had a job, I was a somebody. Now I’m more of a nobody,” she said, “and people sense that. They look right through you.”

She has contemplated suicide but has found the strength to push ahead. “I want to work. I want to work. I want to work,” she said, her intensity level increasing as she repeated each sentence.

“Unemployment just leads to more homelessness, more depression and the suicide rates will keep going up. You lose something when you don’t feel worthy. I’ve gone two years without a job, and there’s no one in your life to say you’re doing good. We all need a place to go, a place that makes you feel productive and good about yourself. We all do.”
- Dave Berns, Las Vegas Sun

Date: 09/17/2011

Nevada’s rate of male-on-female killings tops nation

LAS VEGAS SUN (LAS VEGAS, NV)--Nevada’s rate of women killed by men — more than double the national average — ranks first in the nation for the second consecutive year, according to a report released today.

Nevada has taken the unenviable top spot four of the past five years in the “When Men Murder Women” report released by the Violence Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that studies gun violence. This year’s report analyzes homicides from 2009, the most recent data available from the FBI.
Nevada’s homicide rate of women killed by men in 2009 was 2.7 per 100,000, according to the report. The national average was 1.25 per 100,000.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/sep/20/nevada-tops-list-male--female-murders/