Eighteen-year Las Vegas police officer Laurie Bisch keeps running for sheriff against her boss, Doug Gillespie. She says her independent attitude sometimes makes her feel \u201clike a woman without a country\u201d when she goes to work — though other officers have been known to approach her in private and thank her for raising issues others fear to confront.<\/p>\n
Officer Bisch was recently assigned to the Bolden Area Command, which is headquartered on a side street just southwest of what used to be known as Drive-By Corners: the intersection of Lake Mead and Martin Luther King boulevards.<\/p>\n
One day, a few weeks ago, she got a call from dispatch. A driver had complained some men were out in the street at the corner of Rancho Drive and Charleston Boulevard, aggressively soliciting funds from motorists, and blocking traffic when the light changed.<\/p>\n
She drove there, asked the three men whether they had a permit to be in the street aggressively selling their Nation of Islam newspapers to motorists stopped at the red light, determined they had no permit and wrote them citations for violating NRS 484B.297.<\/p>\n
The law specifies: \u201cA person shall not stand in a highway to solicit … any business from the driver or any occupant of a vehicle. A person shall not, without a permit … solicit any contribution from the driver or any occupant of a vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
But local firefighters do the same thing when they collect funds for MDA in their annual boot drive, I pointed out.<\/p>\n
A county spokesman says their firefighters now limit their drives to private parking lots. If city firefighters work the intersections they get a permit, Bisch explains — a permit which is good for only three days a year. Firefighters still have to be careful to be out of the street when the light turns green, or they\u2019d still be in violation.<\/p>\n
While Bisch was writing her citations, the three men did not seem chagrined, she reports. They were laughing. Indeed, while she was there, her cell phone rang. It was an officer from her station house, informing her \u201cthere\u2019s a deal\u201d under which members of the Nation of Islam are not cited for selling their newspapers, nor for soliciting and collecting funds from vehicles stopped in the streets at red lights.<\/p>\n
She wrote the tickets, anyway.<\/p>\n
When she arrived back at the station, she says she was again told there was \u201ca deal\u201d under which members of the Nation of Islam — and only members of the Nation of Islam — are not cited.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was told \u2018This is political; we don\u2019t mess with them.\u2019 At the following morning\u2019s briefing, she says she was told, \u201cWhen it comes to the Nation of Islam guys, we have a hands-off policy, short of having a citizen come back and fill out a crime report and do a voluntary statement.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I\u2019ll have to give these tickets to the captain to take care of,\u201d Officer Bisch says she was told.<\/p>\n
When there are crimes on the West Side, members of the Nation of Islam step in and help police solve them, Bisch says she was told by one of her superiors.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you tell me a single case where there\u2019s been a crime on the \u2018Side,\u2019 and someone from the Nation of Islam has gone in there and located the perpetrator and turned him over to us, or gotten him to turn himself in?\u201d she says she asked.<\/p>\n
Officer Bisch says her superior could not name such a case.<\/p>\n
Bisch says she was told there was no sense issuing the tickets to members of the Nation of Islam, because Las Vegas City Attorney Brad Jerbic wouldn\u2019t prosecute them.<\/p>\n
She called that office, identified herself, and asked if it\u2019s true the city attorney\u2019s office won\u2019t prosecute tickets issued for violations of statute 484B.297. She says Assistant City Attorney Ben Little came on the phone and said, \u201cI understand you\u2019re calling about the Nation of Islam?\u201d<\/p>\n
She pointed out she hadn\u2019t mentioned the Nation of Islam. Bisch says Little told her if she were the only officer ticketing these aggressive panhandlers, who appear to all be black men, her actions might be interpreted as racist.<\/p>\n
Bisch says she responded that she has written hundreds of citations under this statute over the years, \u201cand you can pull them up and check; the majority were to white adults.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION RIGHT\u2019<\/p>\n
Officer Bisch says she was told both by her superiors and by Ben Little that in order to prosecute such an offense, she would have to locate a witness who was willing to return with her to the station, write out a voluntary statement that they\u2019d witnessed the offenses, and file a criminal complaint. Even then she would need a sergeant\u2019s permission to proceed, she says.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s completely at variance with the way officers normally write tickets for misdemeanors, when it\u2019s considered enough for the officer to have seen the offense with her own eyes, Officer Bisch points out.<\/p>\n
\u201cVin, I asked the dispatcher how many of these calls we got in the month of February, and it was dozens, especially from women, who say they\u2019re frightened by these guys, they feel intimidated, so they call in a complaint. And the dispatchers are so frustrated because the officers are told not to respond to these calls,\u201d Officer Bisch says.<\/p>\n
The calls are handled with a \u201cbroadcast and clear\u201d command, she says. That is, no officer is instructed to respond. The calls are logged as \u201ccleared by sergeant,\u201d meaning no further action was authorized.<\/p>\n
The Nation of Islam, led nationally by Louis Farrakhan, is believed to have 20,000 to 50,000 members nationwide. Farrakhan preaches that white people are sub-human devils who \u201care potential humans. … They haven\u2019t evolved yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although I don\u2019t set much store by the judgment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, myself, that group has tagged the Nation of Islam as a \u201chate group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of the group\u2019s recruiting is done in prisons. If these men are on a path to better lives through good works, more power to them. Still, it would be interesting to see the prior arrest and conviction records of those aggressive \u201cnewspaper salesmen\u201d cited by Bisch for sticking their hands in drivers\u2019 windows, attempting to \u201cshake hands\u201d — except that those tickets were \u201ctaken care of,\u201d of course.<\/p>\n
Phone messages left last week at the Muhammad Mosque 75 on D Street were not returned.<\/p>\n
Sheriff Doug Gillespie says \u201cBack in the \u201990s … the city attorney wouldn\u2019t prosecute on those tickets. So if we can\u2019t write tickets, we can\u2019t ignore it. So rather than write citations, what we do is we meet from time with the Nation of Islam\u201d to discuss what activities are permitted.<\/p>\n
Capt. Larry Burns has been in command of Metro\u2019s Bolden Area substation since January. I asked him if his officers are routinely advised not to roll on complaints about aggressive fund-raising in the streets by the Nation of Islam \u201cnewspaper salesmen,\u201d or complaints that they\u2019re blocking traffic.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo no no, we roll on those calls,\u201d he said in our March 11 phone conversation. \u201cThe officers are certainly not given an order to not ticket. What we typically do, if we receive a call, if there\u2019s an individual that makes a call to police, if they feel they\u2019re in danger in any way shape or form, we make every attempt to meet that individual and get a voluntary statement from them. And that hasn\u2019t happened in a very long time. …<\/p>\n
\u201cThis issue of individuals who are proselytizing and offering things for sale has been going on as long as I\u2019ve been a police officer, for 25 years,\u201d Capt. Burns said. \u201cAs a matter of practice, going back in my recollection to when Cliff Davis was a deputy chief here for Metro, and through discussions with particularly the city attorney, the ACLU, you name it over the years, those citations that have been written over the course of the last two decades, those things are routinely dismissed at some level, and they\u2019re not prosecuted. … None of them has ever been struck by a motor vehicle. … And we\u2019re getting into a religious expression right.\u201d<\/p>\n
What happens to the tickets, I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no automatic procedure for that. … It\u2019s dependent on the totality of circumstance. I\u2019ve taken tickets before that have been written, and I have not allowed them to process through the system, they have stopped here, it\u2019s within my authority to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bottom line is that this is a relationship issue. There is a lot that\u2019s involved with something that\u2019s seemingly very simple. … We\u2019re talking about organizations that have leaders who can be contacted, who I assume dispatch them. … Those relationships are key to policing. The way that we have always been successful in law enforcement is through our community relationships. … For the good of the community these are things that are constantly balanced.\u201d<\/p>\n
The captain confirmed he \u201ctook care of\u201d the three tickets issued by Officer Bisch, though he did not use her name.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have done that on one single event with three individuals, stopped the tickets before they went forward into the system,\u201d Capt. Burns said. He told his subordinates to \u201cLet me have them and let me do some review and do some reaching out to make sure that we don\u2019t have issues. I asked them to give me two weeks. I asked if we had a statement from someone, was there something else to go with the citation other than the citation itself, and that was at Rancho and Charleston. It is not a turn your head, don\u2019t worry about it, they\u2019re suddenly exempt from the law.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the bigger picture is hoping that the Nation of Islam can help Metro with crime on the West Side?<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you create those relationships, you are so much further ahead,\u201d Capt. Burns said. \u201cValley-wide we solve 85 percent of homicides, here in Bolden area it\u2019s 20 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018THEY COULD STRING TOGETHER THE PERMITS\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything you say is correct,\u201d City Attorney Brad Jerbic told me Monday. \u201cYou cannot commercially solicit, you can\u2019t sell newspapers from medians, the Nation has been told that; they can ask for contributions only. If there are any strong-arm tactics, we\u2019ve told them you will be ticketed, we\u2019ve told them if you remain in the intersection when the light turns green, they will be ticketed. We process (those tickets) and we\u2019ve taken them to trial. …<\/p>\n
\u201cI participated in a meeting with Metro the Nation of Islam and the ACLU, it could be more than a decade ago,\u201d Mr. Jerbic recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe state Legislature has created a scheme where an individual can come in and get a permit to solicit from the median for as long as three-days at a time. With an organization as large as the Nation of Islam, they could string together the permits, one after another, so they could put someone on a median every day of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo in the context of first amendment speech, the conclusion was that people wouldn\u2019t be arrested or cited simply for not having the permit, but rather for the action itself. Are you engaging in coercive soliciting, are you on the median or in traffic? I have seen tickets issued. The Nation is not exempted, they don\u2019t have a \u2018pass.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
They can repeal all the \u201cpermit\u201d laws they like, as far as I care. But I believe that\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve ever had a city official tell me they\u2019re not going to enforce a statute requiring a permit, because if they did so the darned culprits could ruin everything by just going out and applying for a bunch of permits.<\/p>\n
Mr. Jerbic then admitted it\u2019s been \u201ca few years\u201d since he saw such a ticket come through. Surely that\u2019s evidence that Metro has effectively exempted the Nation of Islam from having to obey this statute, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question goes back to Metro. If they\u2019ve got people knocking on windows, that\u2019s not contact that\u2019s protected. I invite you to call Ben Little, who spoke to me last week, and verified that we have prosecuted those tickets … It\u2019s not skin color, it\u2019s not religion, it\u2019s conduct,. If you\u2019re blocking traffic, if you\u2019re commercially selling products from the median, I\u2019ve never sent any memo to Metro that says that\u2019s legal. …<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember one ticket, going back to the Nation with Metro and with the ACLU, they said, \u2018We had a deal that we could be on the medians.\u2019 We said \u2018No, no, no, we\u2019re not going to be looking so much on whether you have the permit, but he was blocking traffic and he was prosecuted and he was convicted.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018THE QUINTESSENTIAL PUBLIC FORUM\u2019<\/p>\n
Allen Lichtenstein, local lead attorney for the ACLU, remembers that meeting of about a decade ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was agreed as long as they\u2019re not blocking traffic or interfering or harassing anyone then they have a First Amendment right. It was agreed by all the parties that the streets as well as the sidewalk are the quintessential public forum …<\/p>\n
\u201cMy understanding is they\u2019re not selling their papers, if asked they\u2019ll give them away,\u201d attorney Lichtenstein said. \u201cIf people feel intimidated, that\u2019s a bit of a concern as a basis for issuing tickets, because the fact that they are the Nation of Islam may make people feel intimidated. I\u2019m not aware of anything in the code that makes being a large black man illegal, or that puts restrictions on someone\u2019s activities because someone is a large black man. …\u201d<\/p>\n
Officer Bisch drove through the same intersection, off duty and out of uniform, the day after she issued her three tickets. The Nation of Islam guys were at it again. They actually knocked on her window.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you kidding me?\u201d she asked. \u201cI just wrote you a citation for this yesterday.\u201d
\nShe says the solicitors laughed and shouted to one another, \u201c\u2018Hey, it\u2019s Miss Bush,\u2019 they call me Miss Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe citation is supposed to put them on notice to end the behavior,\u201d Officer Bisch points out. \u201cIf an officer issues repeat citations and the behavior doesn\u2019t change, the next step is normally that we take the offender to jail.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI live in the Rancho and Charleston area,\u201d says District Court Judge Donald Mosley. \u201cThey\u2019re out there all the time, and oftentimes they\u2019re blocking traffic, talking to people, blocking traffic and people are waiting for them to get out of the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just gets me a little aggravated that we can\u2019t seem to control, as a city, people collecting alms this way. They\u2019re out there all the time. If they\u2019re getting cited it\u2019s not having any effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was told some years ago they don\u2019t want to do anything because they don\u2019t want to stop the firemen from doing the boot drive. Well, the answer is a permit system. …<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had \u2019em peck on my window if the window is rolled up,\u201d says the judge, who used to preside at Las Vegas Municipal Court, but now occupies a bench that doesn\u2019t deal with such offenses. \u201cThe panhandlers won\u2019t get a permit, and these Islam guys who seems to make a career out of it, if you restrict it to three days a year that\u2019ll put \u2019em out of business.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked the judge if he thought the \u201cspecial deal\u201d under which the Nation of Islam gets to ignore this particular law was put in place to \u201cbuy peace\u201d on the West Side?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what a Taser is for, to buy peace,\u201d the judge responded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eighteen-year Las Vegas police officer Laurie Bisch keeps running for sheriff against her boss, Doug Gillespie. She says her independent attitude sometimes makes her feel \u201clike a woman without a country\u201d when she goes to work — though other officers have been known to approach her in private and thank her for raising issues others […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,36,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2nd-amendment","category-about-town","category-due-process"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sWqFl-721","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2179,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions\/2179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}