The Resorts Have Always Owned Metro 4/15/2012
Posted by Mike Zahara on Apr 15, 2012
When that bald and always constipated looking guy at the Las Vegas Sun gets it wrong, he really gets it wrong!
<–He always looks like he hasn’t taken a good healthy shit in years!
Jethro Patrick Coolican must have some sort of ‘unseemly’ relationship with the big resorts because he went to their aid and defense against them paying for extra patrols in this silliest piece of his entire career here:
Metro was born 39 years ago precisely because the mob wanted one-stop shopping for police and prosecutor services they used and barely paid for back when traditional organized crime ran the town and since the Wall Street mobsters who took their place decided they didn’t want to pay for anything anymore, some of our city fathers and mothers in power in recent years began to see what the resorts were doing to the two million of us who once believed the LVMPD worked for us too… and not just for the resorts.
In fact, our parasitic Las Vegas resorts have been on a feeding frenzy since nincompoop former super-corrupted Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa decided in favor of each property being able to contribute to sheriff and District Attorney races—and every other office too—instead of just one check from each publicly traded corporation.
Things have never been the same at Metro or at the resorts ever since; today, the LVMPD can’t state definitively what exactly ‘protecting the Strip’ costs and exactly how much of Metro’s budget the Resort Corridor devours each year.
<–This local woman is claiming a years long, very steamy affair with LVMPD Captain Charles Hank III when he headed up the Convention Center Area Command which patrols the Strip and where she is one of the most popular hookers there and one of his very favorites!!!
This is because of Metro’s archaic budget reporting processes that are by design, done to deceive everyone involved, not to inform its stakeholders and the taxpayers who foot their bills when officers are moved from our neighborhood Area Commands and sent to patrol the Strip for instance.
It’s not just for Special Events these days either; this chronic problem of moving officers into the Resort Corridor from elsewhere is an almost weekly thing these days under the very worst sheriff in America, our very own Doug Gillespie!
As reported on these threads in the ‘It’s 9/10 on the Las Vegas Strip’ pieces, our fine resorts have actually decreased their internal security boots on the ground and have delegated almost all of their guest security responsibilities to Metro in exchange for those big fat checks each property write to the Sheriff!
The Las Vegas resorts simply don’t give a damn about their guests’ security and safety and their Wall Street mobster owners found it substantially cheaper for them to write $10,000 campaign checks to the sheriff and DA instead.
<–Gee, thanks Frankie Sue!
The resorts’ complete abrogation of their responsibilities to pay for protecting their guests on their own properties largely from themselves and their ‘What Stays in Vegas’ belief that they can do anything they please here is not for taxpayers to accept…or pay for.
No one is going to argue that we shouldn’t expend resources to protect our 40 million visitors, but it’s a matter of how much and for what and who is bearing the burdens and who is not.
WTF are Metro officers ever doing inside of any resort anywhere in town? Vice stings notwithstanding, this is an outrage of enormous proportions largely done because the resorts fear being sued for roughing up their guests and have found it far cheaper to have Metro doing that for them on their properties instead!
During the 2006 sheriffs race, I witnessed many Metro officers of almost all ranks accepting cold hard cash for providing protection to various super-hot clubs within the resorts burning white hot at the time. Certain ‘protected’ prostitutes were allowed to stay because they paid for the privilege, others were arrested, illicit drug activity was rampant and also protected and though Metro officers—some even in uniform—made out like bandits, the onus falls on the respective Resort Security Directors and what they want and don’t want on their properties and most of those directors are former cops themselves and some are real assholes too!
Talk about cozy!!!
And they now have Captain Todd Fasulo whom everyone hates and no one respects and who should be on his way to prison rather than heading up Strip operations. His predecessor Captain Charles Hank III should have been fired years ago and may still end up in prison if rumors that he’s under FBI investigation again are true.
If you’re serious about protecting the Strip, you don’t place either of these guys within 5 miles of any resort! If you’re really serious about Vice on the Strip, you don’t place a Lt Karen Hughes or a Sgt John Hayes within ten 10 miles of any resort either!
<–Metro Vice Lt Karen Hughes and Vice Sgt John Hayes are shown here during recent undercover stings on the Strip!
Within Metro, relationships with the Resort Security Directors are and always have been nothing less than incestuous. Today, certain police managers are very territorial and consider certain properties ‘theirs’ and they pretty much control the entire goings on. Some at the LVMPD who have nothing to do with the Strip are regularly ‘consulted’ and are on resort properties because so and so is friends with so and so. Comps for meals and shows and ‘badging in’ is still a regular occurrence and the Resort Security Directors and other resort personnel have no problem whatsoever making obnoxious demands and piping in about officers they don’t like and want removed from their hotels…or placed there.
This has been going on since before Bugsy Siegel turned over the first shovel of dirt on the Strip.
<–Where we have to start questioning Sheriff Gillespie is about resources and priorities and why the resorts should be paying a special tax in a new ‘Resort Corridor Surtax’ district and over things like the TRU TV show ‘Vegas Strip’ and ‘ Las Vegas Jailhouse’ two shows that actually encourage visitors to act even worse than they may have without cameras rolling.
I’ve been observing filming on the Strip and these shows do nothing but trivialize law enforcement and distract from true policing while fostering jealousies and rivalries for those chosen to appear on camera against those who are not. The producers are making a mint off of the stupidity of LVMPD which allows them to do these shows in the first place.
A member of the production team and I had a beer together late last year and he chortled at how easy it is to ‘snow them with flattery’ and they get the brass as well as rank and file cooperation with ‘a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of really bad pizza’ when they’re filming.
<–In return for those pizzas, they have an all-access pass to do anything that they wish to do!
These shows are also very phony as cuts and re-takes are a pretty regular occurrence and when officers are aware or even waiting for cameras to get in position they are nothing less than distracted.
Filming played a role in the murder of Trevon Cole by Detective Brian Yant as that unit was part of a TV production too.
Will anyone at Metro end this nonsense once and for all?
Rumor has it that LVMPD Deputy Chief Jim Owens is moving over to Homeland Security in Doug Gillespie’s best decision over six years; maybe he can finally put an end to crime in Las Vegas as a Hollywood enterprise to be exploited by low-rent TV producers with no benefit to anyone but the producers’ bank accounts!
‘Vegas Strip’ itself and its producers played an integral part in the LVMPD losing its federal Homeland Security grants as officers identified on the show as ‘Homeland Security Saturation Team’ members filmed chasing drunks and hookers really brought home to many in Washington exactly what these grants weren’t supposed to be paying for.
Washington bureaucrats visit our town and watch these shows too which apparently never dawned on anyone at the LVMPD!
Chasing drunks and hookers weren’t part of anyone’s original concept of how these grant monies were to be spent by local law enforcement agencies.
Saturation Teams are nothing new in policing and it was then Lt, now Undersheriff Jim Dixon who brought the concept to Metro where it has been successful, but also has had some big troubles and they also became so common that virtually everything the LVMPD was doing was a ‘saturation’ effort.
<–When they opened their new headquarters on MLK, someone forgot to order tampons for the Ladies Rooms and Dougie immediately formed a ‘Saturation Team’ to go down the block to Costco and buy some!
Trouble was that no one on the Team could tell the difference between Dougie and a tampon!
The saturation efforts are only as good as the Lts and Sgts running them and if you have shitheads in either or both positions—Metro has an embarrassment of riches in shitheads at both ranks—your saturation effort is going to reflect that and there was a pullback of sorts as mission creep and operational failures diluted the effectiveness of many of the efforts.
It took no time at all for the bad guys to figure out when a ‘saturation’ operation was about to commence.
Which brings me back to the question WTF are Metro’s elite Homeland Security Saturation Team members doing on the Las Vegas Strip chasing drunks and hookers when according to their shithead Assistant Sheriff Greg McCurdy’s own words on Metro’s website, isn’t part of their mission?
http://lvmpd.com/Sections/HomelandSecurity.aspx
Not a word about prostitutes or drunks to be found in McCurdy’s ‘Mission Statement’ which he wrote longhand and with a crayon for this very expensive and necessary Division.
<– Failed Assistant Sheriff Greg McCurdy’s elite Homland Security Saturation Team seen here on the Strip before they began chasing drunks and hookers on a recent shift!!!
There’s also not a peep about rethinking how Metro is operating on the Strip which when you take the two steps back and really look at what they’re doing, hasn’t changed much at all in 39 years.
With the possible exception of Vice—and I have problems with even them being on site—no officer of any rank should ever be ‘patrolling’ on resort property and should not step foot inside any resort unless they are called to arrest and transport someone the resorts themselves have detained which is their legal right to do in Nevada.
Just because the resorts don’t wish to be sued or endure bad publicity for the trash they call their ‘security staffs’ is no reason for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and local taxpayers to do the job the resorts’ stockholders should be paying 100% for themselves and by themselves Mr Coolican.
Please name me any industry in any American city where law enforcement officers come inside of a company’s location and provide security services for free…every single day of the year!
So Dougie, how about you getting your best non-asswipe/non-shithead minds at the LVMPD together to rethink and restructure how we are policing the Las Vegas Strip and get rid of that Captain Todd Fasulo asshole before someone pops him, bar Captain Charles Hank from ever going to any resort in his brand new post-bankruptcy Mercedes or any other vehicle, and dump Hughes and Hayes from Vice too as both have been there far too long and everyone hates both of them because they’re so very bad at their jobs that they will never be effective in that unit which is why you put them there in the first place isn’t it Dougie?
Before we embark on anything regarding the Resort Corridor, the very first place to begin is Metro itself without any butt-in-skis from the resorts making demands or even suggesting anything at all until the police professionals determine what is best for the LVMPD’s operations and not our resorts’ ever growing, ever demanding tantrums and their steadfast refusal to pay for their own security on their own properties…with their own staff!
It time to end their bullshit Douglas; 39 years of the resorts on the Las Vegas Strip raping and robbing our community and our police department is long enough!
.
Michael Zahara
4/15/2012
www.WatchdogWag.com
