Recently, I wrote about the new “Eldora” substation being completed and then being abandoned by the department due to lack of funds and personnel.
We’ve learned that the LVMPD administration has now opted to move the traffic bureau to the new Eldora substation.
The traffic bureau is the last “substation” to receive a new substation and has historically always been the last to receive any benefits.
Northwest Patrol has its new substation on west Cheyenne, moved from the old Jones and Hargrove location.
Southeast Patrol has its location at Pearl and Harmon after moving from the old station at Atlantic and St. Louis (The current traffic station)
Southwest substation, now called “Enterprise” is located at Windmill and Rainbow after closing down the Spring Mountain and Duneville location.
Northeast substation is now at Pecos and Walnut, after abandoning “Fort Mojave” at Washington and Mojave
South Central has a new substation located on Las Vegas Boulevard and Russell.
Convention Center Command has a well equipped new facility behind the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Downtown Area Command has a new station on Bonanza, east of Las Vegas Boulevard.
The Traffic Bureau had been stuck in the basement of City Hall and then shoveled over to the old (built in the early 70’s), refurbished Southeast substation, with the help of the city. The city pitched in some funds to help in the re-opening of the station as long as the neighbors had the police presence and was able to take reports from citizens.
The original plan was to allow the motorcycle mechanics to be housed at the substation, in the same building. A large storage area in the building seemed to be appropriate for the mechanics, and the logistics were perfect for the officers and mechanics. The officers could drop off their bikes with the mechanics during their briefing times and the bikes were usually done after briefing. No extra travel times and mileage. Evidently, some other accoutrements were needed to house the mechanics and the department wasn’t willing to pay out the extra money to accommodate them, so they moved back to the Decatur and Oquendo location, approximately 20 minutes away from traffic briefing. The other accommodations in the building were sparse and archaic, to say the least.
The new substation should be a godsend for the traffic division and well deserved.
The problems?
Contractors that were working on the Eldora substation bailed out, in the middle of their contracted work. Since LVMPD takes lowest bids, many bid so low to assure that they would get the contract but then realized they couldn’t do the work for that price, so they walked away, leaving the job partially completed.
Several jobs were done, only to be re-done over and over again, sometimes with less than desirable results.
And what happens when the Sheriff decides to make the Eldora Substation a patrol station again? Where does traffic go then?
The city is building a new City Hall.
Does it have a basement?
This is a continuation of a series of articles regarding the different types of stressors that officers face daily, in their personal and professional lives from a personal point of view.
by Dave Robbins, retired Metro Officer
Along with these obvious producers of stress on the job, there were also the added issues of leadership. The motor division had its share of bureau commanders, so good, some not-so-good.
When we had the “good” ones, the morale was good and productivity was fine.
When we had the bad, well, you know.
When morale and productivity was low, all management saw was the productivity side of the equation. It never occurred to them that the policies and leadership quality could be at fault. The only way the bureau commanders could "fix" the problem was to lower the morale even farther by incorporating an autocratic dictatorship and “performance standard”. A fancy term for quotas. This is usually what inept leaders do; instead of looking at each officer individually, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and letting them know where they were excelling, meeting performance standards, or deficient, they make a "one size fits all" method of deciding who is or is not proficient.
When the standards were met, even more stringent standards were implemented, because now that they were invested in this idiotic system of determining achievement, there needed to be some arbitrary way of separating the officers' performance. Tickets were then scanned for “quality”, not “quantity”. Violations were categorized by type. Certain violations were deemed “goal oriented” and officers were required to write X amount of “goal oriented” citations.
The categories were confusing. Also, you couldn’t write more than five citations to someone. If you had more than five violations on someone, you were supposed to arrest the driver, but LVMPD policy states that you can only arrest on the most serious charge, not all the charges you could’ve charged them with.
So if you stopped a driver with an unrestrained child, no license, no insurance, unregistered vehicle, fictitious license plates, not wearing seat belts, open container, equipment violations, etc., you were supposed to arrest the driver. That required waiting for a transport officer, one for the trip to jail and one for the child to be booked into Child Haven.
LVMPD policy also states that before you tow the vehicle, you should call someone to come and get the vehicle since everyone is in dire straits due to the economy.
So, if the vehicle is unregistered and uninsured, you were still supposed to release the vehicle. On several occasions, the “someone” would respond with the entire (usually irate) family. And on many occasions, the “someone” didn’t have a valid license. In any case, each situation was a waste of the officer’s time (at taxpayer’s expense).
For many years, the traffic division was stationed in the “basement” of city hall. Brand new area substations were being built to accommodate patrol officers but no plans had been made for a new Traffic Substation. The old Southeast substation was then “refurbished” and traffic moved into that building, at the intersection of St. Louis and Atlantic. The building was built in 1972 and still retained the 70’s features. The showers were located on one side of a main hallway and the locker room (with 70’s style lockers) was positioned on the opposite side of the hallway, requiring a walk across the hallway to your locker. Oh yeah, not everyone had a locker. No workout facilities. The substation wasn’t even listed in the LVMPD website as a substation. The administration had no qualms about expressing their disdain for the traffic officers, often lauding traffic for their efforts to the public but then internally claiming traffic officers were a pain to deal with. The majority of officers assigned to traffic were senior on the department and had a lot of very reasonable opinions about how to properly do the job. The bosses wanted no part of that. It was their way or the highway. They often alluded to who lost the rock-paper-scissor game to address the traffic briefings.
During my tenure in the motor division, I was involved in many more accidents than any other traffic officer(9 total, I believe). Each time I was hit, I was traveling less than 30 mph. Once I wasn't moving at all; a vehicle hit me while I was standing on the opposite side of the road dealing with another traffic accident. Sometimes I even had my emergency lights and siren on, and STILL got hit. Some of those accidents required a trip to the hospital and some surgeries. I became a familiar face in UMC Trauma. Each time I was wheeled in on a gurney, I heard the familiar word “Again?” Each recovery required doctors, more surgeries, therapy and the dreaded “light duty”. My personal accident scenes were a favorite for the evening news. “Metro motor cop gets hit…again…and again…and again”. It was pretty bad when I would go to my favorite restaurant and the owner had a front page picture of my wreck, even in the foreign language newspapers.
After each time, I got back on the bike.
Hard headed? Some say so. Dumb? Heard that too. I was resolved not to let anything to keep me down and away from what I considered the best job on the department (okay, second best. Gotta give cred to the Air Unit)
Some believed I had a “S#&t” magnet on my bike. 
I couldn’t find it. Neither could our mechanics.
Was it on my bike?
To be continued…
