[Headline] Demonstrations cost taxpayers $100,000
[Subheading] Police ring up overtime patrolling the convention center, where the disabled have held several protests.
By Jan Greene
Review-Journal

6B Las Vegas Review-Journal/Friday, October 7, 1994

[Image] PHOTO by Jeff Scheld/Review-Journal: A police officer in a tan uniform wearing medical exam gloves and large belt with radio, plastic handcuff-ties, regular hand-cuffs, and other equipment, pushes a man in a manual wheelchair down the street in a long line of single file wheelchairs. Behind them is a long line of cars driving in the opposite direction.

[Image caption] A Las Vegas police officer escorts one of about 165 disability rights activists arrested Thursday for blocking entrances to the Las Vegas Convention Center, where the protesters demonstrated against a nursing home trade group. Jeff Scheid/Review-Journal

While disabled protesters spent a third day being taken away by police this time for blocking entrances to the Las Vegas Convention Center parking lot on Thursday — officials were tallying the cost to taxpayers of their demonstrations at $100,000.

Thursday's protest resulted in about 165 demonstrators being removed and cited for creating a public nuisance by having an unlawful assembly, a misdemeanor.

The group, Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, or ADAPT, has been protesting the annual convention of the American Health Care Association, a nursing home group. ADAPT wants a quarter of the federal funds that go toward nursing homes shifted to independent living arrangements for the disabled.

Part of ADAPT's strategy for gaining attention to the cause is appearing at the nursing home group's meetings, making a lot of noise and getting its members arrested.

Local taxpayers will pay for that strategy to the tune of about $100,000, according to Las Vegas police Lt Carl Fruge.

He said most of that cost is from overtime for officers called in to keep the peace and cite dozens of people in wheelchairs. About half the approximately 120 officers involved were pulled from regular duty elsewhere in the valley.

The Metropolitan Police Department also spent taxpayer money to rent specially equipped buses, to get special equipment, to train officers and to have? a helicopter circle overhead for surveillance.

The Nevada Highway Patrol also assigned 10 troopers to help divert traffic but didn't incur any overtime because the officers were switched from high-accident risk areas they normally patrol, said trooper Steve Harney.

ADAPT organizers said the cost was minimal compared with the money spent on nursing homes, some of whose residents could live more cheaply with some help on their own.

National organizer Mike Auberger said people wouldn't question the cost if the group were protesting, for example, the Ku Klux Klan.

"We didn't come here because we wanted to raise hell for Las Vegans," Auberger said. "The reason we're here is the AHCA. Let them pay for it."

Fruge noted the Culinary union has voluntarily paid the overtime costs for police officers responding to union protests at, for example, the Frontier and MGM Grand hotels.

Culinary Secretary-Treasurer Jim Arnold confirmed the union pays those costs to avoid being "a burden on the community."

Still, Arnold didn't want to criticize ADAPT.

"They've got to do what they feel is right to get their point across," Arnold said. Everyone has a right to demonstrate."

Overall, Fruge said the experience has been a good one for Las Vegas police officers, 120 of whom received special training in dealing with the disabled. Similar training will be made a part of the department's police academy curriculum, he said.

Also, he said, the Police Department was able to prove it can handle a disturbance at the convention center.

"The message is, 'This is a safe place to hold your convention,'" Fruge said.

ADAPT leaders were also happy with the week. "Now people in Las Vegas understand the issue," Auberger said. "The value of that is very important."

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