my office, my newspaper, my column, I know how to say SORRY when I have to…

Last Saturday morning when I got to the office, I encountered another thief hanging around my property and who tried to attack me, so I called the police. As always, the telephone operator started bombarding me with questions, so I hung up the phone. She called me back, and I then gave her a piece of my mind.
Yes, I know that while operators (call-takers) are talking to the alleged victim they are typing the information to the patrol unit en route to the scene, but really, how many people know that? Why can they not tell the caller, “Don’t worry — while I am talking to you I am typing and transmitting your information to the officer who is en route to your place.” Those few words would do much to calm the caller down a little bit.
Why do they need to be so secretive and arrogant by keeping the caller in suspense with a million questions that are immaterial or unknown to the caller who needs their help?
I believe that all those questions make the callers asking for help a little more nervous and impatient because how many people have the knowledge to know if a person is on drugs (unless they ask for the expertise of State Senator Tick Segerblom)? What do these Metro call-takers expect from an alleged victim — to go search the criminal for a gun or a knife, so they can assure the responding officer’s safety?
Most often by the time the call-takers get to the end of their endless stupid questions, the predator is gone and the caller is frustrated and irritated and ends up being rude to the officers who respond to the call and are there with the best intentions to help in whatever way they can.
That is what happened to yours truly, a senior citizen (as much as I hate to accept the “senior citizen” part), when a homeless person got upset when I woke him up so I could open the door to my office.
He must be friends with City Council Bob Coffin who is the almighty protector of the downtown homeless and wanted to get even with me for exposing useless Coffin corruption when he’s not having a drink with his friends at the golf course, for which he stabbed his fellow councilman Bob Beers in the back.
Coffin cannot throw me out of my office for calling him useless like his partner in crime, City Council Lois Tarkanian, did to me when I used my First Amendment right in HER city hall and called the two of them USELESS.
This is my office, my newspaper, and my column, as well as my First Amendment right, and those two corrupt politicians cannot shut me off here.
But I am getting off my train of thought about the police department. By the time I walked from one building to the other, three police cars with six officers were at the front door.
I was upset and I told them to get off my property when they were there to protect me from Coffin’s possible friend (if he has any friends) but I was so fed up with the call-taker that I took my ire out on them.
Because I am the kind of person who is not afraid to apologize or excuse my behavior when it is needed, I want to publicly ask those officers to please excuse me for my unpolite way of asking them to leave my office or my premises.
If Sheriff Joe Lombardo would not be so vindictive toward me and this newspaper by taking orders from former Sheriff Douglas Gillespie, AKA Doug Gillespie, who we refused to endorse in all his campaigns for sheriff, he would pay attention to my suggestions in this column and train his call-takers with those suggestions and remind them that they are not police officers and they don’t need to be intimidating the callers because over the telephone they cannot scare anyone anyway.
Which brings me to another issue that Sheriff Lombardo should pay attention to in order to improve the police department: why are these police units so protected from the public? Are they afraid? If they
are, I have a beautiful and brave German Sheppard that I can donate to them.
But then, I don’t see as much of a problem because even if detectives are not as much of a target as the uniformed officers, they are still police officers on duty and they are entitled to protect themselves.
What I find ridiculous and ironic are those in the Public Information Office who are supposed to be available to inform and be able to communicate not only with the members of the media, but on many occasions, with the public in general, and they are secluded, hidden in a secret office somewhere in the police mausoleum on MLK Boulevard;
but what can be expected from a unit of men and women with police training that are insulted by being directed by a civilian woman who has no knowledge of police work and once was not even a very good news reporter but who filled part of a quota on a local television station, and who may now be part of a quota for the police department.
I don’t need the PIO to tell me a public relations cockamamie lie when I have my own source on all levels of the police department, so Sheriff Lombardo can order his men not to respond to my inquiry phone calls or not to respond to my business calls for help because after all, most of the time those who call the police for help are the ones who get arrested for a simple misdemeanor.
My name is Rolando Larraz, and as always, I approved this column. Rolando Larraz is Editor in Chief of the Las Vegas Tribune. His column appears weekly in this newspaper. To contact Rolando Larraz, email him
at: Rlarraz@lasvegastribune.com or at 702-272-4634.