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Friday, September 17, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
COLUMN: Barbara Robinson
Ex-mayor got special treatment
The first time I met Henderson's ex-Mayor Robert Groesbeck, I was appearing before the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority board. Groesbeck was on the panel. I don't remember exactly why I had come before it, but I remember Groesbeck was rude, arrogant, condescending and possessed none of the qualities of a successful politician. Seeing Groesbeck drunk could not be a pleasant experience.
A friend who is a police officer asked me why the press was covering up for Groesbeck. I was stunned. I thought the press did a good job of reporting the Groesbeck story. But I realized that the police were responsible for treating Groesbeck as if he were King of Henderson instead of an ex-mayor, a political has-been. Groesbeck has been charged with lewdness and battery stemming from an incident in which he is alleged to have groped a woman and struggled with a police officer at the Mandalay Bay's exclusive House of Blues Foundation Room.
Groesbeck is one of the luckiest men accused of battery on a police officer. If Groesbeck had been my brother, he would still be in jail. He would have been tested for drugs, and he would have been charged with at least one felony. This is what happens to regular, working-poor, taxpaying citizens.
To prove my point, Willena "Maria" Warren, Terrell Young's mother, lost her composure after her son was found guilty this week of killing, kidnapping and robbing four young men. She went after her son's attorney. Warren was subdued and thrown to the floor by at least two guards. She was immediately arrested, even though no one was hurt. The attorney she went after is not interested in having charges filed, but Warren was still in jail the next day charged with contempt of court, intimidating a public officer with force and battery -- charges that could land her in jail for two years. Most annoyingly, Warren is being held without bail.
Warren did not engage in lewd conduct, as Groesbeck has been charged with doing. Why is there a difference in their treatment? Warren should be released immediately. She is scheduled to testify on her son's behalf. She's not going anywhere. A more sensitive judge should have understood that this mother is suffering. A doctor could do more for this hysterical mother than a jail.
In order for democracy to work, all citizens must believe that justice is dispensed equally.
-- On Sept. 9, Rafael Elliot Tammariello died. He was one of my three editors. I treasure them all.
I will truly miss Rafe, as we called him. Rafe, a bilingual Gemini, an intellectual, was a true Renaissance man. There were few subjects that he wasn't versed in. Rafe lived an exciting life. He was a Peace Corp volunteer in the Dominican Republic on Hispaniola.
There is a distinctive spirit about many of the people who have served in the Peace Corps. There is a heightened sensitivity, a sense of personal security, a peacefulness in their inner soul. This security probably helped Rafe leave his job at the Review-Journal years back to spend time in Mexico.
When I last spoke to Rafe he was really happy about the overwhelming response to his column, "We've waged an 85-year war against eccentricity," his treatise against the war on drugs. Ironically, the recently uncovered facts surrounding Rafe's death will do more to strengthen the drug war.
I always felt editing my work and the work of others was secondary to Rafe. He loved to write and he loved shocking his reading audience with little-known facts that substantiated his position. His column "Time Magazine's Person of the Century: Hitler or Einstein" was Rafe at his best.
I shall miss my discussions with Rafe ... he disliked the Clintons, but he loved his cigarettes and he ardently defended his right to smoke them. I could not care less about the circumstances of Rafe's death. It's his life that I'll miss.
Barbara Robinson is a retired attorney living in Las Vegas. Her column appears every other Friday.
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BARBARA ROBINSON
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