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Wednesday, March 22, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
End teen chain gangs
Let Silver State pick up its own trash.
The main responsibility for the Sunday afternoon deaths of six local teen-agers picking up trash in the median of Interstate 15 rests with the driver who hit them. Test results are awaited to indicate whether the accused -- Jessica Williams, 20 -- was driving under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance, or whether she may face lesser charges for falling asleep or losing control of her vehicle due to some other cause.
That said, however, many Southern Nevadans were shocked to learn the county has been "diverting" children into a program which places them mere feet from 75 mph traffic in lieu of reporting to the juvenile detention center or merely paying fines for offenses as minor as curfew violations, shoplifting, and driving without a license.
"She was out there because she couldn't pay a fine for a curfew violation," a tearful classmate of one of the victims, Centennial High School student Malina Stoltzfus, told reporters Monday. "She died because she couldn't make curfew."
The plot thickens when one learns the stretch of road being cleaned Sunday is a "regular work area" for the teen-age crews -- that the county's monopoly garbage hauler, Silver State Disposal Service, "contributes" $3,850 per month to the Family and Youth Services Department's "Children's Service Guild" for the teens to pick up trash that blows off Silver State trucks as they use that stretch of road on their way to the Apex landfill.
What an interesting arrangement. One wonders if state labor laws would allow Silver State to retain children of this age, directly, to do such work -- or how much the firm would have to pay its own, adult workers to do the same job.
County officials announced Monday they're temporarily halting the child trash pickups, though they wanted to avoid the appearance of acting hastily with an outright cancellation of the program. When the program resumes, the county might consider placing cones to restrict traffic in the lane closest to where the young people are working, suggested county spokesman Doug Bradford.
But that's not good enough. And while acting hastily can sometimes be a mistake, it shouldn't take the County Commission a whole lot of deliberation to realize that underage teen-agers ticketed for minor offenses should no longer be subjected to the deadly danger of rubbing elbows with 75 mph traffic.
The county was responsible for exposing these children to a deadly risk which is now revealed in all its palpable horror. Though no cost in cash can possibly compare to the loss to this community of six young lives still in their formative years, the county will doubtless be getting out its checkbook soon -- with every taxpayer helping to settle the claims.
If the county wants to continue offering a diversion program -- allowing young first-time offenders to "pay their debt to society" with some modest public service work -- let them clean up the parks, scrub graffiti, or empty bed pans.
But if there's any common sense in our Temple to Government down on Grand Central Parkway, the era of the teen-age highway cleanup crew in Clark County is now over.
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