A cop in a turkey suit drives home serious safety concern

With those fowl legs how could a driver not stop?

But dozens of motorists didn’t. Veteran Metro traffic officer Michael Lemley, dressed for the day as “Butter Ball 1,” seemed to take his life in his own hands each time he traversed a well-marked crosswalk at Charleston Boulevard and 8th Street on Tuesday morning.

“A successful enforcement is when we don’t have to write any tickets,” Lemley said after about 90 minutes of crossing the street as motorcycle cops from area agencies handed out citations.

The annual event may seem light-hearted, but Lemley’s Thanksgiving-themed costume is intended to drive home the point that even a giant turkey crossing the road won’t be noticed by some drivers.

In the past two years there have been two pedestrian deaths nearby, at the intersection of Charleston and 10th Street, Lemley said.

During Lemley’s first attempt crossing the busy street about 8 a.m., a driver slammed on his breaks, burning rubber on his tires as he skidded to a stop, nearly colliding with a truck that had stopped for Lemley. The smoke from the burned rubber lingered as Lemley made his next pass.

Nearly each time Lemley crossed, vehicles drove through the crosswalk just in front of or behind him. The more than 15 motorcycle traffic cops were kept busy as they pulled out from hidden locations on Charleston — behind a lawyer’s office heading east and behind the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada on the westbound side — and stopped offenders.

It’s been an especially bloody month for pedestrians in the Las Vegas Valley.

Thirteen people so far have been killed, including Michael Grubbs, 63, of Las Vegas, who was pushing his 18-month-old granddaughter in a stroller Monday morning when they were hit by a dark gray Honda Civic as they walked along the shoulder of South Rainbow Boulevard near Warm Springs Road. The girl suffered minor injuries and was released.

The driver, described only as a woman in her 20s or 30s, fled the scene. Police haven’t found her.

Grubbs’ death weighed heavily on the minds of those running Tuesday morning’s operation, which included motorcycle traffic officers from Metro, the Nevada Highway Patrol and the Clark County School District.

According to the Nevada Office of Traffic Safety, in 2012 there were 43 pedestrians killed. In 2013 that number jumped to 54.

Erin Breen, director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Safe Community Partnership program, said that at the beginning of November there had been 32 pedestrian fatalities in Clark County. That was bad enough, she said.

“We’ve killed 13 pedestrians in the three weeks’ time in Las Vegas,” said Breen, a traffic safety advocate and one of the coordinators of the sixth annual crosswalk enforcement event. “Last year, we thought it was an anomaly.”

Breen said while drivers and pedestrians share in responsibility, pedestrians must always stay vigilant.

Pedestrians should stop looking at their mobile phones while crossing the street, make eye contact with drivers and wear bright clothes at night, Breen said.

But Breen wasn’t just critical of drivers.

“My heart goes out to drivers,” she said. “Unless you’re a sociopath, you’re not walking away from a crash (with a pedestrian) thinking, ‘Oh well it’s their fault.”

The psychological damage is palpable, she said.

Meanwhile, during the four-hour traffic sting, officers stopped 100 vehicles, wrote 168 citations and gave four warnings.

“It they don’t see me dressed in this sparkly costume,” Lemley said, “how are they gonna see a citizen who is dressed normally?”

Contact Francis McCabe at fmccabe@reviewjournal.com or702-224-5512. Find him on Twitter: @fjmccabe