WEEK IN REVIEW: GANGS TERRORIZE PEOPLE IN SOUTHWEST VALLEY

Three gangs made up mostly of high school-aged youths are terrorizing the southwest valley with violent stickup jobs, Las Vegas police said last week.

Describing the gangs' manner of attack as similar to "packs of rabid dogs," police say the groups are made up of 20 to 30 youths ranging in age from 12 to 20.

Sgt. Jim Young, with the Southwest Area Command, said police first noticed the gangs in January. Their criminal enterprise started small, with graffiti and alcohol consumption. Then it escalated to burglaries.

Young said the gangs found some guns during burglaries and the stickups started.

"These are not underprivileged kids. Some live in gated communities," Young said. "Some of these kids don't have a basic respect for human life."

Joe Bakus, 76, was confronted by two members of the gangs on Tuesday at the apartment complex where he lives, in the 7500 block of Flamingo Road, near Tenaya Way, police said.

"There were these two punks with big guns. They had bandanas over their faces like Jesse James' mob," Bakus recalled Friday. "I wasn't afraid of it. I didn't think it was real at first. I thought they were toy guns."

But one of the two gang members said: "We want your money. This is a stickup," according to a police report.

Bakus said he had none, and one of the would-be robbers "gave me a whack with the pistol on the head."

"I was yelling 'robbery, robbery,' and they took off running," Bakus said.

MONDAY

Dolphin born

at Mirage habitat

"Duchess," a dolphin at The Mirage's Dolphin Habitat, gave birth about 10:40 p.m. June 8.

Officials said they are "cautiously confident" that the 25-pound calf will survive to adulthood.

Duchess, who is roughly 30 years old, is an experienced mother with six births to her name, according to the habitat's curator, Jim Hudson.

TUESDAY

Police shoot, kill woman with knife

Las Vegas police shot and killed a woman brandishing a knife on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Police said they couldn't stop her with multiple shots from a bean bag shotgun, three 50,000-volt shocks from a Taser and pepper spray. Police wound up putting two bullets into her, and she later died at a hospital.

The woman, later identified as Denise Glasco, was four months pregnant, family members said.

WEDNESDAY

Empowerment school scores up

The Clark County School District's experiment with empowerment schools appears to be working, at least with two of the four schools in the pilot program.

Two schools made significant strides improving student performance, while two others had mixed results on the state's Criterion Referenced Test given in March and April.

Based on the test results, Superintendent Walt Rulffes said he is optimistic that empowerment schools will improve student performance.

Gov. Jim Gibbons has pushed to expand the number of empowerment schools statewide.

"There are powerful indicators ... that, given the right conditions and some additional funding, empowerment schools can dramatically improve student performance," Rulffes said.

THURSDAY

Nevada residential foreclosures rise

Nevada showed the highest increase in the nation in new residential foreclosures during the first quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported.

The percentage of loans on which foreclosure was started during the first quarter jumped 0.19 of a percentage point to 0.76 percent in Nevada, according to the group.

Also, the number of loans in foreclosure on March 31 climbed 0.32 of a percentage point to 1.16 percent in Nevada.

FRIDAY

More than 1,100 teachers needed

The Clark County School District is short more than 1,100 teachers for the upcoming school year, almost twice the number of instructors it needed to hire at this point in 2006.

District officials said they anticipate that schools might begin the upcoming year with at least as many teaching vacancies as in fall 2006.

"I don't want to be the bearer of gloom and doom, but we'll see similar shortages this year as last year," Rulffes said.

COMPILED BY MICHAEL SQUIRES

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