WEEK IN REVIEW: Reporter’s Notebook

WHEN A MAN AT WEDNESDAY'S NORTH LAS VEGAS CITY COUNCIL MEETING STOOD to talk about a speeding ticket he had received, council members probably thought they were in for a whining session about how unfair it all was. Instead, the man said he wanted them to know what a pleasant experience receiving the ticket had been. The young traffic cop was so polite, "he made it seem like I just hit the lottery at Caesar's," the man said.

Council members were momentarily speechless with surprise.

"If you're being sarcastic, it's the best I've ever heard," Mayor Mike Montandon said.

The man did have one complaint, however. The police department hadn't returned a call he made to praise the officer.

Police Chief Mark Paresi, who was in the audience, apologized and offered to arrange a meeting between the speeder and the officer.

"I've already met him," the man said.

"It's easy to meet him," Montandon said. "Just pick up speed."

HEARING MASTER DAVID GIBSON HEARS ABOUT PLENTY OF BAD PARENTING while overseeing child abuse and neglect cases in Family Court. But he hasn't seen anything approaching the scenario in the latest Harry Potter book, where parents join forces with evil wizard Lord Voldemort.

"I've got 114 pages left in the last Harry Potter book, and I gotta tell you, I'm pretty upset," Gibson told a boy in his courtroom recently. "If some of those parents were in front of me, they would have been in trouble."

BRIAN HAYNES

NEARLY ONE-FIFTH OF THE TROUBLED LIED ANIMAL SHELTER'S STAFF LANDED IN THE DOG HOUSE after testing positive for illegal drugs in early August. Wal-Mart employees restocking shelves at a northeast Las Vegas store on Thursday marveled at results of the random drug tests, which were done after the new facility director heard rumors of a significant drug problem among employees. Twenty-eight people were fired, including seven employees who refused to be tested. It's the latest development in attempts to clean up the shelter, where overcrowding and disease led to 1,000 animals being euthanized in February.

"This sure explains a lot," one worker said.

LISA KIM BACH

ALLEGATIONS ABOUT HER INABILITY TO STAY AWAKE ON THE BENCH have hounded District Judge Elizabeth Halverson since she took office and contributed to the Nevada Judicial Discipline Commission's decision to suspend her last month.

A number of witnesses told the commission about Halverson's courtroom naps during a closed-door hearing on July 16 in Las Vegas. Transcripts from the hearing, which were made public last week, revealed that Chief Deputy District Attorney Lisa Luzaich Rego was one of those witnesses.

Rego testified that she once told a defense attorney before a trial in Halverson's courtroom that she would throw something at the judge if she fell asleep. Halverson attorney John Arrascada then asked Rego about a previous statement in which the prosecutor said her plan had not succeeded because the defense attorney was in her way.

"So ma'am, my question is, you were going to commit a battery on a sitting judge?" Arrascada asked Rego.

"No," the witness replied.

"You've been a prosecutor 15 years?" Arrascada asked.

"Yes, more than that," Rego said.

"Is willfully throwing something at someone a battery?" Arrascada asked.

"No," the prosecutor answered. "A battery requires contact."

CARRI GEER THEVENOT

BELFAST TELEGRAPH

Visitor has some fun despite loathing

A recent Las Vegas travel piece in a Belfast newspaper read, in places, like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" if Hunter S. Thompson had instead been a vacationing resident of Northern Ireland.

"We'd come for a week, and a week is a long time in Vegas," Oliver Duff of the Belfast Telegraph began. "The city is insane, a carnival of escapism, posturing and pretense."

Duff continued, "Any more than three or four days self-medicating on alcohol, on big spending, on soft nudity, sunshine and oxygenated gaming rooms, on adrenalin and absolute excess, and your morals and behavioral norms slip. You want to stop indulging but enjoy it too much. You should cut the booze, even for a day, but freak out at the horrible reality that sobriety might expose. So you drink through the nausea, dry throat, headache, sweating and paranoia. Only a non-negotiable return plane ticket can safeguard you against irreversible decline: Without that you'll stay 30 years and end up driving cabs. Yet against my expectations, and against this backdrop of madness, we had an absolute riot."