EDITORIAL: Police mustn’t cut accident response

Lobbying failed to produce new revenue for the Metropolitan Police Department. Perhaps some public pain will do the trick.

Mere weeks after the Clark County Commission again refused to increase the sales tax rate to fill the department’s budget hole, police are following through on a promise to cut a key service: response to traffic accidents.

The department assures the public that there is no cause-and-effect relationship between the two actions, but taxpayers have every reason to believe otherwise. Thanks to the 2013 legislation that gave the commission the ability to increase the sales tax, Sheriff Doug Gillespie now has immediate access to about $140 million in reserves to preserve services in the short term. But Metro has long-term funding shortfalls that the commission and the Las Vegas City Council have no interest in addressing — they’re too busy handing out pay raises to other bargaining groups and preserving less-important programs. Elected officials won’t take notice of the police funding problem unless the public starts squealing.

And squeal they will, starting perhaps as soon as Monday. Las Vegas police say they will stop responding to minor traffic accidents. The department line: No blood, no ticket. If a crash results in property damage and no injuries, drivers are advised to exchange information, take photographs and let insurance companies sort it out. If you want to submit an accident report after the fact, forget about it. Substations won’t take them.

Police say determining fault and issuing citations for fender benders — the surest way for insurance companies to sort good drivers from bad — takes too long. They want to focus on serious accidents and preventing fatalities.

But this strategy could make the valley’s already-lawless driving culture even worse. Now drivers have even less fear of repercussions. What’s to stop someone who rear-ends another vehicle from refusing to provide a license and proof of insurance? What happens if you’re hit by an uninsured driver, but no one’s hurt? The police aren’t coming, after all. Can you say “road rage”?

Besides, plenty of people suffer injuries in accidents that don’t initially reveal themselves or require treatment. And even if someone is injured, there’s no guarantee police will come. Paramedics don’t write tickets.

Drivers can count on insurance premiums rising as a result of this policy change, which will put a much higher investigatory burden on insurers and send more claims to court.

Sheriff Gillespie should reverse this decision. And if he won’t, accident response must be a top issue in this year’s sheriff’s campaign, which Mr. Gillespie is sitting out. Making the public pay for not paying more for police is wrong.