News
Plea deal raises questions about ties between cops and pimps
Note: The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly protecting certain pimps at the expense of their competitors. Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melanie Tobiasson says Metro’s failure to investigate one suspected pimp believed to be targeting the children of law enforcement forced her to turn to the […]
Discrimination victims win at Dotty’s
The company that owns Dotty’s, the ubiquitous strip mall slot parlors, will pay a $3.5 million to victims of discrimination to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC said in a statement Wednesday. “Since at least 2012, Nevada Restaurant Services violated federal law by maintaining a well-established companywide practice […]
Unhealthy and unregulated: Conditions in local shelters draw complaints
The Shade Tree Shelter in Las Vegas has a unique mission, describing itself as “the only 24-hour accessible shelter designed specifically to meet the needs of women and children in Southern Nevada.” But women and children staying at the shelter have also been exposed to excessive black mold, suffering respiratory related illnesses as a result, […]
Daughters of police, judges lured into prostitution
Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melanie Tobiasson says she gave Metro Police detectives a road map that may have prevented three murders involving the sex trade, but vice detectives, under investigation by the FBI for allegedly protecting pimps, failed to act. Tobiasson drew criticism from friends and foes alike when she alleged on KLAS-TV […]
DA primary reflects Democrats in transition
In the 1980s, a group of centrists, including a young governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton, formed the Democratic Leadership Council. Its goal was to shift the party to the right, and away from a declining political left that had suffered Richard Nixon’s landslide victory over George McGovern in 1972, and then found itself no […]
Laxalt’s chief investigator pursues case against daughter’s former pimp
Before Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt named Roland Swanson as his Chief Investigator in 2015, Swanson, according to his bio on the AG’s website, led investigations for the FBI’s public integrity unit in Las Vegas. Now, his office is involved in the prosecution of convicted pimp Kobe Hogue, who happens to be the former boyfriend […]
Send them away, sweep them away… A look at local policy on homelessness
Las Vegas officials claim that “by offering a one-stop shop with access to medical, housing and employment services through a variety of partners” at the city’s Courtyard Homeless Resource Center, “the cycle of homelessness can be broken.” However, the most used service at the Courtyard isn’t providing medical care, a home or a job, according […]
Culinary Union fights for immigration protections as TPS recipients ponder uncertain futures
Immigrants working on the Las Vegas Strip and in Downtown Las Vegas could have the strongest job protections in the country, if the Culinary Union gets its way.
State lawmaker: Metro misapplying law by refusing to supply information
An effort by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to deny information to journalists is a misapplication of the law, according to one state lawmaker. LVMPD recently stopped providing information to Nevada Current, citing a 2017 amendment to state law requiring that reporters be affiliated with “a newspaper, press association or commercially operated, federally licensed […]
Supreme Court ruling on gay couple’s wedding cake delights Laxalt
Attorney General and governor candidate Adam Laxalt applauded a U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving a baker’s refusal to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. “Today the Supreme Court reinforced that the Constitution is not a zero-sum game, and that we can respect diversity and protect against unlawful discrimination while also respecting and protecting […]
Burned Investors Livid Over Guinn Comeback
Jeff Guinn, son of former Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn, who emerged unscathed from an FBI investigation and federal grand jury only to have his company’s mortgage brokers license revoked by Nevada regulators, is back in the hard money private lending business. In the decade since the mortgage meltdown, Guinn’s former investors in the now-defunct Aspen […]
Fines & fees sent nursing mother to jail for traffic tickets
Leslie Turner was arrested in 2016 when her son was four months old. Her crime: Failure to make a payment for a traffic ticket. In Nevada, traffic violations are treated as a criminal infraction, meaning missing a payment is seen as a failure to appear in court, rendering the person who got the ticket subject […]