Las Vegas Metropolitan Police want to raise taxes on tourists and citizens, while providing Culinary Workers Union 226 services for free, costing nearly $200,000
By Brad Tidwell
Culinary Workers Union strikers insult Las Vegas Casino patrons while Vegas Police look on
Police on the Vegas Strip appear to be playing politics with taxpayer money, claiming they aren’t paid enough to do their jobs. They claim it’s so bad they might not be able to do their jobs without more police officers, and yet that hasn’t stopped them from happily reporting for duty to the city’s unions.
Las Vegas Metro for the last year has loudly lobbied public officials for a sales tax increase and — claiming poverty — has even reduced its public law-enforcement activity.
All the while, however, the department was also gifting Culinary Union Local 226 with over $195,000 worth of free police services.
That’s enough to cover total compensation for two officers that the department says it needs.
In fact, Vegas Metro Police has only charged the Culinary Union Local 226 once — giving it an $8,858 bill following a civil disobedience “event” conducted by the union where they arrested over 100 Culinary Worker protesters. Even then, that amount was for only half of the full cost of the job!
In the Nevada Journal story, Officer Jesse Roybal, Las Vegas Police’s Public Information Officer, was quoted saying “It is our policy not to charge organizers of labor disputes,” as if by not charging the union for disrupting business, they are somehow staying neutral. What the Culinary Workers Union is doing right now is anything but neutral – targeting nine specific Las Vegas casinos for contract negotiations.
Despite the fact that the Culinary Union calls events like this “informational pickets,” these strikes have repeatedly turned ugly. The issue at stake: Obamacare made their healthcare costs go up. So now, the police want higher taxes to pay for their free protection for Culinary Union to harass Las Vegas casinos for not paying more for their Obamacare cost increases.
The Vegas Metro Police claim that they provide a fair standard for providing services is laughable on its face. This policy of exempting unions from the same standard as any other business is not only unfair and damaging to the Las Vegas business community, but also harmful to the taxpayers as well.
If the Vegas Police aren’t able to do their jobs because they need more resources, the first place they should be looking isn’t the taxpayer’s wallet. They first need to think good and hard about the hundreds of thousands of dollars they leave on the table when they choose the union side of a dispute.
Brad Tidwell is the web editor for Americans for Limited Government.
