Can you really go to jail in Las Vegas just for standing on a bridge? A new ordinance going into effect in the middle of this month says “yes” you can! And if you do get arrested, you might be banned from downtown Las Vegas for a year!
There are new ways to go to jail in Las Vegas, and one of them begins next week! Plus, if you do get arrested you might not be welcomed in Sin City for up to a year! In what sounds like a joke, the simple act of standing on a pedestrian bridge in Las Vegas could get you locked up for 6 months! And while that might seem ridiculous or even funny, Clark County Commissioners were not laughing when they passed this new ordinance.
Simply put, the Commissioners say that standing on a pedestrian bridge is now illegal due to it being a “safety concern”. However, what’s particularly odd about this new law is that these pedestrian bridges have been in place since 1995… and they’re just now becoming a safety concern? It seems to me that the timing of this ban is just a bit suspicious, especially in light of what happened at the F1 race back in November. With ass hat security guards acting like storm troopers toward anyone on a pedestrian bridge.
During the race it was the F1 people and their hired group of enforcers and thugs who were trying to intimidate people… getting up in their faces, yelling at them,forcing them off of these bridges… and to the best of my knowledge, simply standing on a pedestrian bridge in Las Vegas had never been a problem before… not for over 27 years… not until just that moment. And as far as I could tell, there has never been an accident on a Las Vegas pedestrian bridge that was caused by someone simply standing there. I’m not saying that it hasn’t happened, just that I can’t find a record of it. What I do know for certain, however, is that Formula 1 brought in over $1.2 billion for the city of Las Vegas, so… you do the math!
Those who support this new law and helped push it forward say that it was not written for tourists… people like you and me. It was written for panhandlers, homeless people, con artists, criminals, even street performers... people they don’t want on their pedestrian bridges or on the escalators in stairs leading to them. Those are the folks that need to go to jail in Las Vegas. So with that in mind, what do you think about this new law? Let us know!
And finally this week, if you do go to jail in Las Vegas for standing on a pedestrian bridge (or any other crime in Nevada for that matter) the mayor of Las Vegas might not want you back in her city… at least not for a while. City Council Members voted unanimously to establish a new “Order Out Corridor“, meaning that a court can order you or anyone else out of downtown Las Vegas, including the Fremont Street area, for up to one year as a condition of a deferred decision or a suspended sentence.
A similar law to banned people from the Las Vegas Strip is currently being challenged in the Nevada State Supreme Court… so we’re going to have to wait and see how that turns out. In the meantime, don’t worry about it… go to Las Vegas have a good time. Just remember to keep it moving, or you too could go to jail in Las Vegas.