LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — It’s been nearly a year since the Spring Mountain Corridor business owners faced a burglary spree.
34-year-old Cedric Hasan was arrested last November after he was linked to dozens of break-ins. Hasan was originally facing 34 counts of burglary.
He ultimately took a guilty plea deal earlier this month, and he was sentenced to 8-20 years in prison.
Months later, crime within the Spring Mountain Corridor continues to plague Chinatown business owners, and Las Vegas Metro Police are calling on the community for help as they work to combat the recent uptick in car burglaries.
“The commitment that I have in this area of command is expected phone call, you’re going to be contacted, we’re going to do everything we can to solve your crime, and he got a significant amount of prison time,” LVMPD Spring Valley Area Command Capt. Jimmy Lorson said.
While the Spring Valley area command Capt. Lorson says overall crime numbers are down; he says what is up within the Spring Mountain Corridor is a 100 percent uptick in car burglaries compared to this time last year.
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“Until something is at zero percent, it’s always going to be an issue, so one of the issues that we have is auto burglaries. So, bringing that to the attention of the community and how they can help us combat that issue,” Capt. Lorson said.
After already having tackled a string of business break-ins and burglaries last year, the new wave of crime, consisting of 8 currently reported car burglaries within the Spring Mountain Corridor, has many Chinatown and Shanghai Plaza business owners on high alert.
“It’s a hidden gem where tourists are finding the great food through social media, but they are also finding it may not be safe for them to come also as well. Most of the crimes that are happening is really, I think they call it grab and go, where they smash the car, grab what they see inside, and go,” AAPI Chamber Founder & President, Catherine Francisco said.
One of the many ways, Capt. Lorson says he hopes to address the issue by being more proactive with local business owners.
“We try to get the business owners to understand putting up signage or even when they come in, tell the patrons you might want to lock up all of your valuables or bring them into the business instead of leaving them in the car because it becomes an easy target. Getting people to understand that communication is key to everything. When we see that we need their help in reporting the crime, it can just be reporting it to the businesses because that is traditionally what happens, is they’ll report it to the business, but then they don’t report it to the police department, and that puts us behind in the investigation,” Capt. Lorson added.
As LVMPD officers work to reduce crime within the Spring Mountain Corridor, other local leaders are also working to increase overall public safety within the area by adding a pedestrian flashing crosswalk along the Spring Mountain Corridor, a crosswalk along the same corridor along Jones, and a newly announced grant for Spring Mountain business owners.
“So the board of county commissioners really cares about Spring Mountain, so we’ve allocated $750,000 for a grant program that will allow business owners to make those security upgrades, to make public art upgrades, to facade upgrades to their properties, and it’s really just going to bring the cohesion of the Spring Mountain Corridor really up to a different level,” Clark County Commisoner Distct F commissioner Justin Jones said.
Overall, many of the business owners say they are looking forward to the growth in collaborations amongst the community, business owners, and LVMPD.
“I’ve never been this optimistic about the way that Chinatown is going right now with the support from the county commission, with the U.S. senators, with our local community, with our business owners. Like everybody seems to be getting on the same page,” said Fukuburger founder, Colin Fukunaga.
“I think having a lot of these community efforts and having volunteer people from the community to bridge the gap between the general public and the police department to see how we can collaborate and work together, and the overall goal is to improve public safety,” added Minja Yan who says a recent, a group of community mebers donated $50,000 for the installation of a LVMPD security camera within the Chinatown Plaza parking lot.
