Carson City Sheriff's Office conducting crosswalk stings

A sense of privilege emerged riding shotgun in a CCSO Chevy Blazer through the streets of Carson City on April 16. A sense of protection, invulnerability even. It faded in a matter of minutes.

“I would say about three times a year we try to get these done, amongst other saturation type of patrols we do,” said CCSO Sgt. Matt Smith, who was driving. “Saturation patrols meaning we pick a designated area. It could be Carson Street. It could be Highway 50. It could be other areas around the town where we overly saturate with our guys from traffic enforcement. So that way we can really make our presence known, try to really curb the things that we see.”

The Appeal had contacted CCSO to participate in a crosswalk sting as part of a series on pedestrian safety. The location for the operation was Adaline Steet where it intersects with North Carson Street, a 25 mph zone. Just north stood the former Frontier Motel. To the east, following the unsignalized crosswalk across four lanes and a turn lane, stood Antojitos La Jefa Mexican Restaurant. Quesadillas, gorditas and tacos were advertised in the windows.

The confidence of a police escort diminished as each officer took their posts, two on motorcycles. Orange cones sat 162 feet outside the crosswalk in both directions, per guidelines from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and a fluorescent-green vest had been provided to the decoy as well as careful instructions of what to do and not to do. Lingering on the street corner, then stepping out before traffic felt like a shell coming off — a shock of sunlight, asphalt, noise.

Since 2013, 19 pedestrians have died in crashes in Carson City, the Appeal found in an investigation. The number of factors that lead to a crash seems bewildering: what the pedestrian was doing at the moment of impact, what the driver was doing, the physical space itself, the striping, the lighting, variables of time….

A second can make a difference, Smith said.

Smith, 43, supervises CCSO’s traffic management unit.

“It’s very difficult to respond to these things because we may not know them, but we feel they’re all family since we’re all a large community here,” he said.

Of crash investigations, Smith said, “It takes quite an emotional toll to go through it because we’re reliving the driver’s angle. We’re reliving the pedestrian’s, and we’re telling their stories from all the different sides.”

There was no crash during the crosswalk sting April 16, though three cars were stopped for failing to yield to the decoy, a reporter acting as a pedestrian. Two of the drivers were cited, and one was given a warning. The operation lasted about 20 minutes with 14 individual crossings. Some cars honked in annoyance at other cars stopping for the decoy, Deputy Jessica Dickey later reported. Other cars stopped dutifully seeing Deputy Smith hidden near the Mexican restaurant. More than a few passersby waved.

“They’re agreeing with what we’re doing,” Smith said. “They know the dangers for pedestrians here in Carson City.”

During the operation, an older man with a white beard passed on the east sidewalk. Coincidentally, he was wearing a shirt that said neighborhood streets are “not racetracks.” Shortly after, a grandmother, Maria Acevedo, pushed her grandson in a stroller across the staked-out crosswalk without incident. She didn’t speak much English but raised her fingers to her eyes and then pointed to the street while swiveling her head. She indicated she always looks for cars before crossing.

“There’s a false sense of security when a pedestrian is in a crosswalk,” Deputy Jim LaChew said after the sting. “The laws of Nevada may be on your side, but the laws of physics are not.”

LaChew worried about pedestrian inattentiveness, especially among the city’s youth. He said the cases he’d seen could have been prevented.

“When you wake up in the morning and get behind the wheel, you don’t think ‘I’m going to go out and kill someone’ … You got your suspect in the incident, but they’re your typical day-to-day citizen. They didn’t wake up expecting this, and now here they have hurt someone in their own community. It can be devastating for them and devastating for everybody on scene … They’re just nasty. There’s nothing nice about a pedestrian crash.”

Dickey said she bought her teenaged son a 1997 Chevy pickup without “bells and whistles,” so he can focus on driving and not technology.

“It’s not placing the blame on one or the other necessarily,” she said. “It’s saying that everybody needs to pay more attention.”

Dickey mentioned Lexi Rodriguez, 14, who died Jan. 28 at Nye Lane and North Carson Street, not far from the site of the April 16 sting.

“Lexi hit us harder than, I think, any of the other ones did because we all have kids,” she said.

Smith, father of two daughters, maintained pedestrian crashes can be prevented, or at least mitigated, through enforcement, education, engineering or some combination of all three. He said he works with city and state engineers to help identify problematic intersections. He’s also been visiting elementary schools trying to teach children at a young age how to be safe on the street. One thing concerning him is more aggressive and impatient driving since the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Collectively, we have to do better,” he said.

On the way back to the police station, Smith and his passenger observed a jaywalker on Roop Street. The man displayed the same inattention that LaChew had feared; he was not far from a designated crosswalk but had taken another route.

“We don’t want to keep going to these,” Smith said after the man reached the other side.

The sergeant had the window of the Chevy down, and the man saw him — a visual warning.

“It does take an emotional toll to do these,” Smith said.

The goal, he said, is to get loved ones home safely.

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