CCSN plans no action in case
Community College of Southern Nevada President Richard Carpenter said Thursday that he isn’t going to take any action against his construction chief, whose office and home were raided by state investigators Wednesday.
“I don’t have any basis to,” Carpenter said. “If the attorney general finds an indictable offense, even then, people are innocent until proven guilty. I don’t know the college has a legal right to take action.”
CCSN Associate Vice President for Facilities, Operations and Management Bob Gilbert had his office at CCSN’s Cheyenne campus searched by investigators for the Nevada attorney general’s office. Earlier this year, college employees alleged that Gilbert had abused his position to get discounted work and materials for a home he had built. There also were allegations that he had stolen equipment owned by the college.
Gilbert could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Carpenter said investigators seized eight computers and several boxes of paperwork, including “any piece of paper that … looked like it might have anything to do with construction.”
He said investigators allowed the college to copy each hard drive before the computers were taken, and each computer has been replaced.
Authorities also served a search warrant at a Henderson-based construction company, WGDL Inc., sources in the attorney general’s office said.
Carpenter said CCSN police in March, at Gilbert’s request, investigated several pieces of equipment at Gilbert’s four-acre ho me off Kyle Canyon Road near Mount Charleston.
The CCSN officers checked serial numbers on equipment at Gilbert’s home, and none of the numbers were on lists of serial numbers for CCSN equipment, Carpenter said.
The attorney general’s office told CCSN officials afterward that they weren’t going to pursue a case against Gilbert, Carpenter said Thursday.
“So when they showed up yesterday, we were both surprised and baffled,” he said.
Higher education system Chancellor Jim Rogers said he wasn’t aware of the details of the case, but that the attorney general’s office might have better resources to investigate the incident than the college does.
“We’re not in the investigating business,” he said. “We may not have gone deep enough or be sophisticated enough to handle this.”
