EDITORIAL: Keep close eye on constable

The Las Vegas Township constable’s office will close come January, having been abolished by the Clark County Commission. But the next five months can’t go fast enough as Constable John Bonaventura continues to make a mockery of his elected post. Lately, it seems not even a week can pass without more troubling or even outlandish news coming out of the office.

Most recently, the Review-Journal’s Ben Botkin reported on July 14 that Bonaventura ordered the shredding of documents from an internal investigation that determined his second-in-command, Deputy Chief Dean Lauer, had used office resources to look up information on adult film actresses. The constable ordered the documents destroyed at an April 2013 meeting, a month after commissioners voted to shut down the office once Bonaventura’s term ends, in January. The Review-Journal obtained a recording of the meeting and offered to play it for Bonaventura, who declined the to listen to it while denying he gave the order to destroy the records and saying that Deputy Chief Lauer hadn’t used the office’s database service to look up adult actresses.

Not surprisingly, no legitimate law enforcement purpose for the searches was ever identified. Equally not surprising, it wasn’t the first time a tape leaked from Bonaventura’s office. In May, Mr. Botkin reported on an expletive-laden telephone conversation between Bonaventura and Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins that included discussions on the decision to abolish the office and Bonaventura’s now failed run for County Commission in the June primaries.

Just a week later, on June 3, Mr. Botkin reported on an alarming recording in which Bonaventura said the best revenge for the forced closure of his office would be selling off all assets and spending nearly $4 million to keep the money from Clark County officials. In that April recording, Bonaventura says, “The county’s screwing us left and right,” before talking about staging a “sidewalk sale” to sell off the office’s equipment before it shuts down. The constable’s office had a balance of $1 million at the end of June, down from $5 million when Bonaventura took office in 2010.

And of course, there’s the potential class-action lawsuit over wrongly ticketing drivers who had out-of-state license plates, and the recent revelations of improper reporting of contributions to his commission campaign.

With each passing week, Bonaventura becomes a bigger parody of himself, though it’s gotten to a point where it’s not funny. He’s conducting himself like someone who has nothing to lose. But this is an elected official in a public office conducting public business.

Bonaventura has taken the public for enough of a ride. The Metropolitan Police Department and the county need to keep a very close eye on him and make sure he doesn’t have a grand finale of incompetence and arrogance.