By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
The office of Mesquite Constable has been filled after being vacant since January. The Clark County Commission appointed Mesquite Police Sergeant Wyatt Oliver to fill the office in an action taken at a meeting held Tuesday, April 2 in Las Vegas.
“I am excited for the opportunity to serve the citizens of Mesquite in a different aspect,” Oliver told the Commissioners at the meeting. “I feel it is important this position needs to stay in Mesquite and represent the constituents there, and I am happy to do it.”
Oliver has been with Mesquite Police Department (MPD) since 2007 holding a variety of roles during that time. He started off as a corrections officer, later served as a patrol officer and then as a detective. He also worked on the local SWAT team before being promoted to a Sergeant five years ago where he has served as Public Information Officer and in other supervisory roles for the department.
Oliver will be taking over the role from former constable Duane Thurston who has held the office for the past 29 years.
In January, Thurston became ineligible to continue in the office because he had not met certification requirements set forth in a state law passed in the 2019 legislature.
This law requires all constables in communities with populations of 15,000 people or more, to complete Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) certification within one year of taking office.
Previous to this law, the population requirement for the training was set at communities of 150,000 people or more. The threshold reduction brought both Boulder City and Mesquite into the certification requirement.
Thurston, who had served as Mesquite’s constable since 1994, was reelected in 2022 and sworn into office in January 2023. Thus he was required to be POST certified by January 2, 2024.
In a recent interview with The Progress, Thurston said that he had spent most of the past year working to obtain the certification.
He had first gone to the academy last April, but was unable to pass the initial physical exam.
“So I went home and joined CrossFit and got a personal trainer who got me in shape,” Thurston said. “When I went back in October I passed the physical that time. I was happy with that.”
But the rigorous load of classwork that followed proved to be too much of an obstacle for Thurston, who said that he has suffered from a lifelong learning disability.
“It was 10 hour days, Monday to Thursday, with a lot of memorization,” he said of the coursework. “With my learning disability, I couldn’t learn it that fast.”
Thurston ended up failing out of the program last fall.
According to state law, constables who do not become POST certified in the required amount of time must forfeit their office.
Since the office was left vacant, the duties of the Mesquite constable have been carried out by Bunkerville constable Jace Haviland since January. Haviland is not required to be POST certified because Bunkerville falls under the 15,000 population threshold.
The duty of constable is in the realm of civil law as opposed to criminal law which is handled by MPD. Among other things, the constable carries out evictions, serves civil court papers and processes abandoned vehicle complaints.
“Basically what you are is a paper server,” Thurston said. “That is all it is. I’ve been doing it for 29 years. When the POST certification requirement came up I really wanted to see if I could do it at my age. But there is a lot of material there that you just don’t need in this job, at least not in Mesquite.”
In February, the vacancy came before the County Commission as an issue that needed resolution. The state law gave the Commissioners two options: 1.) abolish the office as had already been done in Boulder City; or 2.) appoint a new constable within a period of time required by statute.
“I don’t want to abolish the office,” said Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick in the February meeting. “Mesquite is far enough out there that I think we need to provide some Clark County services there.”
Kirkpatrick said that the whole situation has stemmed from unintended consequences of the 2019 law. “I tried to tell (the legislators) that the 15,000 threshold was too low with Mesquite at more than 21,000. But it fell on deaf ears. So here we are. And we can’t really address it here. I do think that it needs to be revisited in the next legislative session.”
The Commissioners voted to continue to allow the Bunkerville constable to serve the Mesquite community on an interim basis. They then acted to put the Mesquite constable’s office on the ballot for the upcoming election. Candidates could then file and run for the seat allowing the voters to decide how to fill the vacancy.
Oliver was the only person to file his candidacy for the position. “I heard about the issues with the vacancy and I felt like it was important enough to keep the position here locally instead of it going somewhere else,” he said in an interview last week. “That was the ultimate deciding factor for me.”
Thurston said that he had made the decision not to run again. “I could have filed again and, if I won, I would have had another year after that to get certified,” Thurston said. “But my wife and I talked about it; and we decided not to do it. So I have officially retired.”
Thurston said that a main factor in that decision was the POST certification which would have cost $8,000 in tuition fees, plus materials, travel costs and hotel expenses during the ten-week training. All of that for a part-time position offering about $1,800 per year plus health benefits in compensation, he said.
Thurston expressed his gratitude to the voters for allowing him to serve in the position for so long. “I’ve enjoying serving the community,” he said. “It has always been well worth it and fulfilling knowing that I was serving and helping keep the rates down so that local folks could afford legal fees if they had to.”
Oliver said that he admired Thurston for his many years of service. “He has kept the job for almost 25 years!” he said. “Anyone willing to dedicate that much time to public service; that’s a mark of a great member of our community.”
