☰
It seems the police officer had it a bit backwards.
The street performers aren’t "protected by some ridiculous and obviously outdated law that had not yet been repealed." Rather, they’re protected by no less than the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the abridging of the freedom of speech, among other freedoms (religion, the press, peaceful assembly, and redress of grievances).
Amendments to the Constitution can be repealed, but only if a new amendment overturns the old one, as happened with the Twenty-first Amendment, which superseded the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition).
That said, the City of Las Vegas has been trying to "clean up" Fremont Street for years. The latest policy went into effect in November 2015. As we covered more fully in the QoD on January 20, 2016, it confines performers, panhandlers, buskers, and other tip-seekers to six-foot-diameter "performance zones" painted to look like oversize poker chips. A 40-foot buffer separates one busker from another; there’s also a 100-foot separation from Fremont Street concerts. "Performers" enter a daily lottery for the privilege of two-hour intervals in the zones. Thus, buskers can’t congregate in crowded areas, nor can they hound passersby.
You can cut a wide swath around them. Or, as you say, you can avoid downtown altogether. But the street people aren’t going away anytime soon.