The Fourth of July is two days away. While most of us enjoy a night of grilling and fireworks with family and friends, it is not exactly a relaxing night for police.
However, Las Vegas Metro Police Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said this year the department's response to illegal fireworks will be "far more effective" than in years past.
"Aside from regular patrol officers having the responsibility of responding to those calls for service that come in, we also have a number of teams that are out in conjunction with fire department folks as well... We're going to have three teams of six officers as well as four firefighters," he said.
McMahill said the teams were starting up on Tuesday. Anyone caught with illegal fireworks can face civil and criminal charges that include hundreds of dollars in fines.
"The challenge is they start a lot of fires, a lot of people get hurt every year," he said.
The undersheriff explained that one of the problems is fireworks that are illegal in Clark County can be legally sold at Native American reservations around Southern Nevada.
People will buy the illegal fireworks there and bring them into Clark County. Only fireworks labeled as 'safe and sane'can legally be sold and set up off in the county.
Instead of buying illegal fireworks, McMahill suggests finding one of the many fireworks displays put on around the Southern Nevada, including the show along the Las Vegas Strip, Heritage Park in Henderson, Veterans Memorial Park in Boulder City and Petrack Park in Pahrump.
While illegal fireworks continue to be a challenge for the department, McMahill believes it is making headway on a far more serious crime.
He said Metro has seen a reduction in homicides this year compared with the past few years. In 2017, there were 141 homicides but so far this year there have been 40.
"We're really on track, I believe, to have a historic reduction in the number of homicides that we have within our jurisdiction," he said.
McMahill said there were several contributing factors to the drop in homicides, including the addition of new officers to the ranks and stronger efforts to develop relationships in neighbors with higher levels of violence.
"We have a level of engagement from our area command captains that I think is unprecedented," he said, "I'm not saying it was bad before but... you really have to take this policing personal. One death is too many."
McMahill said those captains are working closely with the community they're assigned to and closely with the homicide detectives, who he said are, "doing as good as they've ever done."
He also said Metro employed what they called the "hot spot policing strategy," which targets parts of each area command that has long struggled with crime.
While Metro is making progress in the area of homicides, law enforcement across the country is having to decide just how much help they'll give federal authorities - if President Donald Trump follows through with his threat to increase raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Undersheriff McMahill was firm in his response.
"I don't know how the sheriff or I could be any more clear on this. We will not ever participate in roundups with ICE," he said, "We have enough on our plate. Immigration is a federal issue and we will not participate in those types of events."
However, in response to a callers question about a program known as 287G, McMahill said the department did extend its participation in the program for another year.
He said the 287G program and ICE raids are often confused but they are separate issues. 287G allows Metro to go through ICE data to see if anyone arrested and booked into the Clark County Detention Center for a felony or a gross misdemeanor is wanted by immigration officials.
"We have never hid the fact that we do use that mostly for identification purposes of foreign-born individuals," he said.
He also pointed out that only a fraction of the people who are arrested and booked into CCDC actually have an ICE detainer and only a fraction of those people are actually picked up and detained by ICE.
Undersheriff Kevin McMahill, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
