So much is coming to Las Vegas over the next six months: The F1 race, dozens of U2 shows at the Sphere, the NBA mid-season championship games, the annual New Year's Eve bash on the Strip, the Super Bowl in February.
All that time, casino companies, tourists and locals will rely on Las Vegas Metropolitan Police to keep the peace. And they want it done by a police department that doesn’t do what so many others in this country have already done: draw negative attention with poor behavior.
But how do you do that when thousands of people are jam-packed together?
Meanwhile, people also want an explanation as to how police are working with ICE, federal immigration enforcement, especially after police arrested, then alerted ICE, to a man who was selling ice cream on the Strip. The man didn’t have a license.
Kevin McMahill was elected sheriff last fall, so the department and all 5,000 of its employees are his responsibility.
Las Vegas police were in the news recently, when an officer arrested a vendor at the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign. After the arrestee was released from jail, he was picked up by ICE, and was eventually released on bond. Questions arose because for years, Metro said it would only contact ICE if it arrested immigrants involved in violent crime.
It’s just one of the issues McMahill addressed in a wide-ranging interview on State of Nevada with host Joe Schoenmann.
This an incomplete, partial transcript of the interview.
On the vendor arrest
When I first took over as a sheriff, we were right smack dab at the beginning of a legislative session. I published an official LVMPD policy on our relationship with ICE and it basically says that if you are arrested for a violent felony, domestic violence or DUI, we will notify ICE if you're born in a foreign country. It's pretty clear.
So what happened in this particular case, which by the way, was really an unfair characterization … which is the whole point of why I released the rest of the video which was the body worn camera, and then the overhead shot from one of our crime cameras as well. Because what went viral on … the internet was when our officer had already been thrown to the ground … but … they take the part where he jumped back up and was pointing a Taser and yelling at the man. So the truth is, and this is useful for me to help get this information out, there is a law that was passed in regards to these vendors. However, the law has to enable the county and the city here to actually pass a law as to how it they want it to look … I believe they have until October to do that. They're in the middle of their listening sessions as to what they want that to be. But in no case, is it going to be allowed on the Strip or within I believe it's 1,500 feet of any of the casino properties.
… And so we'll see what comes out on the other end of this. But I do believe that, you know, the education piece of that was sort of lacking because everybody believed that the law was passed at the time.
In the case of the actual arrest, what also is not very well known, even though we've put it out there, that officer and that vendor had an interaction the day before. And there was clear communication in English, there was a clear warning that was given, which is exactly what we want them to do. We want them to start off at warning. But the next day we come back and then we have a completely different sort of interaction. So what have we done also, Joe, we've pushed out additional training. We also posted those signs (after the incident) in Spanish … that those vendors are not allowed to conduct business up there.
Some people have called into the program and said, you know that the man also had a warrant out for his arrest at the time. Is that the case?
Okay, so we didn't get to that part of it. And I don't want to I don't want you to think I'm shying away from it. So what ends up happening is he gets booked into the Clark County Detention Center. And before he's released, we run everybody for warrants. So sometimes while you're sitting in jail, you might have a warrant pop up in another jurisdiction. When we run a case, or when we run the individuals name, we run them through our local SCOPE. This the state system and the federal system, which is called NCIC, once it goes through the federal system and NCIC, it goes out to all of the federal agencies that could have potentially issued a warrant, that includes ICE. So once that comes back to say that he has a warrant for his arrest from ICE, we then notify ICE that we have him, and we're getting ready to release him. That's when ICE showed up to pick him up right after we released him. Now, I was surprised to hear that, quite frankly, that notification happens. But this is a long way from when we talked about detainers versus warrants. We still do not hesitate when you're supposed to be released from our jail, we are releasing you. But if the federal agency like any other law enforcement agency is there to pick you up on their on their federal warrant, then they're going to take you into custody,
(A question from a caller asked if the officer who arrested the vendor should have de-escalated the situation.)
I don't know what else a police officer is supposed to do. But when he gets thrown to the ground, he certainly would have been well within his rights to tase that individual. He didn't do that. I think that's a pretty classic case of de-escalation. But also to be very clear on what you're saying though: it is illegal now to do that work, okay? That the law that was passed by the Legislature hasn't changed anything yet. It is still illegal.
And he was also warned the day prior. The difference is that when the city and the county enact these ordinances, then we'll have a different law to move forward.
And, we still intend to warn people and to ask them to comply with the law, rather than to take enforcement action. I don't want to be in this vendor business. I have enough to do as a police department. But if you owned a business, and one of these carts showed up in front of your restaurant, and was taking business away from your restaurant, while you were, you know, paying for the brick and mortar, and the employees and all of those kinds of things, you'd have a different feeling about it too. So I hope cooler heads prevail as we move forward on this. That's why we're working with the various community groups and the other elected officials to try to find a way around this so that those individuals can go out and thrive in the businesses that they're trying to conduct in the locations that they're able to do it in.
Question from a listener: I work for the oldest gun shop in Las Vegas and we get a lot of traces for straw purchases and what we've noticed is people come in with Nevada IDs instead of driver's licenses or such, and then we … catch them with also a California driver's licenses, at which time we shut down the sale. But what can be done (by Metro) to help DMV to get these primary IDs from Californians, especially to help shut down this purchase problem?
That's a great question. I appreciate the work that you're doing out there, by the way to make sure you're not selling to those individuals. You know, but probably the general public does not know, we have the Crime Gun Intelligence Center. And we have the ability to trace cartridges and rounds and a number of other things as we look at the straw purchases of firearms. I do know that they use DMV, but I don't know to what level to be very candid with you, sir. So I'm not 100% Sure. But if you'll leave your number with the call taker, I will put you in touch directly with one of my folks and see if we can't get a better answer to that question for you.
(In mid-August, a former California police chief was bicycling and was struck by a driver, who fled the scene. Later, video surfaced from inside the vehicle. The 17-year-old driver is now being charged with homicide and prosecutors are asking that he be tried as an adult.)
When did Metro become aware of the video? And how much weight does that have in this case?
Well, when Mr. (Andreas) Probst was (hit), we didn't really have anything to go on. Very candidly, (it) was one of those rare whodunnits. And we became aware of that video and obviously made that arrest and upped the charge to homicide.
You know, there's a lot of online stuff that goes back and forth. And I know a number of reporters have been attacked over what was said. But early on, we thought it was an accident, we did not think that it was a homicide, right? It's not all that common for somebody to be driving, or riding their bicycle down the street to be rear-ended intentionally by two individuals with the intent to kill them. And so that's been an interesting case all along. You know, the fact that he was a former police chief from California certainly added to the tragedy, personally, for me, and he spent a lot of time out there trying to do a lot of good things, and then to be senselessly murdered while you're riding your bike here in Las Vegas is just not acceptable. And so I think we've put together an exceptional case on that. But it just, it was one of those ones, Joe, that I mentioned, that sort of shocks the consciousness as we, as we look around at the things that happen in our streets in this valley,
On recruitment of police and dispatchers
So when I took over, we had about 300 budgeted unfilled positions for a police officer. Today, I'm happy to report that we've already cut that in half. And I would imagine by the next Academy that we start, we're going to only be about 30 to 40 positions down what we're currently budgeted and authorized.
More importantly, though, then, once I fill those positions, then we can actually request additional positions through our budgetary process that will start in January.
One other thing to just mention on that is that on (Sept.) 23rd at the Resorts World, we have a massive recruiting event. So people are going to be able to show up at Resorts World through their partnership with us. And we're actually taking the written test, the physical tests and doing a number of things to get that out of the way very quickly. We already have over 500 people signed up for that particular event.
However, I do want to mention to you that probably the most difficult staffing challenge that I had was at the beginning of the year, when I took over, we were at only about 50% staff for our dispatch center, our 911 calls and our 311 calls.
And as it stands now, I've taken every light duty police officer that we have, I've taken volunteers, I've mandated overtime. And I've recently hired 85 new call takers and dispatchers and they're all in training, and they won't graduate training until November and so to the public, I want you to know that I'm acutely aware of the problems with 911 and 311. We have a fix that's coming very shortly, we're also looking at using artificial intelligence to help us sort of go through a number of those calls so that it doesn't necessarily require a human to, to answer each one of them.
On the nascent “wellness bureau," putting “humanity” into policing
Yeah, the human injecting humanity into policing really became the fundamental philosophy, the redefining of what community- based policing is here at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Because as I mentioned to you before, I think what happens as you look around the country, and you see some of the challenges -- but you know, whether you talk about Minneapolis or Memphis or LA in some of these just horrendous beatings that we've had at the hands of police or the deaths at the hands of police -- the reality of it is, is that if we would have had one officer inject humanity into any one of those situations, those individuals would not be dead…
And so, as I went about creating this wellness bureau, the important part was, is that we had to go in and look at wellness, from the holistic perspective to understand heart, mind, body and soul. And so, as we continue to go in there to take care of our police officers and our civilians-- because that's the that's the biggest misconception that a lot of people also have is that I'm only focused on cops.
Well, the reality of it is, is that think about those dispatchers that take those 911 calls all day every day, and never get to see the resolution of the call. Think about the crime scene analysts that go out there day in and day out and process those brutal, horrible traffic accidents and homicide scenes, and rapes and robberies, and all of those kinds of things…
And then you start to compare that to 30 years of cumulative trauma of seeing all of those things that we have to hear and see and feel and smell over the course of a period of time … those moments will live with you forever. And that's why we have sleep issues. And that's why we have problems. And so I've just decided to completely throw out the old way of doing it. And with this Wellness Bureau, we've hired a number of licensed clinical social workers to actually be on payroll at Metro so that we can start to deal with some of the challenges … as well as we're bringing a doctor on for the ability to sort of manage what wellness looks like, because the bottom line … is I'm not an expert on wellness, right?
So what I know how to do though, is to build teams and to bring people together that are experts on it, to find a way to radically take care of our cops in a different way than we ever have. Because I think if we do that, then we'll feel that from them. And they'll take care of this community in a way they never have.
You know me, I'm not a very patient man, I like to get things done very rapidly. This isn't even close to where I want it to be yet. But the reasoning behind that is if I lose the faith of those men and women that are out there working for me right now, and they don't believe that this is entirely confidential, that it won't mess up promotions and transfers and all those kinds of things, then they'll never take advantage of the services that we're going to provide to them. And so … yearly, when you go in for your physical during your birth month, we'll also have these mental health check ins. And my intention is, is that once we've arrived at having the Mental Health Bureau fully in place that you will actually go to the Mental Health Bureau, we will bring your physical results back, we'll have a nutritionist there that you can talk to about the blood results, we'll have a doctor that you can talk to about, you know, fitness and exercise, we have all of those resources there for you.
Guest: Kevin McMahill, sheriff, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
