Metro Sheriff says violent crime increase has slowed, credits new ‘neighborhood engagement’ team

Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Joe Lombardo on Wednesday addressed the public on violent crime in the valley — an update from his last talk in April, when homicides were up by about 135 percent compared with April 2015.

As of the Wednesday address, homicides were still up, Lombardo said, but the increase gap had dropped to 62 percent since April, which he said “shows we are going in the right direction.”

“If you look at violent crime across the board, not just homicides, we are leveling out,” Lombardo said. He added that property crimes have decreased 6 percent.

Lombardo credited the slowing of violent crime to a new neighborhood engagement team, a centralized unit that was created about 10 weeks ago to serve as a “cohesive team” to directly address violent crime.

The team was funded by a more than $400,000 contribution to Metro from the city of Las Vegas, and it is composed of about 20 officers, four detectives, a couple of sergeants and a lieutenant, Lombardo said.

In the last 10 weeks, the team alone was responsible for 419 felony and gross misdemeanor arrests, 177 misdemeanor arrests, 23 search warrants and 19 fugitive arrests.

Lombardo added that the team also recovered many stolen firearms.

When violent crime first surged this year, Metro initially implemented the violent crime initiative, which shifted detectives to temporary patrol shifts to make up for a manpower shortage in the field.

“We have scaled that back greatly,” Lombardo said of the initiative. “The traditional role of detective has gone back to the traditional role of investigative, post-crime,” because “we have met success with the neighborhood engagement team.”

But Lombardo said Metro needs more funding to keep the team going, as well as hire additional patrol officers.

A $1 million contribution from the county, contingent on another $620,000 contribution from the city, was announced from county officials last month. The combined $1.6 million contribution would have funded one additional sergeant, two additional detectives and 10 additional Metro officers.

But city officials won’t know whether there’s enough revenue to fund the $620,000 contribution that the county made its $1 million allocation contingent upon until last fiscal year’s budget has been audited, likely late this year, officials said.

“We weren’t able to accept that money at this time,” Lombardo said on the now-void $1.6 million allocations.

“I fully anticipate that we will be able to — through the city and the county — to receive additional funding to hire police officers in the future, it’s just a matter of the logistics,” he added.

Looking forward, Lombardo mentioned the planned Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s expansion and a proposed NFL stadium.

“As the economy increases, as the population increases, my manpower must be synonymous with that and increase also,” he said. “I cannot bear or understand how our economy will survive without that increase in personnel.”

Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Find @rachelacrosby on Twitter.