Prosecutors in many American cities step in as the public’s watchdog in the aftermath of a police shooting, but the Clark County district attorney’s office is content to sit on the sidelines. It doesn’t treat shootings by police like other homicides and it won’t even review an officer’s use of deadly force unless the sheriff or a chief of police requests it.
They serve and protect. And sometimes they shoot and kill. Las Vegas Valley police have been involved in 378 shootings since 1990, 142 of them fatal. One agency alone, the Metropolitan Police Department, was responsible for 310 shootings and 115 deaths.
A five-part special report begins Sunday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal and online at lvrj.com. The culmination of a yearlong investigation covering more than two decades of officer-involved shootings in Clark County, the series will analyze the systemic issues that help determine when, where, how and why police shootings happen — and what can be done to limit them. The Review-Journal investigation includes staff-produced online documentaries, a searchable database of all police shootings since 1990, an archive of original documents, videotaped re-enactments by police and other interactive features.
