Las Vegas police release report detailing use-of-force statistics
The Metropolitan Police Department released a report late Thursday detailing its use-of-force statistics between 2012 and 2016.
The 30-page report was prepared by the department’s office of internal oversight and constitutional policing, and its purpose was to list Metro use-of-force trends and identify use-of-force training needs “to further refine police responses in the field with the hope of preventing harm to both citizens and officers,” the report said.
Highlights of the report include:
Over the course of five years, Metro reported 66 officer-involved shootings. Twenty-nine of those shootings, or about 44 percent, were fatal.
Last year, Metro reported 10 officer-involved shootings, compared with 16 in both 2014 and 2015. Of the 10 in 2016, all subjects were armed and three subjects died, the report said.
Of the people police shot at between 2012 and 2016, about 45 percent were white, about 30 percent were black, about 21 percent were Hispanic, about 3 percent were Asian and about 1.5 percent were Native American.
About 90 percent of those subjects were male, while about 10 percent were female, the report said.
The report also noted about 88 percent of all subjects involved in officer-involved shootings had some sort of criminal history, including anything from misdemeanors to felonies. Of that 88 percent, 67 percent of subjects had previously been convicted of violent crimes.
In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice recommended a series of sweeping reforms to Metro’s use of deadly force in the wake of a 2011 investigation into police shootings by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @rachelacrosby on Twitter.
