Metro neighborhood team has busy first month in Las Vegas’ crime hot spots

The Metropolitan Police Department’s new city neighborhood engagement team made 72 felony arrests, 31 misdemeanor arrests and seized 14 firearms during its first month of existence.

The new team is Metro’s third such team, but “Squad Three” is funded by the city to focus on high-crime, violent areas within the city boundaries.

“We’ve had great successes,” Lt. Steve Connell told the Las Vegas City Council Wednesday.

Connell oversees the engagement team. During its first month, the 10 uniformed officers and two detectives that make up the team also issued five search warrants, racked up 82 gang field interview cards, made 13 dangerous offender arrests and picked up four fugitives, two of whom had either murder or attempted murder backgrounds, he said.

The team’s responses “run the gamut” — this week they responded to a robbery in progress that was connected to a dozen other robberies in the valley. The first night the team was active it responded to a shooting, Connell said.

The City Council in June approved more than $400,000 for Metro to fund department overtime costs to support an additional neighborhood engagement team to focus on crime hot spots within the city this summer.

City officials have said they won’t know whether there’s revenue to fund the program’s continuation until last fiscal year’s budget is audited, likely late this year.

Captains in the Bolden, Northwest, Downtown and parts of the Northeast commands send in “wish lists” for where they want the neighborhood engagement team team to deploy to, Connell said.

The officers ride double about 90 percent of the time due to the nature of their focus, and the fact that they usually anticipate making an arrest, Connell said.

Connell also outlined some of the other duties of these officers, including crime prevention efforts: officers this week have plans to talk to a group of people on Fremont Street about “choosing the right path,” he said.

“We do have other things we do besides go out and strictly arrest people,” Connell said.

The City Council members were happy with how the city-focused squad is doing in its first month.

“Good job, good numbers,” Councilman Stavros Anthony said.

Contact Jamie Munks at jmunks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0340. Find @JamieMunksRJ on Twitter.