New law would mandate CCSD police use of force reporting

The provisions of Assembly Bill 420 would only apply to Clark and Washoe counties, the only two jurisdictions with dedicated school police departments.

The bill has cleared the Nevada Assembly and Senate, but has yet to be signed by Gov. Joe Lombardo. The 2025 Legislative Session closes Monday.

“In recent years, concerns have been raised about the use of force by police officers, including the use of chemical agents and electronic stun devices against students,” bill sponsor Assemblywoman Cecilia Gonzalez told the Senate Committee on Education earlier this month.

She added: “While school police officers play an essential role in maintaining order and security, it is essential to ensure the use of force in school settings is monitored, reported and subject to public oversight.”

The bill was amended to remove obligatory reporting from the Metropolitan Police Department of its officers use-of-force incidents on school grounds.

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Metro publicizes its use-of-force incidents annually in a report. According to language in the department’s most-recent report, it uses a “force investigation model that prioritizes constant and critical self-analysis.”

The purpose, according to the department, is to “learn from and further refine our police response with the goal of preventing harm to citizens and officers by preserving the sanctity of life.”

In 2024, Metro reported 17 officer-involved shootings in its jurisdiction, an area with a population of about 1.7 million people, according to the latest report released this week.

Of those 17, nine led to a fatality. The total number for 2024 was an increase from 10 in 2023, but a slight decrease from the five-year high of 19, which was recorded in 2020.

But Gonzalez said that Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill told her Metro would start reporting school-related use of force incidents in its annual report.

Transparency guidelines

The Clark County School District, for example, already compiles thorough reports about its police officers, Gonzalez said.

The bill mandates that the information is forwarded to the districts’ governing bodies, which will disseminate it for public consumption by the first day of every school year.

The law would go into effect on July 1 and the first public disclosure would be due in August.

The district website must state location, whether the incident occurred during classes or school-sponsored activity, the rank of the officers, how long they’ve been with the department, and demographic information of the students.

Names will not be reported and the Washoe County School District, which employs less than 75 officers, doesn’t have to report the officers’ rank or years of service to not make them identifiable, according to the legislation.

The law could serve as a footprint to expand it to the state’s smaller school districts in the future, Gonzalez said.

Use-of-force data already is available but only through public records requests, which take months to complete, Nyle Usher, with Make the Road Nevada, told the committee.

For school year 2019-2020, Clark County school police used pepper spray 30 times, stun guns six times, and “applied force” 22 times, Usher said.

The use of pepper spray increased the following year and substantially decreased the next year, Usher said. Make the Road hadn’t obtained complete data for the 2023-2024 school year or for the school year that just ended.

“As we work to create safer and more supportive school environments, we must start by looking at the data,” Usher said. “Understanding what’s happening at our school allows us to pinpoint areas where change is necessary and where we can improve. However, the data we need is not easily accessible.”

Gonzalez said the data would also help examine the school-to-prison pipeline.”

She said that in Clark County, the community doesn’t readily know police apply force on campus.

“Is it happening too much? Is it not happening at all? Is it happening too much at a certain school?” she said.

Review-Journal staff reporter Bryan Horwath contributed to this report.