More transparency in police shootings

Trust starts with transparency. It starts with an open book that lets anyone search for the answers to their questions.

Police shootings, by themselves, did not erode the public's trust in Las Vegas officers. It was the Metropolitan Police Department's insular culture and institutional lack of accountability that, over many years, created a crisis of confidence in officers' frequent use of deadly force.

After police killed a record 12 civilians in 2011, and after a yearlong Review-Journal investigation into police shootings uncovered troubling use-of-force trends and outdated practices, Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie, department administrators and other valley leaders started taking important steps toward rebuilding the public's confidence.

It started with transparency.

The department continued down that path last week when it announced that it will compile and release quarterly and annual reports about police shootings. The reports will detail when and why officers fired their guns, provide statistical analysis and identify trends.

Meanwhile, the department's new Office of Internal Oversight will issue a quarterly response to the shooting data that details how the agency intends to fix identifiable problems. The first new reports were released Friday.

Those reports will be completed on top of the full internal inquiries into each shooting, which the department began releasing earlier this year, and the independent investigations into suspect deaths conducted by the district attorney. Such openness is the norm at larger police departments, including the forces of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

"The goal is to keep our officers safe and to keep the public safe," said Capt. Kirk Primus, who heads the Office of Internal Oversight.

The vast majority of police shootings are completely justifiable, where officers clearly protected their own lives and the lives of innocents. A minority of the incidents, however, have not been so clear-cut, especially those involving unstable or mentally ill subjects. And for the public to trust that police are following policies and acting within the law, citizens must learn the details of every case, not just the ones lacking in public controversy.

The county still needs to try its revamped coroner's inquest process. The fact-finding hearings into police killings, reformed because they were so obviously structured to favor officers, have been postponed pending a court challenge by police unions. The hearings used to be the public's only opportunity to learn about police use of deadly force.

Not anymore. Sheriff Gillespie and Las Vegas police are taking the correct approach. The more information the better. The public's trust is at stake.