‘Technology bubble’ could put big dent in Las Vegas crime, sheriff says

In an interview with two venture capitalists, Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said that Metro’s around $1.5 billion budget is dedicated almost entirely to employees’ salaries and benefits — leaving little for the technological advancements he wants to make throughout the department.

Of that approximately $1.5 billion, McMahill said that more than 90 percent is dedicated to salaries and employees. “Our organization is 6,200 people strong,” McMahill said in an interview posted on Youtube on Monday with Ben Horowtiz and Marc Andreessen, co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, a venture capital firm that invests in software.

According to a post on the firm’s website, Horowitz has “been helping the LVMPD become the most technologically advanced police department in the world,” donating more than $7.5 million to the department for new computer terminals, facilities, emergency call technology and public safety technologies, some coming from the firm’s portfolio companies.

“The key to making citizens, police and suspects safer is better intelligence,” Horowitz wrote on the website. He said he hoped to solidify the department’s basic technology, retain 911 operators and improve the department’s intelligence and situational awareness.

“Thanks isn’t enough to the two of you, but it’s what I have,” McMahill told Horowitz and Andreessen at the end of their interview, which was posted on a16z’s YouTube channel.

‘Technology bubble’

McMahill said that throughout Las Vegas, there are 10 areas in town that Metro identifies as “chronic, persistent hot spots.” Metro did not say which parts of town McMahill was referring to.

The department made a mistake in taking too long to realize that “there are far more good people in those communities that want police to come to their community to protect them — to give them the opportunity to thrive in those communities — than there are bad folks,” McMahill said. “We had to change our mindset many years ago.”

About 75 to 80 percent of all crime occurs in these 10 areas, according to the sheriff. “If we could envelop those communities in a technology bubble and make it virtually impossible to commit crime, think about all the lives we would be saving,” he said.

This was, McMahill recalled, the initial conversation he had with Horowitz. “That’s where you’ve been absolutely critical in helping us,” the sheriff told the venture capitalist.

McMahill was accompanied at the interview by Metro Chief of Staff Mike Gennaro, who spoke about key new technologies Metro is embracing, thanks to funds from Horowitz.

Notably, Metro hopes to increase its use of drones. Skydio, one of Andreessen Horowitz’s portfolio companies, makes drones whose camera feeds can be sent to individual officers’ cellphones, Horowitz wrote.

Gennaro presented a hypothetical scenario in which a citizen called 911 to report a man with a rifle, when in fact the man was holding a broomstick. He said that if an officer only knows the man has a rifle, “that guy turns to you with that broomstick, and now it results in an officer-involved shooting.”

“Now you have a dead citizen that did not have a firearm,” Gennaro said. He said that drones put time on the officer’s side and provide them with better real-time intelligence, alleviating stress.

Contact Estelle Atkinson at eatkinson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @estellelilym on X and @estelleatkinson.bsky.social on Bluesky.