Las Vegas police report examines two years of department shootings

Las Vegas police on Friday announced that they will release annual and quarterly reports about how, when and why its officers use their firearms and what the department is doing about them.

Police released the first reports Friday, which include a statistical breakdown of the 43 police shootings over 2010 and 2011, two of the most turbulent years for the Metropolitan Police Department, years that launched a yearlong Las Vegas Review-Journal investigation and a U.S. Department of Justice probe.

Among their findings:

■ Officers shot at blacks at a disproportionately high rate.

■ While shootings dropped from 25 to 18 in 2011, officers killed a record 12 people that year.

■ Most people officers have fired upon have had guns, and those people shot at officers first a third of the time.

The reports are a step toward transparency and bring the agency in line with many of the top departments in the country, such as the New York, Chicago and Los Angeles police departments, which for years have issued such reports.

Until recently, Las Vegas police released little information on their shootings beyond sparse news releases in the hours or days after the incident. The department began releasing full internal reports into shootings this year.

Police will be releasing a statistical analysis of the previous year's shootings annually. It identifies trends that police and the public should be aware of.

"The No. 1 purpose of collecting that data is looking at data and trends ... in order to provide the best training and have our officers be prepared," said Capt. Kirk Primas, who heads the department's newly created Office of Internal Oversight, which created the reports.

Because the actual numbers are so small, it's difficult to glean trends over only two years of data. The number of department shootings has risen and fallen over the past two decades, the period over which the Review-Journal did its own statistical analysis last year. That analysis, with interviews with officers, civilians and experts, revealed that the department ignored trends and did little to limit shootings.

But Primas said his office will use the past two years' data going forward to determine long-term trends.

"The goal is to keep our officers safe and to keep the public safe," Primas said.

Every three months, the Office of Internal Oversight will also issue a report into what the agency is doing to reduce shootings. The one released Friday summarizes the recent changes to policies and training.

Those changes include training officers to de-escalate encounters with civilians, revising policy to emphasize a respect for human life and requiring officers to undergo new training more times each year.

The report also states what the new office will be doing over the next few months: focusing on the recommendations from a study commissioned by the Justice Department.

That study was expected to be released this month, but Primas said department officials think it will come out in late September.

It is expected to include suggestions for how to overhaul the Metropolitan Police Department's Use of Force Review Board, a mixture of civilians and police personnel who rule on whether shootings are within policy. That board has been heavily criticized by officers and former members, and it has never ruled against an officer in a fatal shooting.

Las Vegas police came under scrutiny after a series of high-profile shootings in 2010 and 2011, including the deaths of Trevon Cole and Stanley Gibson, who both were unarmed. Cole was shot by an officer during a botched drug raid. Gibson died after a miscommunication by officers led to one firing several times with a rifle into the Gulf War veteran's vehicle.

Police have shot at people six times this year.

Contact reporter Lawrence Mower at lmower@reviewjournal.com or 702-455-4519.