Metro officers’ use of force incidents at 5-year high in 2023

The Metropolitan Police Department recorded a new five-year high in 2023 for the number of uses of force by Metro officers, according to the department’s annual statistical report released Thursday.

There were 947 non-deadly use-of-force events last year out of nearly 1.5 million total events recorded, according to the report. This figure is up from 905 events in 2022, the five-year low.

As use-of-force events increased, so did allegations of misconduct. According to the report, Metro received 230 allegations regarding uses of force, a 30 percent increase from the year before. Only 21 were sustained, meaning misconduct was found.

While the ACLU of Nevada said that data released by Metro is “helpful,” the organization expressed concerns about Metro’s ability to transparently review these allegations.

“These are internal investigations, so I don’t think anybody would be confused by why internal investigations would yield low numbers,” said Athar Hasseebullah, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada.

“These are colleagues and coworkers of those that are being accused,” he said. “That’s not an independent investigation.” Metro did not provide comment at the time of publication.

Not a surprise

In years past, Metro’s reports have shown similarly low rates in the number of allegations that were sustained, Hasseebullah said.

“The numbers aren’t surprising to me,” he said. “What is surprising to me is that year over year, the Nevada Legislature and state government will look at this and say, we need to do something about it. And then the most that we have is a Citizen Review Board.”

Hasseebullah, a former board member himself, said the board is composed of well-meaning people who don’t have the tools they need to effectively review Metro.

While board members can review allegations, he explained that they are not fully empowered to question a finding.

While the board was unavailable for comment, its website says that the board’s mission is to “serve as an independent civilian oversight agency to review complaints of misconduct against Metro peace officers and to review internal investigations done by the LVMPD.”

The report also said that there were eight instances where an officer was disciplined because of a non-deadly use of force, in the form of either a written reprimand or suspension.

Metro did not clarify whether the data means that the majority of misconduct findings went without any disciplinary measures at the time of publication.

The stats

In addition to non-deadly events, Metro reported 10 shootings by officers, half of which were fatal.

All of the shootings that passed through Metro’s critical incident review process last year received approval by Metro administration, which means that the administration believed that “objectively reasonable force was used under the circumstances.”

Metro began tracking use-of-force incidents in 2012 amid an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into a series of lethal shootings by Metro the year before.

This year, out of all calls for service and events initiated by officers, 0.06 percent led to the use of force by an officer.

Less than 0.001 percent led to a shooting by an officer. All victims in the shootings were armed, and Metro said in the report that there has been “an increase in subjects being armed with a knife/sharp incident” in 2023.

This year was the first in 5 years that a subject of a shooting by an officer was female, the report said. There were 2 female subjects shot.

Of the people shot by an officer in 2023, four were Hispanic, four were white and two were Black.

A “data dump”

Hasseebullah said that it’s difficult to view the report “in the context of anything but a data dump.”

He said that while releasing data is helpful and provides a snapshot of how Metro is operating, it’s difficult to address issues without more details.

Some of the statistics lack nuance, Hasseebullah said. One that stood out to him was the fact that 4 out of the 10 people shot by an officer last year were perceived by police to be suicidal.

This figure is also a new 5-year high, jumping up from zero percent in 2022. “It does raise questions about what’s the state’s plan to address this long term,” he said.

But without full incident reports, it’s difficult to understand what exactly happened in that interaction with a Metro officer.

Hasseebullah said he feels that Sheriff Kevin McMahill and Undersheriff Andrew Walsh do make an effort to share information with the public.

But he feels that it would be more helpful for the Sheriff to “share more publicly about what trends they saw and why.” McMahill was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

Contact Estelle Atkinson at eatkinson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @estelleatkinsonreports on Instagram and @estellelilym on X.