Dave Robbins review on The Review Journal on Police Shooting

I’m still perusing the articles in the Review-Journal regarding officer involved shootings in the Las Vegas valley and amazed on how skewed the RJ’s “investigation” is. 

The RJ has stated that the focus is on LVMPD’s activities and that the investigation is a result of a year-long effort on the RJ’s part.  No outside, unbiased entities were involved UNTIL the RJ, upon doing its own research, provided their own findings to the outside agencies and asked opinions of those agencies.  At one point, a professor stated “based on (your) data…”

Percentage comparisons between departments showed a higher number of LVMPD’s officers were involved in shootings versus other departments.  Again, no consideration of Metro’s interaction with over 30 million tourists and visitors, and no per capita comparisons between local jurisdictions.

The RJ article states that 97% of the findings of 500 cases reviewed by the Use of Force Board, comprised of officers and civilians, rules in favor of the officer(s).  It cites that officers, such as Officer Pease, “who show patterns of poor judgment and multiple lapses in police procedure with fatal consequences - rarely face discipline when they shoot and kill”.  If I read this right, if an officer has had what is considered by some, as poor decision making skills, and he is placed in a life or death situation, and he has the tools to protect himself or others, he shouldn’t react because he should be punished because of his past?

I invite anyone to be placed in the same circumstances, or ANY life or death situation, given the same tools, and see how they react.  But before they react, tell them their past history will be held against them however they act.  “Remember when you wet your bed as a child?”  “You’ve been arrested for DUI or domestic violence”. 

Inquest results were also listed, and the vast majority was shown as “unanimously justified” for the use of deadly force. Others show a 6 to 1 vote in favor of the use of force. The folks that sit on these boards are civilians, not department members.

Jury of your peers?  Sound familiar?

What is the complaint?  Are the officers being judged?  The jury selection?  The preparation by the attorneys?  The venue?  I’m confused.  It seems that the complaint is that officers, doing their job, protecting their lives and others, are deemed justified, in all avenues, when they use force.

Not all incidents are perfect, and all the incidents have their critics, regardless how “black and white” it seems, and the majority of the incidents that are ruled justifiable show the suspect had a clear-cut intent and ability to harm/kill the officer or someone else.  The officer sometimes had to make a split second decision.

Basically, if you point a gun at an officer, you will be met with deadly force.  The same goes with trying to run them over with a vehicle.  Bring a knife to a gun fight?  Who’s going to lose?  That’s the rules.

It’s unfortunate that shootings do occur.  Someone loses a life.  Someone takes a life.  There is more than one victim.  There are family members, friends of both the person who lost their life and the person who took it.

Hints have been made that alternatives to deadly force need to be used.  There already have been issues raised with the use of less-than-lethal alternatives, such as “Tasers”, bean bags and other types of less-than-lethal shotgun rounds, batons, etc.  Each is a tool on the officers belt and the training on each is extensive, but each can cause severe injuries or worse (hence the less-than-lethal designation).  Each tool has been highlighted by the media when it is used with dramatic effects.

But with each dramatization by the media of any officer’s use of force, regardless of the tools used, the media slowly biases the public’s perception of the folks that are sworn to protect and the department’s reaction to such articles.

LVMPD administration has developed a “kneejerk” reaction to the public’s response to issues, forming committees, additional reviewing teams, additional training, getting more civilians involved, all at additional cost to the already financially burdened department.

Not once, during my tenure in the department, did the administration ask the line personnel their opinion about how change should come about.  Decisions were always made at the upper levels, by administrators that had not seen any street time in several years, yet the sheriff repeatedly states that he remembers where he came from.

No wonder department morale has been at an all-time low.

To be continued…

Police stress pt 8 (Yup, lots of stress)

This is a continuation of a series of articles regarding the different types of stressors that officers face daily, in their personal and professional lives from a personal point of view.

by Dave Robbins, retired Metro Officer

Along with these obvious producers of stress on the job, there were also the added issues of leadership. The motor division had its share of bureau commanders, so good, some not-so-good.
When we had the “good” ones, the morale was good and productivity was fine.
When we had the bad, well, you know.


When morale and productivity was low, all management saw was the productivity side of the equation. It never occurred to them that the policies and leadership quality could be at fault. The only way the bureau commanders could "fix" the problem was to lower the morale even farther by incorporating an autocratic dictatorship and “performance standard”.  A fancy term for quotas. This is usually what inept leaders do; instead of looking at each officer individually, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and letting them know where they were excelling, meeting performance  standards, or deficient, they make a "one size fits all" method of deciding who is or is not proficient.

When the standards were met, even more stringent standards were implemented, because now that they were invested in this idiotic system of determining achievement, there needed to be some arbitrary way of separating the officers' performance.  Tickets were then scanned for “quality”, not “quantity”.  Violations were categorized by type.  Certain violations were deemed “goal oriented” and officers were required to write X amount of “goal oriented” citations.

The categories were confusing.  Also, you couldn’t write more than five citations to someone.  If you had more than five violations on someone, you were supposed to arrest the driver, but LVMPD policy states that you can only arrest on the most serious charge, not all the charges you could’ve charged them with.
So if you stopped a driver with an unrestrained child, no license, no insurance, unregistered vehicle, fictitious license plates, not wearing seat belts, open container, equipment violations, etc., you were supposed to arrest the driver.  That required waiting for a transport officer, one for the trip to jail and one for the child to be booked into Child Haven.


LVMPD policy also states that before you tow the vehicle, you should call someone to come and get the vehicle since everyone is in dire straits due to the economy. 


So, if the vehicle is unregistered and uninsured, you were still supposed to release the vehicle.  On several occasions, the “someone” would respond with the entire (usually irate) family. And on many occasions, the “someone” didn’t have a valid license.  In any case, each situation was a waste of the officer’s time (at taxpayer’s expense).


For many years, the traffic division was stationed in the “basement” of city hall.  Brand new area substations were being built to accommodate patrol officers but no plans had been made for a new Traffic Substation.  The old Southeast substation was then “refurbished” and traffic moved into that building, at the intersection of St. Louis and Atlantic.  The building was built in 1972 and still retained the 70’s features.  The showers were located on one side of a main hallway and the locker room (with 70’s style lockers) was positioned on the opposite side of the hallway, requiring a walk across the hallway to your locker.  Oh yeah, not everyone had a locker.  No workout facilities.  The substation wasn’t even listed in the LVMPD website as a substation.  The administration had no qualms about expressing their disdain for the traffic officers, often lauding traffic for their efforts to the public but then internally claiming traffic officers were a pain to deal with.  The majority of officers assigned to traffic were senior on the department and had a lot of very reasonable opinions about how to properly do the job.  The bosses wanted no part of that.   It was their way or the highway.  They often alluded to who lost the rock-paper-scissor game to address the traffic briefings.


During my tenure in the motor division, I was involved in many more accidents than any other traffic officer(9 total, I believe).  Each time I was hit, I was traveling less than 30 mph. Once I wasn't moving at all; a vehicle hit me while I was standing on the opposite side of the road dealing with another traffic accident. Sometimes I even had my emergency lights and siren on, and STILL got hit.  Some of those accidents required a trip to the hospital and some surgeries.  I became a familiar face in UMC Trauma.  Each time I was wheeled in on a gurney, I heard the familiar word “Again?”   Each recovery required doctors, more surgeries, therapy and the dreaded “light duty”.  My personal accident scenes were a favorite for the evening news.  “Metro motor cop gets hit…again…and again…and again”.  It was pretty bad when I would go to my favorite restaurant and the owner had a front page picture of my wreck, even in the foreign language newspapers.
After each time, I got back on the bike.
Hard headed?  Some say so.  Dumb?  Heard that too.  I was resolved not to let anything to keep me down and away from what I considered the best job on the department (okay, second best.  Gotta give cred to the Air Unit)
Some believed I had a “S#&t” magnet on my bike.
I couldn’t find it.  Neither could our mechanics. 
Was it on my bike?
To be continued…