About a quarter of all complaints against local police are true

Monday, Aug. 30, 1999 | 3:13 a.m.

About 25 percent of all misconduct complaints filed against police in the Las Vegas Valley in the past three years have been found to be true.

The statistics were compiled by the three largest law enforcement agencies in the valley: the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, North Las Vegas and Henderson police departments.

Police said the numbers show they are doing a good job in identifying misconduct within the ranks, but at least one police critic says the statistics don't tell the full story.

Because the contents of internal affairs investigations are kept secret, there is no real way to tell whether police in the Las Vegas Valley are adequately weeding out bad officers, said Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.

"The only internal affairs information we are allowed to scrutinize is the information the police are willing to release," Peck said. "That means we know absolutely nothing about the nature of the complaints, the nature of the evidence and the level of discipline handed out to officers when complaints against them are proven."

Statistics show that there were 4,482 internal affairs complaints filed against police from 1996 to 1998. That number does not include statistics for Henderson police in 1996, a year in which the city started a new system for gathering and categorizing complaints.

Of the complaints in the Las Vegas Valley, 871, or 26 percent, were proved true. The other 74 percent were determined to be either false, not supported by evidence or reflected conduct that did occur but was proper and lawful.

The vast majority of the complaints in the Las Vegas Valley, about 96 percent, were filed against the Metropolitan Police Department, the largest of the three departments studied. It employs nearly 1,600 officers, while Henderson employs 190 and North Las Vegas employs 171.

Given the size of the force, an average of about 1,500 complaints a year is not unusual, said Las Vegas police spokesman Steve Meriwether.

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