Las Vegas homicides hit 10-year low

Keith Paul

Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2001 | 11:24 a.m.

Las Vegas had fewer than 100 homicides last year for the first time in a decade, while nationally other major cities may have witnessed an end to the years-long decline in crime, especially murders.

The 95 homicides in Metro Police's jurisdiction -- Las Vegas and the unincorporated areas of Clark County -- are the fewest since 1990, when there were 86 slayings. In 1999, 113 people were killed.

Contributing to the drop in 2000 was a more than 50 percent decrease in the number of domestic violence slayings from the previous year, from 31 to 15.

"The sheriff puts a high priority on preventing and investigating domestic violence," Lt. Wayne Petersen of Metro's homicide unit said.

Police, court officials and advocates have been working to intercede in domestic violence episodes before they turn deadly, said Elynne Greene, an advocate in Metro's victim services detail.

"With all of the education and attention, people are less likely to stand by and watch (domestic violence)," Greene said. "The police get calls from neighbors, when before neighbors wouldn't call, saying it was a private matter."

But calling the police and taking steps to get away from domestic violence don't always protect someone from death.

Marina Cannon, who had moved to her father's house to escape domestic violence, had changed her will recently asking that the media be invited to her funeral should she die to increase public awareness of domestic violence.

On Dec. 23 she became the area's 94th homicide. Her father found her dead in his house, and Cannon's ex-husband, Vitally Zakouto, was charged with her slaying.

Greene said friends and family are more likely now to make the calls to the police reporting domestic violence than they were years ago, when they would stand around pondering all the signs but would not tell anyone.

The majority of Las Vegas homicides stemmed from other reasons, including drugs, arguments, gangs and self-defense.

Police, criminologists and others have various theories why the homicides were not only down in 2000 but also reaching the lows of nearly a decade ago.

"Police have done a good job of getting rid of the factors that were causing a lot of homicides in the 1980s and early 1990s," said Alfred Blumstein, a professor at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and director of the National Consortium on Violence Research.

Those factors were mostly the growing number of teens and children dying after enlisting in the drug trade or joining gangs.

Police nationwide in the mid-1980s and 1990s targeted the drug trade and teens with guns through a variety of programs that yielded a variety of results. But as the 1990s moved on, fewer and fewer teens died as a result of the drug trade.

As those numbers fell nationally, so did homicide numbers in some of America's biggest cities that had the largest numbers of slayings.

"However, nationally, this downward trend is starting to level off," Blumstein said. For example, the homicide rate in the San Fernando Valley was up 19 percent in 2000 from 1999, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

But not in Las Vegas, as homicides reached a peak of 168 in 1996, five years after most other cities hit their peaks.

"Las Vegas is such a unique place," Blumstein said. "There really is no other comparable city in the country."

Petersen said there isn't much his unit does to prevent slayings, since when homicide detectives are called to a scene someone is already dead. Rather it's the cops' special units -- the repeat offender unit and the criminal apprehension team -- that could be nabbing suspects before violence has a chance to escalate, he said.

"I'd like to take credit for the decrease, but there are so many possible factors that could attributed to the lower number of homicides," Petersen said.

Three other factors may have as much do with the lower number of homicides as anything else -- luck, aim and University Medical Center's trauma unit.

Police scurry to a number of shootings each day with the victims shot in the arm or leg. Police have routinely said a couple inches make the difference between death and a limp.

The most severely injured people -- including most shooting and stabbing victims -- are shuttled to UMC's trauma center. In 1999 it became a Level 1 center, meaning a trauma surgeon and other trauma-trained medical personnel are always there.

"There is no doubt the trauma center is contributing to the health of this community," Dr. Dale Carrison, director of the emergency department, said. "There are absolutely people who survive because the trauma surgeon is here waiting in case someone gets shot in the chest or injured in a construction accident."

Such was the case of a 36-year-old man who was stabbed at least 12 times -- including twice in the heart -- by two men chasing him Dec. 7 on the sidewalk by the Sahara hotel-casino. The man was taken to the trauma center in extremely critical condition, and 11 days later he was released. No arrests have been made in the stabbing, which police suspect may have been drug related.

In several cases last year homicide detectives were called out to shootings because the outlook for the victim wasn't good, only to have the person survive the injuries.

Last year was better than 1999 in another respect: It lacked a shooting rampage that killed several victims at once, as occurred June 3, 1999, when Zane Floyd hunted down and shot people at a grocery store, killing four. Floyd was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Just because 2000 has ended, detectives haven't forgotten about those slain. About 45 of the year's slaying remain unsolved.

The national average for solving homicides is about 60 percent. Metro's for 2000 is 52 percent, but Petersen hopes to increase that number.

"There are several that we are very close to solving," Petersen said. "There are others that we know people have information about but refuse to come forward."

Some people fear retaliation, but others apparently just don't want to get involved.