Police agencies say local killings have dropped 9 percent

Jen Lawson

Friday, Jan. 7, 2005 | 8:52 a.m.

The Las Vegas Valley saw a 9 percent decline in homicides in 2004 compared with the year before, with Metro, North Las Vegas and Henderson police all reporting drops in killings.

Metro Police handled 10 fewer homicides in 2004, breaking a three-year streak of increasing numbers of slayings.

Metro detectives investigated 137 homicides last year compared with 147 in 2003, a 6 percent decrease.

"Considering our population is rising, I think that's pretty good," Sheriff Bill Young said.

According to the state demographer, more than 66,000 people moved into Clark County in 2004, a 4 percent bump.

The per capita rate will be included in Homicide Lt. Tom Monahan's annual homicide report, which will be released later this year.

The department also nudged down the number of robberies last year by 5 percent, which Young said helped push down the homicide numbers because violent robberies can escalate into murder.

The number of homicides in North Las Vegas and Henderson also were lower in 2004 than in 2003.

Last year, North Las Vegas investigated 18 homicides, compared with 21 in 2004 and 22 in 2003, Officer Sean Walker, police spokesman, said. There were 22 homicides in that city in 2002.

Henderson handled eight homicides last year, 10 in 2003 and six in 2002, Henderson Police spokesman Keith Paul said.

These statistics don't include police killings. Eight people were shot and killed by Metro officers last year and two died of drug-related heart attacks after being shocked by officers' Taser guns.

North Las Vegas Police killed two people in 2004 and Henderson police killed one person.

In 2004, Metro solved just under 60 percent of the homicides that occurred that year, Young said.

The rate for the year before was 52 percent. The national average was 64 percent for police departments, such as Metro, with jurisdictions with populations of more than 1 million.

Henderson solved all eight of its homicides, and North Las Vegas Police were unable to say how many of the homicides in that city they had solved last year.

The drop in Metro's homicides can be attributed to the department's "zero tolerance" approach to domestic violence, Young said. Anyone arrested for domestic violence spends a mandatory 12 hours in jail, which Young said saves lives.

The shrinking number can also be traced back to the decline in robberies, he said.

"To see those numbers go down, there is a direct relationship to the decrease in homicides," Young said.

Lt. Ted Snodgrass, head of Metro's robbery section, said in early 2004 that his goal was to decrease the robbery rate by 10 percent, and that he was going to use several different strategies to try reach that goal.

But the rate didn't decrease as much as Snodgrass had hoped -- there was a 5 percent drop in robberies last year -- even with Metro's programs operating at full force.

The programs involved detectives working closely with banks and bars to cut down on robberies, and they also partnered with retail stores during the holiday season.

They continued with a decoy program, in which police officers dressed up to appear vulnerable, and therefore more appealing, to robbers.

Snodgrass also added three squads, consisting of 18 detectives and three sergeants, to work the swing shift. Before that, swing shift patrol officers gathered evidence and conducted interviews, then submitted their reports to the robbery detectives.

Having detectives respond to scenes immediately after robberies occurred -- the same way homicide detectives respond to killings -- has helped preserve the integrity of the evidence and has resulted in more prosecutions, Snodgrass said.

"A 5 percent reduction, am I happy about that? Yeah. We would have liked to have seen the 10 percent," Snodgrass said. But the numbers need to kept in perspective, he added, because a significant number of new people moved into the valley during the year and the valley's tourist population was huge in 2004.

Now, Snodgrass said, he is reading books and studies, trying to figure out what else he can do to cut the robbery numbers.

"What we're going to do is look at some new, innovative programs to try to knock those numbers down," he said. "We have to come up with some new ideas to attack this."

Police are also working on fresh ways to solve homicides at a greater rate by launching a cold case review program. Investigators will use new technology to help crack homicides that happened before DNA became a common investigative tool, Monahan said.

A case is considered cold when all leads have been pursued.

A retired, part-time detective is reading the more than 100 unsolved case files from 1991 to 2003 to see if new advances in forensic science could help solve them, then prioritizing them.

The cases will be reassigned to the detectives, who will do a through review of the files, and present them during roundtable discussions involving forensic science experts from Metro's lab.

A cold case will always take a back seat to new homicides, but Monahan said this new protocol " provides a standardized format and elevates the priorities of cold cases."

This program was launched because there is no statute of limitations for murder, he said. And people who were friends years ago might now be enemies and could now be willing to work with police.

Plus, Monahan said, "A murder for a family never goes away, and we understand that."