Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill speaks to new officers and family members during a graduation ceremony for Metro Police recruits at the Orleans Showroom Tuesday, April 4, 2023. With the graduation Metro Police added 57 new officers.
Friday, July 14, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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Six months into his tenure as Clark County sheriff, Kevin McMahill says he continues to be focused on reducing violent crime in Las Vegas and throughout Clark County, and creating a wellness program within the Metro Police Department — two promises he made in his 2022 campaign.
“I set some goals at the get-go,” McMahill said Wednesday night at the Mob Museum during an event celebrating Metro’s 50-year anniversary. “That’s a 10% reduction across the board in violent crime. We are doing really well in violent crime reduction right now.”
He said robberies were down 23%.
“All of our violent crime is down except auto theft,” McMahill said.
Auto thefts across the nation have been high in 2023 as a series of social media posts showed how to steal certain models of Kias and Hyundais.
Data released by the department in April showed thefts for the two vehicles were up more than 500% in the first three months of the year, with about 1,350 of the vehicles stolen between Jan. 1 and March 31.
“When crime goes up, most police leaders go back to what we already know doesn’t work,” McMahill said. “That is arresting everybody, throwing everybody in jail and expecting a different outcome from what we had before.”
McMahill reiterated his focus was on “injecting humanity” into the department and community. He claims it’s his own definition of the commonly used police phrase “community policing.”
“It is simple to start off with,” McMahill said. “If you recognized everyone as a human being first and we start out by treating each other as a human beings, then the outcomes will be better.”
Part of that focus revolves around a wellness program in Metro, he said. This includes hiring licensed social workers and marriage family therapists to be on staff and available as a resource for employees.
“This job changes you,” McMahill said of law enforcement.“This job impacts your heart, your mind, your body and your soul, mostly in negative ways. The high highs and the low lows and the tears and blood and sweat has led to higher instances of suicide, higher instance of alcoholics and higher instances of domestic dispute. All things you don’t want to lead in.”
McMahill said employee assistance programs have helped officers in the department for more than 30 years, but more can be done.
“At times we’ve allowed ourselves to get to a place where suicides outnumber the number of police officers who we have on our wall of duty who lost their lives in the line of duty,” McMahill said.
The department has lost 18 officers in the line of duty and 39 officers to suicide since recordkeeping started in 1983.
McMahill said the wellness program had been harder to launch than he thought it would be.
“If I don’t get the men and women, civilian and commissioned (within Metro), to believe what I’m trying to do with wellness, it is never going to be successful,” he said.
Yet, he continues to push forward with the program.
“I believe to the core of my being, that if we take care of these men and women better than we ever had, then they will take care of this community,” McMahill said.
Some major tasks for the department in the upcoming months are surrounding the Formula One and Super Bowl events coming to Las Vegas.
McMahill said Metro was better equipped than police departments in most American cities to handle special events.
“Your police department dealt with the Golden Knights winning the Stanley Cup,” McMahill said. “You also had 15,000 people surge into Toshiba Plaza, and we pulled it off without a single problem. A couple days later, 100,000 people show up on Las Vegas Boulevard and had a parade.”
The Formula One race in mid-November is a difficult one to plan for, McMahill said.
“F1 is a nightmare for me,” he said. “I’m not going to lie. It came up on us quickly and the footprint is massive. (These are some of) the richest people in the world. We don’t have enough room at the airports for the private jets coming into this city. This type of event, we’ve never dealt with before and the threat is huge.”
McMahill said he’s less concerned about the Super Bowl as Metro has had more time to prepare.
“We’ve sent people down to previous Super Bowls,” McMahill said. “I have an entire special events section that I send to these things.”
The sheriff said Las Vegas also has been learning how to work with sports events throughout the years.
“Pretty soon we will have (major league) baseball, hockey and football,” McMahill said. “For some reason, we put it all down there at Tropicana Avenue”
McMahill ended his conversation by asking help from the public.
“For you to say thank you to our police officers when they are out there goes a long way,” McMahill said. “They feel the support from you.”
