四 川 铁 FourRiverIron

Part I: Always Justified

Yearlong investigation shows many police shootings in Las Vegas could have been avoided

By Lawrence Mower, Alan Maimon AND Brian Haynes

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Posted: Nov. 27, 2011 | 12:00 a.m.

Shortly before midnight on a warm night in May 1996, officer George "Gregg" Pease pulled his Las Vegas police cruiser into the desert behind a storage yard off Dean Martin Drive. In his car was a notebook with the name Henry Rowe scrawled inside.

Both men had seen their share of recent troubles. Rowe, 50, was living in a wash behind the building. Pease, 31, dogged by controversy in his eight years with the Metro­politan Police Department, had killed two men in 21 months and had been disciplined for seeing a prostitute while off-duty.

Banished to the graveyard shift in the Southwest Area Command, Pease was hunting for Rowe. He got out of his patrol car, stepped into the pitch-black night and walked into the wash, alone.

Minutes later, Rowe was dead, shot once in the head, his throat slashed ear to ear.

Pease's third officer-involved shooting echoed the others: Peculiar circumstances. An account that didn't quite make sense. A killing with no witnesses.

Though widely criticized within the department's ranks, the killing of Henry Rowe didn't amount to much.

A Clark County coroner's inquest jury would rule it justified, and the Metropolitan Police Department's internal Use of Force Review Board would find nothing to fault. Pease took a few weeks of paid time off and returned to work with a gun and a badge. The same script has been followed 114 times after fatal shootings, some clear-cut and some not, at the hands of Las Vegas cops since 1990. This year Las Vegas police have set a record: 11 fatal shootings, with a month left to go.

The system never questioned whether Henry Rowe's death could have been prevented.

It never adequately questioned whether any of them could have been prevented.

A YEARLONG INVESTIGATION

In the wake of two controversial officer-involved shooting deaths in the summer of 2010, the Review-Journal set out to analyze two decades of shootings by officers from the Las Vegas Valley's five major law enforcement agencies: the Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas police departments, the Nevada Highway Patrol and Clark County School District police.

The newspaper obtained police reports, coroner's inquest transcripts, civil and criminal court files and other records. It interviewed police officers, relatives of those who have died and experts in police training and administration.

Each police shooting in the region -- 378 since Jan. 1, 1990; 142 resulting in death, 114 resulting in known wounds -- is reflected in a searchable online database, with original documents and, in some cases, videotaped re-enactments by police, linked in a permanent public archive.

While information about all five police agencies was analyzed, the focus of the Review-Journal investigation was the Metropolitan Police Department, Nevada's largest law enforcement agency with 2,700 officers policing 1.3 million people. Las Vegas police were involved in 310 shootings in the more than 20 years surveyed.

Until now, debate has focused on individual incidents rather than systemic issues that help determine when, where, how and why shootings happen.

What the newspaper found was an insular department that is slow to weed out problem cops and is slower still to adopt policies and procedures that protect both its own officers and the citizens they serve. It is an agency that celebrates a hard-charging police culture while often failing to learn from its mistakes.

Nowhere is the problem more obvious than in the workings of the department's Use of Force Review Board, a panel of officers and civilians that has cleared more than 97 percent of the more than 500 cases of shootings and other officer use of force incidents it has reviewed since 1991. Even officers such as Pease -- who show patterns of poor judgment and multiple lapses in police procedure with fatal consequences -- rarely face discipline when they shoot and kill.

Rod Jett was a Las Vegas police officer for 32 years until he retired in 2010 as undersheriff, the department's second-in-command. While proud of his fellow officers, he said he left in part out of frustration over the department's unwillingness to face up to its shortcomings.

"I think the vast majority of (Las Vegas police) officers are well-trained, competent, and come to work each day to do the right thing," Jett said. "But that doesn't absolve the agency from identifying potential problems or trends that are adversely impacting the community. It has been my experience there has been a hesitation to acknowledge that fact in a way that leads to substantial change."

SHOOTINGS HAVE INCREASED

Shootings in Clark County vary greatly from year to year but have generally increased over time, from just two in 1990 to a record 31 last year, 25 of them involving Las Vegas police officers.

While it's tempting to blame the rising numbers on the region's rapid growth, there's no clear relationship between population and shootings. Nor is there a clear relationship with violent crime, which has fallen each year since 2008 even as shootings have increased.

In an average year since 2000, Las Vegas police fire their weapons 17 times. So far this year it's been 16.

Is that a lot for a department and a community this size?

Comparison statistics on officer-involved shootings are hard to find. No one monitors them on a national basis, and many police departments don't compile them about their own officers.

To determine if Las Vegas police use their guns more than officers in other cities, the Review-Journal canvassed 24 major, urban police agencies. Many said they don't keep that data or declined to say anything at all, but 16 departments provided statistics for a decade, 2001 through 2010.

Among those cities, the Metropolitan Police Department ranked third, trailing Houston and Chicago, in officer-involved shootings per capita. In shootings per reported violent crime, the agency also ranked third, behind Denver and Seattle. In average number of shootings per year, Las Vegas police ranked fifth.

A comparison to shootings in the nation's two biggest cities in 2010 alone is also illustrative. Last year, Las Vegas police shot at people 25 times, killing eight. The New York City Police Department, with 13 times more officers covering a population six times larger, shot at people 34 times, killing eight. The Los Angeles Police Department, with more than three times as many officers covering more than double the population served by Las Vegas police, shot at people 32 times. LAPD fatality numbers were not available.

Las Vegas police also stand out in comparison to other local police departments. Thirteen percent of current Las Vegas officers have been involved in a shooting since 1990, compared to about 8.5 percent each for Henderson and North Las Vegas police. That measure may understate the numbers, however, because it counts only officers still on the force, not cops such as Pease who have moved on.

SOME CASES CLEAR-CUT, OTHERS NOT

Officer-involved shootings are an inevitable byproduct of law enforcement, and police are given wide latitude in deciding when and how to use deadly force to protect their lives or the lives of others.

"Our shootings are reactionary to someone's actions," said Chris Collins, president of Las Vegas' largest police union. "I don't think they can be prevented on our end."

Most of the shootings analyzed by the Review-Journal did involve a clear, immediate threat to life. In many, officers came under fire or used weapons after someone pointed a gun at them with clear intent to use it.

But not all were clear-cut. Some incidents grew from poor choices by the officer, while others might have been avoided if Metropolitan Police policies and procedures reflected those shown in other cities to have reduced shootings and officer injuries without reducing public safety.

Law enforcement experts say even communities that support their local police can lose confidence in a department seen as too quick to shoot.

That became apparent in Las Vegas last year.

Las Vegas is a transient town accustomed to hard luck stories and often apathetic when it comes to civic affairs, but many expressed outrage after Erik Scott, a former Army officer and medical device salesman, was shot and killed by three Las Vegas police officers outside a store in Summerlin. That outrage led to an unusual public debate of the issue and a sweeping overhaul of the Clark County coroner's inquest system.

Community reaction has since been muted, but the fatal shooting in July of Rafael "Ralfy" Olivas, a distraught 23-year-old with a knife, after his mother called police seeking help for the man, briefly reinvigorated debate.

Some in Nevada law enforcement fear the department's controversial shootings have damaged its reputation and have strained community relations. Cited most often is the 2010 death of Trevon Cole, 21, a small-time marijuana dealer who was unarmed and crouching in front of a toilet when he was shot in the head during a botched raid on his apartment a month before the Erik Scott shooting.

"The police have to understand that they can't operate outside what is the wishes of the community," said Bill Young, a longtime Las Vegas cop and Clark County sheriff from 2003 to 2007. "And most people in this community were very unaccepting of that (Cole shooting). Everybody just felt it was a bad shooting. I talked to dozens of cops that felt it was a horrible shooting and aren't satisfied with the consequences to this day.

"And, you know, it's embarrassing."

TRENDS ILLUSTRATED RISKY BEHAVIOR

Efforts to erase that embarrassment were limited to an overhaul of the inquest process, now shelved in light of lawsuits brought by police officers. But the problem goes deeper.

Las Vegas police repeatedly place themselves in harm's way, forcing confrontations where they have no choice but to shoot. Those shootings were legally justified, but just because a shooting is legal doesn't mean it had to happen.

The Review-Journal found several trends that illustrate risky behavior. A quarter of Las Vegas police shootings start with an officer seeing what sometimes amounts to a petty infraction and then chasing someone on foot, dubbed an "inherently dangerous" action by law enforcement experts because chases can escalate to potentially fatal confrontations.

About 20 percent of the department's shootings involved firing at cars, often by officers who needlessly put themselves in danger of being run down or violated department policy by shooting at a fleeing driver who presents no imminent danger to anyone.

Eleven percent of people shot by Las Vegas police since 1990 have been unarmed, and those shootings have increased in recent years.

About half of the 33 unarmed people shot by Las Vegas police were black. And in an urban area where blacks make up less than 10 percent of the population, they represent 32 percent of shooting subjects.

While officer-involved shootings can and do happen anywhere in the Las Vegas Valley, distinct clusters can be seen in a few poor, transient neighborhoods: corridors along East Fremont Street and Boulder Highway, across from the Boulevard Mall, west of the Stratosphere and high-density areas near Nellis Air Force Base.

MOST INCIDENTS GO UNNOTICED

Fatal shootings in Clark County tend to make headlines, but those are only about a third of all police shootings. The details on most incidents are buried in department files and largely go unnoticed by the public.

The Review-Journal obtained summaries of hundreds of investigative reports, an unprecedented release of records by Southern Nevada police departments. Police agencies in other areas, notably the New York Police Department, have fought such disclosures. The Las Vegas Valley police departments didn't fight the disclosure, though the Metropolitan Police Department charged the newspaper $11,000 in search and redaction costs.

The reports, now available through the newspaper's online database, recount great acts of heroism in harrowing encounters with armed suspects, such as a 1992 incident during the Rodney King riots when a convoy of Las Vegas police trying to rescue a frightened family came under sustained fire from an angry mob near Martin Luther King and Lake Mead boulevards. Two officers returned fire. No injuries were reported.

But some reports reveal deception, troubling misconduct, and dangerous mistakes that only by dumb luck didn't get someone killed. An incident involving one of the roughly 160 officers of the Clark County School District Police provides a case in point.

At 4:10 a.m. on Oct. 4, 2006, school police officer Theodore Tetonis was checking an alarm at the Chaparral High School football field when he saw two boys running away. He drew his .40-caliber pistol and started to run after them. But he slipped and fell, accidentally firing the gun, he said, "one or two times.''

Tetonis didn't report the shots to dispatchers or to his supervisor. Nor did he mention it to Las Vegas police officers who got involved after they found one of the boys and brought him back to the school. Both youths later told investigators that Tetonis never identified himself as a cop and that they heard as many as four shots.

Neither boy was arrested, and the incident likely would have gone unknown. But hours later, after Tetonis was off duty and at home, his supervisor learned about it and asked Las Vegas police to investigate. Because of the time lag, investigators were never able to deter­mine how many shots were fired or where they hit.

According to police reports, Tetonis admitted that he tried to cover up the incident because he was afraid of losing his job. The incident wasn't made public, and the school district won't say what, if any, discipline Tetonis received. It will confirm he is still a school cop.

Records also show a wide disparity in the way officer-involved shootings are handled. Most Las Vegas Valley police departments investigate their own shootings. Homicide detectives, considered the best investigators, are typically called in, regardless of injuries. Even so, quality varies.

In 2005 a Las Vegas police officer shot and wounded a troubled 16-year-old boy who had a knife. Officers had surrounded the teen in a west valley apartment complex when officer Warren Rivas-Guevara arrived, perceived a threat and fired once. Officer Marc Hinrichs, who saw the incident, later confided to a detective that the situation was under control and he didn't believe the boy needed to be shot -- a candid admission rarely recorded in police paperwork. Hinrichs didn't repeat his assessment when he gave a formal statement about the shooting, but the detective wrote it into the report, anyway.

By comparison, reports on the shooting of a knife-wielding vagrant in 2002 gloss over witness accounts that could have caused trouble for an officer. The incident began when Las Vegas officer Marc Prager detained the vagrant for jaywalking at 6th and Fremont streets. After he was searched, the man became belligerent, grabbed a knife from the hood of a patrol car and attacked the officer. Officer Nicholas Farese, who had just arrived at the scene, shot and wounded him.

Witnesses confirmed the officer's account of the incident, but the investigating detective never addressed a key detail in his report: Why was there a knife on the hood of the patrol car where the man could reach it?

Officers commonly put items taken from pockets of people they search on their car hood, but doing that with a weapon is inherently dangerous.

The Las Vegas police Use of Force Review Board cleared all officers in both shootings of any wrongdoing.

SHOOTINGS TAKE THEIR TOLL

The newspaper also examined the impact of shootings on police officers. Studies have shown that some experience memory loss, remorse, spikes in blood pressure and other ill effects during and after a shooting. Often, effects surface years later.

Zachary Huffine had been a Las Vegas cop for about a year when he and another officer shot and killed John Charles O'Banion in February 2000. O'Banion, like Huffine, was just 23.

Before the incident near Torrey Pines Drive and U.S. Highway 95, O'Banion, a felon, had led police on car and foot chases before trying to fire a handgun at them.

Huffine had no doubt he did the right thing when he shot O'Banion seven times from the rooftop of a house. A coroner's inquest jury ruled his actions were justified.

But Huffine, a graduate of Laughlin High School who always dreamed of becoming a police officer, struggled with feelings of guilt. Nothing in his experience or training prepared him for the aftermath of a deadly force situation.

A few days after the shooting, he told his mother, Francie, he planned to go to confession at a Catholic church.

"That's fine, Zach," Francie Huffine said. "But we're not even Catholic."

Soon after Huffine returned to duty he got into trouble with his superiors for fraternizing with a suspected drug dealer at a casino. The incident prompted Huffine to resign from the department and join the U.S. Army, where he served two tours in Iraq.

Huffine was one of several officers interviewed by the Review-Journal whose career and life were affected by a shooting. The news­paper also spoke with many families of people who were killed by police. Each mourned the death in his or her own way, but all were united in the loss of a loved one.

"It's not the years right after (the death) that are hardest," said Sherry Bryant, whose husband, Rayburn, was shot and killed outside a downtown apartment complex in 2002. "It's dealing with it now. It's when it's all done and everybody has forgotten about it."

SOME WANT CHANGE IN CULTURE

Other big-city departments and communities have discovered that better policies, accountability, oversight and transparency can keep officers safer, inspire public confidence and reduce shootings. Denver cut shootings by a quarter since substantial reforms followed a controversial shooting that shook up that city. Police in Portland, Ore., in 2003 asked outside experts to tell them how they could improve. They've since cut shootings in half.

It's that cultural change that some former Las Vegas police officers and administrators want to see.

"A police organization is only as effective as the level of confidence that the public has in it," Jett said. "LVMPD is such an outstanding organization that, in my opinion, we don't have to be afraid to implement change. We don't need to be afraid to have true transparency in any of our processes."

Last year's shootings prompted a public outcry that rippled through the department. Officers, on advice of their union lawyers, stopped cooperating with homicide detectives. The coroner's inquests, a flawed process that nonetheless gave some transparency to deaths under color of authority, were shelved because the unions challenged the constitutionality of allowing officers to be questioned in an adversarial way.

Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie created two new teams to investigate shootings and recently said he is reaching out to community groups for ideas on how to fix the inquest system and repair his department's internal review procedures. He's asked a team of researchers from California to study racial sensitivity issues, an effort now midway through a two-year process.

The sheriff, now in his second four-year term, said he wants to improve transparency, inspire public confidence, and create a system where his department can learn from its shootings.

"Some of the instances you guys are looking at caused us some concern, like the number of cars we were shooting at, like the number of officers that were getting into armed encounters after foot pursuit,'' he said in an interview for this series. "So what do you do? You look at your policies, procedures, and training tactics, and you adapt, modify, and change based on those things that you see."

But when it comes to shootings, Gillespie said his officers are largely limited by the actions of suspects.

When asked about numerous mistakes and poor decisions by his officers during the raid on Cole's apartment, Gillespie placed most of the blame on the unarmed dead man.

"There were a number of things that led up to the entry into that home that caused me concern," he said. "But again ... if Trevon Cole and occupants of that apartment would have done what the officers had asked them to do, Trevon Cole would be alive today."

Alan Maimon is a Review-Journal special correspondent.

Source

Part II: 142 Dead, and Rising

Analysis of cases since 1990 reveals patterns in Las Vegas police shootings

By Alan Maimon, Lawrence Mower AND Brian Haynes

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Posted: Nov. 28, 2011 | 12:00 a.m.

The Metropolitan Police Department uses deadly force at a higher rate than many other urban police agencies, according to a Review-Journal analysis that shows Las Vegas police could reduce shootings by preventing officers from placing themselves in situations where shooting is their only option.

Police in Clark County have killed 142 people in 378 officer-involved shootings since 1990, with Las Vegas officers involved in more than 80 percent. In dozens of incidents, officers had no choice but to use a gun. In others, use of deadly force could have been avoided.

The newspaper's analysis is based on thousands of pages of police reports, coroner's inquest transcripts, court files and other records, as well as interviews with police officers and law enforcement experts. Until now, debate over police shootings has focused on individual incidents rather than systemic issues that can determine when, where, how and why shootings happen.

Shootings by all Clark County police agencies were examined, but the analysis focused on the Metropolitan Police Department, the state's largest law enforcement agency and the center of controversy following two shooting deaths in 2010.

To determine if Las Vegas police use their guns more than those in other cities, the Review-Journal collected statistics for a decade, 2001 to 2010, from 16 cities. The Metropolitan Police Department ranked third in shootings by police per capita and per reported violent crime among those cities. In average annual shootings, Las Vegas police ranked fifth.

Other findings include:

■ Las Vegas police were involved in 310 shooting incidents since 1990, 115 of them fatal; North Las Vegas had 29, with 11 fatal; and Henderson had 22, 10 fatal. Twenty-one shootings, including eight fatalities, involved the Nevada Highway Patrol, Boulder City police, Clark County School District police or federal agents. Five shootings involved multiple agencies.

■ Shootings valleywide have generally increased over time, from just two in 1990 to a record 31 last year. From 1990 to 2000, there was an average of slightly more than 12 shootings per year. Since then, it's been more than 21 per year. While the valley's population has more than doubled in 20 years, the number of shootings has not been proportional — it varies greatly by year — and the number of shootings per capita in 2010 was nearly double that of each of the previous three, slow-growth years.

■ In 90 percent of incidents involving Las Vegas police, the shooting subject was armed, though not always with a gun. Cars were identified as a weapon in 16 percent of incidents. In a handful of cases shooting subjects were considered to be armed if they attempted to take an officer's weapon.

■ In 29 percent of Las Vegas police incidents, suspects fired guns at officers. An officer was injured in at least 10 percent of incidents.

■ Three officers in Clark County — North Las Vegas officer Raul Elizondo in 1995, Las Vegas police Sgt. Henry Prendes in 2006, and Las Vegas officer Trevor Nettleton in 2009 — were shot dead.

■ Shootings are considered rare for officers, but at least 13 percent of current Las Vegas cops have been involved in at least one shooting, a higher rate than Henderson and North Las Vegas police, each at about 8.5 percent.

■ Nine shootings by Las Vegas police involved off-duty cops whose actions were classified as officer-involved shootings because they were acting in a law enforcement capacity. Incidents unrelated to police work, such as a 1997 drive-by shooting by two off-duty Las Vegas officers, were not included.

■ Blacks, less than 10 percent of Clark County's population, account for about 30 percent of Las Vegas police shooting subjects. Moreover, 18 percent of blacks shot at by police were unarmed.

■ About 25 percent of shootings followed a foot pursuit; 17 percent involved a car chase. Six percent involved both.

■ Twenty percent of Las Vegas police shootings were into a vehicle.

■ At least 70 percent of those killed by police had drugs or alcohol in their system. At least half had arrest records.

■ Forty-two percent of all officer-involved shootings happened in just seven of Clark County's 136 ZIP codes: 89101, 89103, 89104, 89108, 89110, 89115 and 89121. They include downtown and areas east of downtown; neighborhoods near Nellis Air Force Base; an area south of Spring Mountain Road and west of Interstate 15; and an area between Rancho Drive and Buffalo Drive north of Washington Avenue. Most are lower-income areas with a high proportion of rental housing. Each had at least 20 police shootings.

COMPARATIVELY HIGH RATE

Discussion of police shootings in Las Vegas in recent years has been long on speculation, if short on detail. Because there's no national clearinghouse for that data, there is no national average or even readily available city-by-city numbers.

"Even on the academic end, the studies of officer-involved shootings are relatively limited," said Bill Sousa, a criminology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

To compare shooting rates among U.S. police departments, the Review-Journal sampled the nation's 20 largest municipal police agencies, based on population served, plus Denver, Seattle, and Portland, Ore., for geographical balance. The survey also took into account violent crime rates, one indicator of how likely officers are to encounter a situation calling for use of deadly force. Sixteen agencies provided data for 2001 to 2010.

The Metropolitan Police Department ranked third, behind Houston and Chicago, in officer-involved shootings per capita. It also ranked third in shootings per reported violent crime, trailing Denver and Seattle.

Ronnie Dunn, an urban studies professor at Cleveland State University who has researched officer-involved shootings in Cleveland, reviewed the newspaper's findings and concluded "there is clearly reason for concern regarding the volume and increase in police-involved shootings over the past 20 years."

He singled out the disproportionate rate at which Las Vegas police shoot black subjects and in-vehicle shootings as particular areas of concern.

Asked whether he thinks his department uses deadly force more often than others, Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said he's never seen reliable data to allow a comparison to other departments.

"I've always said that one officer-involved shooting is too many," Gillespie said. "Whatever we can do to prevent those acts from occurring, we have an obligation to do."

Gillespie's predecessor, Bill Young, said much the same.

"I will freely admit that we have a lot of shootings here in Southern Nevada. More than what I'd like, and more than almost all our citizens and more than most police officers obviously like," said Young, a 29-year police veteran and sheriff from 2003 to 2007.

DANGEROUS JOB

Dozens of shootings analyzed by the Review-Journal were clearly unavoidable and necessary to protect the life of an officer or a civilian.

Take, for example, a shooting on April 28, 2001: Las Vegas police officer Keith Borders, just 30 months on the force, responded to a domestic disturbance on West Desert Inn Road, where he found Donald Charles Mettinger, 49, and his girlfriend, Susan Spaine, arguing.

While Borders was talking to Spaine across the street, Mettinger emerged from the house with two handguns and fired at backup officers, forcing them to retreat. He then fired a shotgun at Borders, who was shielding Spaine with his body. In the ensuing gunbattle, the severely injured officer fired 39 rounds from his .45-caliber handgun, hitting Mettinger eight times and killing him. Two years later Borders became the first police officer to receive the national Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor. After extensive surgeries he was forced to retire in 2005.

Las Vegas officers have been wounded in gunbattles at least 22 times since 1990. In at least 88 of the 310 incidents, officers said they were shot at before returning fire.

Authorities often say cops are more likely to encounter people with guns than in the past, but the analysis doesn't support that. The proportion of subjects with guns has been consistent at about half in each year since 1990, and the percentage who fired at officers has actually decreased since 2000.

In some cases it was clear the shooting subjects wanted police to kill them — a phenomenon called "suicide by cop." These incidents are few.

The newspaper identified a suicide by cop if a subject clearly communicated a desire to die, provoked a confrontation and did something to threaten officers. Only about 5 percent of shootings met this strict definition.

But in 11 incidents, a person committed suicide during a confrontation, in some cases choosing death over arrest. Those were classified as suicide, not suicide by cop.

PERCEPTION FAILS

At least 33 times since 1990 Las Vegas police have shot at an unarmed person. Seven, including one fatality, occurred in one recent 16-month period, September 2009 to January 2011.

In some of the 33 incidents, officers later said they felt the person was armed with a gun and was going to harm them or others. The Police Assessment Resource Center, a Los Angeles-based organization that studies law enforcement issues, refers to these as "state of mind" or "perception" shootings.

On occasion, the perceptions of Las Vegas officers are wrong.

On April 19, 2000, officer Nathan Chio stopped a car near Pecos Road and Las Vegas Boulevard because the registered owner was wanted on a felony parole violation. After ordering the driver, Kendrick Weather­spoon, out of the car, Chio, a four-year veteran cop, saw what he believed to be someone moving under a pile of clothes in the back seat. He shouted at the person to get out, and fired twice into the pile when something fell to the floor.

There was no one under the laundry.

The Las Vegas police Use of Force Review Board, which rarely faults officers in shootings, found that Chio violated department policy. Because of department personnel rules, it's unclear if he was disciplined. He is still on the force.

Weatherspoon, 33, still resents the shooting. He wasn't even wanted — the warrant was for the car's prior owner.

"My 5-year-old son could have been in the back seat," Weatherspoon said. "I never got an explanation for what (Chio) did. I never even got paid for the bullet hole in my car."

Wayne Peterson, a homicide lieutenant at the time, called the shooting one of the most troubling he ever saw.

"How could you shoot in a pile of clothes?'' he said. "Thank God nobody got hit."

Weatherspoon's extended family had other volatile encounters with police later that year. His cousin, Markus Weatherspoon, shot and injured a Las Vegas officer in June 2000, and his uncle, Johnnie Weatherspoon, was shot and killed by North Las Vegas police during a drug raid in August.

DIFFICULT DECISIONS

Nine times since 1990 Las Vegas police have shot and killed an unarmed man.

In several high-profile cases, including the 1999 death of John Paul Perrin, 32, and the troubling 2010 shooting of small-time marijuana dealer Trevon Cole, 21, an unarmed person was shot after making a movement that police perceived as threatening.

For every unarmed person shot at by Las Vegas police, nine had some kind of weapon, usually a gun. However, about half of the subjects armed with guns never fired a shot.

That was the case in one of the most controversial shootings in recent memory, when Erik Scott, 38, a medical device salesman, was killed as he left a crowded Costco store in affluent Summerlin on July 10, 2010.

Like 70 percent of those killed by police, Scott was under the influence of alcohol or drugs — heavy doses of prescription pain pills for a back injury. But he wasn't accused of any crime. A store employee thought he was acting strangely and dialed 911 when he saw that Scott, who had a concealed weapons permit, had a holstered gun and refused to leave the store.

Three Las Vegas officers — William Mosher, Thomas Mendiola, and Joshua Stark — said they fired because Scott didn't follow orders to get on the ground and instead pulled the still-holstered gun from his waistband. Inquest witnesses testified that Scott appeared dazed and may not have realized he was doing something that would be perceived as a threat. The shooting was ruled justified, but it still prompted debate about whether police could have resolved the situation without resorting to deadly force.

Sometimes the perception that a suspect is capable of doing great harm is validated by information learned only after a shooting.

On Sept. 30, 2006, Las Vegas police responded to a shots-fired call on the west side of the city. Officer Bradley Cupp and his partner tried to question two men who then led them on car and foot pursuits. Pierre Donte Joshlin, 18, pointed a handgun at Cupp, who responded by firing three rounds at him, all of which missed. Joshlin was later found hiding in a trash bin and was arrested. Cupp didn't know until later that the initial call stemmed from a murder committed by Joshlin and others.

BLACK AND WHITE

When it comes to officer-involved shootings, race and location matter.

Since 1990, 39 percent of Las Vegas shooting subjects were white, 32 percent black, and 26 percent Hispanic, as noted in the 92 percent of cases listing a race.

Hispanics are 29 percent of Clark County's population, so shootings for that group roughly followed local demo­graphics. But blacks, at less than 10 percent, were dramatically overrepresented in several ways.

Of the 33 unarmed subjects shot at by Las Vegas police, about half were black, including five of the seven in those 16 months from September 2009 to January 2011.

Of the 77 Las Vegas shootings preceded by foot pursuits, nearly half involved black men.

"The numbers are obviously disturbing in terms of the issues it raises about police tactics used in different communities," said Richard Boulware, a member of the executive board of the Las Vegas chapter of the NAACP.

That's not unique to Las Vegas.

In a report on its own shootings, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department earlier this year wrote that "when there is a mistaken shooting of an unarmed individual, he or she has a substantially higher likelihood of being a young black or Latino person than a white or Asian."

Dunn said research in cognitive psychology shows when a person is ostensibly threatening an officer with a deadly weapon, the decision to shoot is made faster if the subject is black, and the decision not to shoot comes faster if the subject is white. He said the Review-Journal's data "might indicate a need for cultural awareness training as well as more thorough psychological screening in the recruitment and hiring of officers to test for biases, either conscious or unconscious."

David Klinger, a former Los Angeles cop who teaches criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, said the Review-Journal's analysis mirrors other studies.

"Unfortunately, minorities are disproportionately shot by police, and we've known that forever," Klinger said.

Conversely, 27 percent of all shooting subjects armed with guns and 26 percent of those who shot at Las Vegas cops were black.

ON FOOT

Seventy-seven times since 1990, Las Vegas officers chased people on foot before shooting at them. That represents 24 percent of all shootings by the department.

By comparison, North Las Vegas police had foot pursuits in just four of 29 shootings; Henderson only once in 22 shootings.

While many large police departments restrict foot pursuits to reduce risk to officers and limit violent confrontations, Las Vegas police only this year implemented a chase policy — one that falls short of the standard set by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which strongly discourages solo foot pursuits and requires officers to stop if they lose sight of their target or lose contact with their partner.

Many Las Vegas shootings after foot pursuits have been solo chases.

Gillespie said the new policy, while only advisory, has reduced foot pursuits: There have been just two so far this year.

But Gillespie also acknowledged chases have been an issue. He said some officers "get caught up in the heat of the moment" and forget their training.

The department allows officers to use deadly force to prevent the escape of a "fleeing felon" who poses a significant threat to human life, but in at least two chases Las Vegas officers put themselves and others in danger over jaywalking.

On Jan. 19, 2009, a jaywalking suspect in the 3000 block of Las Vegas Boulevard North ran from officer Danny Tapia, who was in his second year on the force. Tapia said he fired five shots — one each time the runner turned and pointed a gun at him without firing — but missed each time. The jaywalker got away and has never been identified.

About a year after that incident, Las Vegas gang officers tried to detain Ray Ivory, 22, and another jaywalker at Vegasgreen Trail and Owens Avenue. Ivory ran, and officer Ben Rose went after him. When Ivory pulled a gun, Rose fired three rounds, missing each time. Ivory didn't shoot, and later received probation after pleading guilty to resisting a public officer. Both shootings were ruled justified by the department's Use of Force Review Board.

MOVING VEHICLES

Sixteen percent of all Las Vegas shootings involved moving vehicles, making cars a more common "weapon" than knives, and in many ways more problematic. Six of the last seven shootings ruled un­justified by the Review Board involved vehicles.

In 2000, Sheriff Jerry Keller advised officers to stop shooting at cars, but incidents actually increased after that. There have been fewer incidents since 2002, but some of the department's most questionable shootings have continued to involve cars.

On Sept. 11, 2009, for example, Las Vegas officer Jesse Gerstel and his partner made a routine traffic stop on the Strip and ordered the driver, Erik Perez, 28, to turn off his engine. Instead, Perez drove off. Gerstel shot out the car's back window in an intersection crowded with pedestrians and other motorists.

Perez wasn't attempting to ram anyone with his car and no one was endangered. Gerstel, no longer with the department, admitted to investigators that he had violated policy; the shooting was ruled unjustified.

In some cases, officers needlessly put themselves in harm's way by reaching into cars or trying to block vehicles with their bodies. If the driver doesn't stop, the car is considered a weapon and the officer is justified in using deadly force for self-defense.

Gillespie acknowledged his officers had a problem with shooting into vehicles, but said it's being fixed. However, the department had four vehicle shootings last year and one so far this year.

MENTAL HEALTH

In 2003 Young instituted training to help officers better handle people who are suicidal or mentally ill. The program has won praise, but those Crisis Intervention Training officers might not have a significant effect on shootings.

Before 2003, about 14 percent of those shot at by police were identified as suicidal or mentally ill. Since then, the rate has been about 20 percent. It's not clear, however, if the numbers indicate limited success or point to a good program overwhelmed by a rising problem.

In half the incidents involving the mentally ill since 1990, shooting subjects were armed with knives.

Gillespie said officers respond to more calls involving the mentally ill than in the past.

"The services provided at the state and local level to people who are mentally ill have been reduced," Gillespie said. "That has impacted the percentage of the population we're engaged with day to day who are mentally ill."

Half of those shot by Henderson police since 1990 were experiencing a mental health crisis — more than three times the rate for Las Vegas police. Henderson Police Chief Jutta Chambers said she wants Crisis Intervention Training for all officers.

"There's a huge value in that," she said. "We're experiencing a lot more issues with folks who might have mental health problems."

SHOOTER, SUBJECT, CIRCUMSTANCES

Since 1990, 519 officers from all Las Vegas Valley departments have been involved in a shooting, including 413 Las Vegas police officers.

Las Vegas officers also dominate the list of 75 cops who have been involved in two or more shootings, with 66 names. Two officers share the record for number of shootings: Former Las Vegas officer James Breed and current North Las Vegas officer Michael Carmody.

Ninety-six percent of officers involved in shootings since 1990 were men.

There's been speculation that waves of hiring as Las Vegas boomed contributed to high shooting rates because more young, in­experienced cops were on the street, but nothing in the data shows that. On average, the officers involved in shootings were more than 30 years old and had more than six years of experience. In 2010 the averages were seven years and slightly older than 35.

The average age of a shooting subject was 30, and 92 percent were male. The youngest person shot by Las Vegas police was 13. The oldest was 77.

While police often cite Las Vegas' status as a 24-hour adult playground as a contributing factor in shooting rates, the analysis found that tourists seldom get involved. The overwhelming majority of those shot since 1990 had a local address.

A person killed by police was more likely to be under the influence of alcohol than any other drug. In the 2000s, however, methamphetamine was noted in toxicology reports for 25 subjects, up from nine in the 1990s.

Las Vegas police were involved in more shootings in the month of January than any other. Tuesday was the most frequent day of the week. There were more shootings, 31, between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. than any other time of day. The fewest shootings, six, took place between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

The majority of shootings started with calls for service, most frequently a domestic disturbance.

Las Vegas police officers used a stun gun, pepper spray or other nonlethal weapon in 11 percent of incidents where they also used firearms, and initially fought hand-to-hand in 8 percent.

Only one person was shot in more than one incident. Jeffrey Dean Martindale was wounded by Las Vegas police after a 1991 bank robbery and was killed in 2005 by Boulder City police after he fired at officers trying to arrest him for attempted murder. He was 32.

Two officers were involved in shootings with more than one department. Glenn Rector and Eric Seibold each used deadly force as Highway Patrol troopers and as Las Vegas cops.

Alan Maimon is a Review-Journal special correspondent.