LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department released its 5-year use-of-force report from 2017 to 2021.
Metro reports a decrease in deadly force incidents involving officers.
In 2021, there were 10 officer-involved incidents, which is a decrease of 47% when compared to 2020, according to the report. Overall, officer-involved incidents have been trending downwards for several years, though there was a sharp uptick in 2020.
According to the report, the suspect was armed in every officer-involved incident, and one or more supervisors were on the scene.
While deadly use of force is down on average, non-deadly use of force instances increased over the 5-year span. The sharpest reported increase in cases came from 2017 (774 total incidents) to 2018 (867 total incidents). The lowest increase is from 2020 to 2021.
The use of non-lethal force falls under de-escalation techniques, albeit at the higher end. Metro’s definition of de-escalation includes “the timely and appropriate use of a lower force option to mitigate a later need to use greater force.”
43% of cases involved black people, followed by the white and Hispanic population.
A Use of Force Report is required by each officer who uses reportable force in an incident.
According to reports, the body-worn camera activation rate was the same in both 2020 and 2021 at 93%.
