"For a city with the volume of tourism and the population growth, Las Vegas is a safe place to live." —Sheriff Bill Young
"It was ridiculous," he says. "Kids were really going for each other's throats and they weren't shooting in the air." Thugs turn Downtown into the streets of Ramadi and you'd think it'd make the news, but it didn't.
Nor was there any media mention of the October shootout at a teenage party that I helped chaperone in North Las Vegas. Pummeled by rivals, one young man promised to shoot everyone up. His enemies got to their weapons first: A slender teenager who resembles R&B it-boy Chris Brown pulled a 9mm from his waist, ducked his head and started firing. The volley of gunshots sounded like fireworks. Cops marked 25 shell casings in a 20-foot radius—on one street. Amazingly, the only casualties were frazzled nerves. One officer told me that this had the makings of a bloodbath: "They had automatic weapons in the bushes."
Then there was the house party near Smoke Ranch and Rainbow that ended in gunfire, one of the partiers hit in the leg with shrapnel. So why didn't these crimes make headlines? Did the police public information offices, which have become de facto PR firms for law enforcement, drop the ball? Or is the media, with its "if it bleeds it leads" philosophy of generally only reporting on injuries and deaths, to blame? Or is it some combination of both?
Yes.
Not that this town needs any more crime reporting—newspapers and television stations devote significant space to it. The Washington, D.C.-based Project for excellence in Journalism notes that stories on crime, law and the courts comprise 26 percent of nightly newscasts. But who wouldn't want to know if gunmen shot up their neighborhood, even if no one was hurt or killed? By the time Metro gets to a crime scene, spokesman Jose Montoya says, there is no information: The suspects are gone and no one wants to report anything. This is a big problem, he says, with gang-related crime. He didn't recall reports of a Downtown gun battle.
"Sometimes, we'll have a victim, but if the person doesn't want to prosecute, testify or go to court, then there is no crime. We may know who the perpetrator is, but if no is going to press charges and we can't press charges, then we can't arrest anyone." Local authorities admit not knowing how many crimes go unreported; there were 9,529 violent crimes (murder, rapes, robbery, aggravated assault) and 19,950 property crimes in town last year. According to federal Bureau of Justice data, half of all violent crimes, nearly 60 percent of all property crimes and 58 percent of all sexual assaults weren't reported in 2005. Through last week, North Las Vegas had taken 25,000 reports. Not every call was life and death, spokesman Tim Bedwell says. And if cops put out a press release for every report, they'd probably spend more time typing than patrolling.
"We have to be very selective in what we put out to the media," Bedwell says. "People know that by embellishing their stories for dispatch, it will increase the likelihood that cops will be sent. When you get there, you often find that the situation was not what was described."
Glenn Puit covers the district courts for the Review-Journal, but made his bones covering cops. While on the crime beat, his general rule of thumb was whether the crime involved a death; if it did, it generally got ink. With this town's growth and news organizations' limited resources, he says, reporters and editors must decide what's more important to cover. A five-minute gun battle where no one is hit or hurt, while of concern, might be less newsworthy than a fatal stabbing.
"You have to draw a line somewhere. You can do everything you can, but the reality is that most of the news organizations don't staff people overnight," Puit says. "[For instance], we don't have anyone listening to the scanner from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. If you listen to the scanner on any given night, you'll hear about gunshots fired about 40 times, so what are you going to cover? If nobody got shot in an incident, that wouldn't even make my radar screen if I'm on the police beat."
Puit says he's never had a problem with law enforcement withholding reports of crimes: "If there were instances that rose to a high level of concern, I'd be surprised if Metro didn't tell us about them. They have a pretty efficient operation over there." In an excerpt from his co-authored book, Covering Crime and Justice: A Guide for Journalists, crime writer, New York Daily News special correspondent and former journalism professor Dave Krajicek says the public is best served when the media-police PIO relationship is slightly adversarial because "neither can claim to be an unadulterated advocate for the public."
Montoya and Bedwell say press releases are put out for every homicide. North Las Vegas police also e-mail releases on traffic accidents, missing persons reports and other crimes. Montoya says supervisors in traffic and other departments determine if releases are necessary, weighing the benefit to the community. If the community is in danger—say, a serial rapist is on the loose—a press release is likely.
Bedwell says the press pretty much drives what the police report to the media: "If there is a death and it's more than likely a homicide, we will do a press release because we know it's going to get reported. If the death is a suicide, we don't do a press release because it's not going to get reported. From a cop point of view, we put information out to the public for two reasons: the safety of the public and to help solve crimes. If there is a shooting that we think is going to be a homicide, we'll call the TV stations [to conduct all interviews]. We'll call news desk at R-J and AP [Associated Press] depending on the time of day and the severity of the crime. You as a reporter are the guardian of the public's right to know. I get the feel from you as to what you are interested in and give you the information I can, just like I'm doing now."
"Say a big shootout at a Boys and Girls Club," Bedwell continues, "and we got there and could substantiate that it happened, then we would put that out."
Well, I must have missed that press release.