The Bill Young I chatted with nearly two and a half years ago—unsmiling and straight-backed as he talked with Downtown business-owners about the tough go of fighting crime in the area—was on hiatus during a recent interview in his City Hall offices. Mere weeks away from ending a 28-year career with Metro—the last four as Clark County sheriff—Young was conversational, if not jovial.
"I'm ready to start the second part of my life," says Young, a 50-year-old father of three who started with Metro as a 22-year-old patrol cop in 1978. "I've been the sheriff. Now I want to be dad. I want to go to my daughter's soccer games and not have to be somewhere all the time or to deal with the politics, because it's corrupting."
The way things have been going lately, retirement can't come quickly enough. In February, one of his officers was fatally gunned down, the first cop murdered in the line of duty in 18 years. In a five-week stretch during the summer, four of his officers fatally shot suspects, sparking lawsuits and howls for Metro to change its use-of-force policy. Then came Gibbonsgate. Young's caught heat for alerting Jim Gibbons, a Republican congressmen and gubernatorial hopeful, about a battery complaint filed by cocktail waitress Christy Mazzeo. She accuses Gibbons of pinning her against a wall and threatening her in the parking garage at McCormick and Schmick's on October 13. Gibbons denies the allegations.
"But I can't talk about the case," he says. Lawyer's orders. "But I can talk about everything else."
And talk he did.
Wild guess—you're on your way to a casino job?
Who knows. I've got offers from three or four casinos, from a pro sports team. I can do something in homeland security. I have a lot of options.
Why the sudden exit?
There were several things. My mother dying. The Prendes shooting [officer Henry Prendes was gunned down by an AK-wielding Amir Crump in February]. The desire to be there for my little girl—she's 12.
Were you scared that some secret indiscretion would be leaked if you ran for re-election?
Ron Williams put that out there, but that's just not true. No. 1, it would've come out the first time I ran. I'd been on the department 24 years then [when he was elected in 2002] and I don't know that in the last four years in public life, when you live in a fishbowl with all the scrutiny, how it couldn't have come out. And finally, and not that I have to defend this, but I've been campaigning harder for Doug Gillespie than I would have done if I was in the race. I think I've been pretty accessible. I haven't been hiding under my desk worrying about a scandal. Am I a perfect person? No. I like to go out and have a beer with the boys as much as anybody. A pretty girl will turn my head. But as far as horrible indiscretions, naw. ... There was no race until I decided to change directions in my life. December through May, there was nobody really going to take me on except some kook in the department that I disciplined that didn't like me.
Back in 2001, when you announced your candidacy for sheriff, police Capt. Randy Oaks said you were "essentially married to the policies of Jerry Keller, and I represent what I think is needed change." What did he mean by that?
I think that he meant that when you're running as the perceived insider and are endorsed by the incumbent sheriff, there's only one way you can go. When Jerry left, he left in a time when I think he could've easily been re-elected, so you have to attack the current administration. I mean, what are you going to say, "He's doing a good job and I'll do better"? I was one of Jerry's deputy chiefs and Randy wasn't. I don't know if you know this, but Randy and I got along pretty well afterward. I consider him a friend today. He later took that back, what he said, and said he was wrong, that I was my own man and that I made needed changes around the department.
In a 2002 debate with Oaks, you said "I think Metro is the finest police department in the United States and I want to make the finest even better." Have you done that, and how so?
I meant that then and mean it now. We certainly haven't gone backwards. I've made Metro better from the point of view that the public trusts us more. I'm privy to some polling on the respect that Metro has, and while you're never going to get 100 percent, our approval rating is 80 percent, and that has to do with people knowing we run an honest department and there's hardly any corruption or scandals. I have not been hesitant to weed out bad officers and hold them accountable for poor performance to include excessive force and aberrant behavior. I'm known as a disciplinarian.
Ralph Lamb is seen as a maverick sheriff. John Moran served three terms [and helped Metro earn accreditation]. Jerry Keller is seen as the lawman who shepherded Metro from a small-town to a big-city outfit. What will your legacy be?
I don't know that I have a legacy as of yet. I'd like to think people will say I did a pretty good job and was a square shooter and ran a very open and honest police department. Albeit, there's been some pretty challenging times for me.
Like?
The Prendes case.
What's Metro's biggest improvement in your tenure?
There's been no time when the sheriff hasn't had to beg the city and county for police officers. We've had I don't know how many ballot questions over the years to get more cops by raising property taxes. I think the idea we had for the quarter-cent sales tax for hiring more cops will make it easier for future sheriffs to get the type of staffing we need to be successful as a police agency. Cops do make a difference in fighting crime. You can't continue doing it on the cheap, which is what we've always done. We're a full officer per 1,000 citizens behind the national average. And that doesn't count our tourism population. I think in future years, we'll go, Thank God we got those cops on board.
What's been the impact of the tax?
So far, we've hired 154 officers solely from that ballot initiative, and we've got another 105 starting the academy in November. That's something no sheriff has ever done. Metro's no different from any other bit of infrastructure in the county, whether it's schools, roads, libraries or the wait for four hours to get a darn driver's license—the growth is hard to deal with.
Cite other areas where Metro's reduced or eradicated problems.
The diversity of our upper management—for the first time in the history of our department, we can be proud of it. If you look at my team, my No. 3 man is a black man. Greg McCurdy, deputy chief of detectives and investigations. I promoted Cliff Davis to deputy chief. I hired the first female African-American communications director in the history of our department, Carla Alston. I think those were needed infusions into Metro's culture.
We always improved our 911 system. The average wait was two minutes when someone called—two minutes. For the last two and a half years, 90 percent of our 911 calls have been answered in 10 seconds or less. If you don't get a hold of cops, it adds to a frustrating experience.
We've always made huge strides in homeland security. It's hard to measure when there's been no disaster, but we've created a Homeland Security division that's looked at as a model for many other agencies. Another I'd cite, and I hate to jinx this, but if I can go to December 31, I'll be the first sheriff to not have a suicide in a jail on my watch. It was huge issue in the previous administration, to the point where the Department of Justice came in. We've made huge improvement. Though it's still overcrowded, but that means we're doing our job.
Okay, now what areas need shoring up?
Many areas. Whether it's use-of-force issues—one death is one death too many—from Tasers, to officer-involved shootings to crime-fighting issues. As long as you have good procedure, good policy, great training and you do your best, even when you do all those things, well ... this isn't a perfect science. A couple of things we could do better: use technology more effectively. Crooks are getting more sophisticated and we spend a lot of time fighting crimes in a manual and traditional way, and I know there are cheaper and more effective ways to fight crime. We've made some huge strides in the last six months in tackling auto theft. There's a lot of technology out there, and it's expensive and sometimes it's tough sorting through the right solution because there are so many salespeople out there.
As a fourth-generation Nevadan, you've seen this Valley's population explode. Growth brings crime and the bottom line is that there's no way Metro can hire enough cops to deal with the growth. So isn't Metro going to have to fundamentally rethink how it enforces law?
In spite of what you read in the papers, the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada] criticizes us for a lot of things, but I think if you talked to Gary Peck [its executive director] he'd say there's a lot of good going on at Metro. We were one of the first three or four agencies to get Tasers for officers. We get a lot of criticism for the five deaths allegedly attributed to those tools, but we've had thousands of deployments of those weapons, and who knows how many lives have been saved and injuries prevented. We're also getting into intelligence-led policing. Terrorism preparedness needs to be more overlayed with regular crime-fighting, and we're putting together a fusion center, where we'll use real-time intelligence and analysis to try and predict where future crimes will be committed. There are some techniques that will provide for a safer environment from a potential terrorist attack to dealing with regular street crime to get officers information on crimes, trends and suspects to help prevent crime.
The past few years, Las Vegas has ranked among the most dangerous large U.S. cities in Morgan Quitno Press' annual survey (seventh in 2006) ...
I'm not a big fan of Morgan Quitno. Numbers can be skewed any way you want. They use a lot of factors like use of alcohol and smoking. When you look at the unique aspects of Las Vegas, it doesn't play well with Morgan Quitno. Every other city in the country closes shop at midnight or 2 a.m. No other city in the country has 350,000 tourists in it at any given time, 135,000 hotel rooms with a constant flux of transient people in the city with an average stay of 2.7 days per visitor. No other city in the country has what we have in the four miles of Las Vegas Boulevard, the sexy, alcohol-oriented environment that fuels calls for service and crime. There's been no county to grow faster than Clark County in the last 10 years. No county has three of the top four fastest-growing cities in America within its borders.
Even with all that, we're a very successful city and everyone wants to move here. If it was such a dangerous place to be, they wouldn't be building things as fast as they can. With all that said, I don't make excuses for certain changes in the community. There's more gang crime than I'd like. There's too many youths carrying weapons today and using them. This isn't just a Vegas thing, it's a trend we're seeing across the country. You can't pick up the paper and not see horrible crimes committed by kids and kids with guns. The Bush administration has been very focused on terrorism and homeland security, I think to the detriment of traditional crime-fighting programs and great losses in cops grants that dealt with neighborhood programs and community-oriented policing programs and Weed & Seed. Some of the programs that we've lost funding for make quite a difference, particularly in neighborhoods.
That said, and with crime on the rise this year, can you honestly say the Valley is a safer place than the one you inherited?
I'd like to think it's as safe as or, in some ways, safer. There's some areas of town that I don't think are as safe as when I started. The eastern swath of the Valley, the demographics have changed dramatically and there's more crime there than I'd like. A lot of that crime is not reported to us as well as I'd like. I mean, I'm not going to hide behind it, it's Hispanics. They're leery of the police. They don't use banks as much as we'd like. It's led to a lot of crime that could be prevented. But we're working very, very hard to rectify those cultural barriers. But there's been a lot of gang crime that's come with that as well. To say that Hispanics have more gangs and crime than any other group isn't right, but there's been a huge change in the demographics. It's happened and it's inescapable. When I meet with city [police] chiefs four times a year, I find out another city has the same problem we do because it has an industry that lends itself to them, whether it's a meat-packing plant, for example. Kansas City is having the same issue. I think culturalism will change ideas.
The tax initiative is putting more cops on the streets. But several candidates have said Metro could've done this by reallocating resources and not raising taxes.
Bullshit. I call bullshit on that one. Our ratio of officers per 1,000 citizens is one of the lowest of any police department in America. The latest Department of Justice statistics of cities with one million or more in their jurisdiction—we're the eighth- or ninth-largest—the average is 4.3 officers in those cities and we're doing it with 1.65. We don't have enough employees. Redeployment? We've had two outside groups here come in, including the Matrix Group, take a look at the way the department is organized. They said we were 400 cops short. There was a lot of constructive criticism, and we're improving, but they also said we're using civilians where they should be used and cops doing cop jobs.
Sheriff candidate Jerry Airola's idea of seeking a change in Metro's funding, from a city- and county-funded budget to one controlled by Metro—is that a good idea or pie in the sky?
It's funny that Mr. Airola has taken several ideas that have been out there, ideas that I had. After the last contract two years ago with the PPA [Police Protective Association], it was said that the sheriff didn't have much flexibility. I had talks with the city, county and mayor for Metro to have its own taxation district. No. 1, it's not the city's and county's money we use, it's taxpayers' money. The county and city contribution comes through them and it provides some oversight to the department. Even if Metro had its own tax district, there'd still have to be a board for oversight because the sheriff is independently elected. There's always got to be some balance. I don't mind the scrutiny. It's shown it works pretty well for the public. If we could save tax dollars, and if I ran for a second term, I'd push for it, but I'm not sure it would.
The rise in officer-involved shootings has some people thinking Metro is a shoot-first, ask-questions-later police force. A number of theories have been floated about the rise in officer-involved shootings: Criminals have more access to weapons and have more powerful weapons. What's your take?
Police work and law enforcement is always very cyclical. When this issue first surfaced in June, when we had three or four officer-involved shootings, I pulled out some old stats. In 1974, the year I graduated from Bishop Gorman High School, one year after Metro was created, we had 41 officer-involved shootings. The department was one-fourth the size it is now and so was the community. Yet we'll reach maybe this year, 25. Over the years, we've professionalized. There's one thing that has to be said: We have solid policy, specific rules and there's very specific law that says what's legal and acceptable for a police officer to do. But we're still dealing with human beings. You're going to have some instances that don't quite match up well with what people like. It's a much more violent society. When I was a young cop, you might get a gun off somebody once or twice a month. You work certain areas of town and you're going to get guns off suspects you stop every single night.
Is public fear justified?
The Prendes shooting had a huge effect on Metro. In the aftermath, there's been questions about shoot first, ask questions later. I hope that's not true. We've done a lot of work with our employees from counseling to retraining to looking at that situation and seeing if it's evidenced itself in any one of the officer-involved shootings. I can't 100 percent rule it out. Human nature is if you've gone through trauma and you've lost a co-worker and friend and you go out there and do the same job day in and day out and you're exposed to same types of potential violence ... perhaps our officers have been a little on edge. An officer brutally shot to death doesn't happen very often.
... With the exception of the Swuave Lopez shooting, most of the other officer-involved shootings have involved suspects with guns. I've looked at the coroner's inquest, the DA's reports, the news. Surely the families are upset. They lost a loved one. They have every right to question us and demand an answer. The ACLU has been very vocal in this arena for years. But I think the public generally supports us.
... I think it says a lot that people aren't marching on the streets or that people have listened to cases and judged them on their own merits. Sure I wish that Swuave Lopez one hadn't happened the way it did. There's a lot of them I wish ... one life is one life too many. The media has made this a big issue. At the end of the year, I think they'll be up a little bit but it's not going to be like the number of shootings we used to experience in the late '70s, '80s and '90s.
Address the controversy about curtailing gangster rap from venues.
I don't care what anybody says: Young people being exposed to a culture of violence ... if that's the person they're listening to, or if that's the role model that affects their formative years, the person shooting the gun. ... You're starting to see academics look at this. I'm going to go way out on a limb. I predict that in a year or two or three, you're going to see some reports and studies in academia that are going to validate that we need to be more concerned about what we're exposing young people to. It crosses all cultures and people and sexes. You're getting young ladies joining gangs.
Have things improved since the 2002 racial profiling study that showed minorities are disproportionately stopped, searched and handcuffed at traffic stops?
It'd be impossible to quantify it because we stopped collecting the data. We did do some things, changed some policies and procedures related to the use of handcuffs at traffic stops. What was bothering a lot of folks was the use of handcuffs on African-Americans at 1.5 times more than Caucasians and Hispanics at 1.3 times more than Caucasians. I modified the procedure. The officer has to articulate a clear reason why they're putting people in handcuffs. We had officers watch videos and I did some spot checks because I had to report back to the legislature [in 2005]. We did analysis in specific time periods and in specific areas of town and presented those facts and it didn't become an issue.
In 2004, you criticized the FBI for withholding information about a potential Detroit terrorist cell that had videotaped surveillance of several Strip properties ...
I did.
Describe the current relationship between Metro and the FBI.
It's good. The best it's been since I've been sheriff, perhaps the best it's been in a dozen years. I've had a couple of instances and I had to speak my mind. We've worked through them.
One way to build community relations is outreach. Metro's done that in certain areas—the Hispanic American Response Team. Would you consider a similar unit for other groups?
It's a voluntary assignment. I've never been one to assign officers by ethnicity. HART is a lot of social services and not a lot of police work. When you sign up to be a Metro cop, you want to do hardcore crime fighting. It takes a special person to want to do more of the social work. Nor would I ask an Asian officer to work the Southwest Area Command where we have a much higher percentage of Asians, or African-American cops to work in Bolden Command, where there's a higher African-American population. But we do need to make these more desirable assignments. There is a need for a similar, HART-type program in the Southwest Area Command and I think I might get that done before I leave. The problem with the Asian culture is all the separate languages—Japanese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Taiwanese, Tagalog or some other dialect. It's hard to pinpoint the one as the Vegas Asian language. We have officers of all those descents.
Any regrets about not running for re-election?
Yes, not seeing all those new cops, not seeing more cops on bike patrol and foot beats and more cops on patrol in high-crime areas, instead of having what we've had for the last 10 years, which is running from call to call to call.
Could anything persuade you to run again?
Nothing.