Only one shot was fired when Las Vegas police stopped a reported stolen vehicle on the west side of the valley Friday afternoon. According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, it came from an officer’s gun, and it wasn’t supposed to happen.
The department didn’t call it an accident. It didn’t say “unintentional,” either. The officer “negligently discharged a round from his firearm,” LVMPD wrote in a release posted about four hours after the first call came in.
Meanwhile, the team the department uses for deadly-force cases is looking at something else: the stolen vehicle, which police say was driven into a line of patrol cars.
So one stop now carries two separate investigations, and the gun isn’t the one being examined as deadly force.
What police say happened
The timeline in the release is short. At about 12:41 p.m. on Sept. 25, LVMPD dispatchers took a report of a stolen vehicle in the 9500 block of West Charleston Boulevard. Working from dispatch updates, an officer found the vehicle stopped in the 8200 block of Silver Sky Drive, with a man driving and a woman in the passenger seat.
The officer got out, drew his firearm and started giving commands. The vehicle then left “at a high rate of speed,” the department said, and that’s when the round went off.
It didn’t get far. More patrol units had arrived and blocked the road. Police say the driver tried to go through them anyway, ramming the patrol vehicles. The suspect vehicle was disabled, and both people inside were taken into custody “without further incident.”
The driver was taken to a hospital with injuries LVMPD described as non-life-threatening and “related to the collision.” The release doesn’t say where the officer’s round went, and it reports no gunshot injuries.
Two teams, two questions
LVMPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau responded to the scene to handle the officer’s discharge. The department’s Force Investigation Team took the other half: what the release calls “the use of deadly force by the suspect against the officers in the collision.”
That isn’t a legal stretch. A vehicle driven into police cars, with officers in and around them, is the kind of thing the deadly-force label exists for. It just leaves an unusual split on paper. The officer who drew a gun is facing an internal review. The driver, whose only weapon mentioned in the release is the car, is the deadly-force case.
What LVMPD hasn’t said yet
The department hasn’t named the officer or the two people taken into custody, and the release lists no charges. It doesn’t say whose vehicle was stolen, how long the officer has been with LVMPD, whether he’s been reassigned, or whether body-worn camera footage will be released. It also gives no timeline for either investigation. Until charges are filed and resolved, the ramming remains an allegation.
LVMPD is asking anyone with information to call the Force Investigation Team at 702-828-8452. Tips can be left anonymously with Crime Stoppers of Nevada at 702-385-5555.
If an officer’s round goes off during a stop and hits nothing, is that a conduct problem or a use-of-force problem?