Las Vegas Police Look For New Training After Gulf War Veteran Was Killed

Las Vegas a test to reduce police shootings 
Mohave Daily News
June 21, 2015

“When you have the trainers actually mocking the training, how seriously are the trainees going to take it?” said Andre Lagomarsino, a lawyer for the family of Trevon Cole, killed by an officer.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — By 2 a.m., nearly five hours had ticked by since Stanley Gibson’s last call. “I want to come home,” the 43-year-old Gulf War veteran told his wife, Rondha, his voice edged by post-traumatic stress disorder.

But Rondha Gibson did not know where to find him until a white Cadillac, bathed in spotlights, filled her television screen. “Local man shot by Metro police,” a headline announced.

“I think that’s my husband you guys killed,” she recalled telling the dispatcher who answered her 911 call.

On that night in 2011, local leaders had just started acknowledging two decades of shootings by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers. But Gibson’s death was a flash point.

Las Vegas, now the first department in the country to complete a “collaborative” Justice Department review, has rewritten its use-of-force rules and ramped up training to de-escalate tense encounters.

Some criticized it as not enough. But shootings by officers, which peaked at 25 in 2010, declined to 13 in 2013 and 16 last year. Through mid-June, Metro officers shot three people, killing one. Even critics credit the decrease at least partly to new training.

Policing experts say training often falls short.

A 2008 survey of more than 300 departments found one-third limited deadly-force training to requalifying in shooting skills, without focusing on judgment or tactics. More than three-fourths did not share findings from police shooting investigations with trainers.
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