A former Metro detective is sharing a firsthand account of Joe Lombardo’s failed leadership as sheriff. Immediately upon taking office, Lombardo turned his back on LVMPD employees and Clark County families by disbanding critical investigative units and causing a dramatic spike in crime.

From the rising crime rates to his history of corruption to former employees speaking out, Lombardo can’t hide from his failed record. Read more below.

Las Vegas Sun: Guest Column: A former detective’s insight into Lombardo’s leadership

Kirk Jordan

July 24, 2022

Key Points:

• As a retired Metro detective, I’ve experienced Sheriff Joe Lombardo’s leadership — which many of us felt was lacking — firsthand. Now that he’s running for higher office, it feels appropriate to shed light on his poor management of Metro.
• When Lombardo ran for sheriff in 2014, he campaigned on decentralizing Metro — or breaking up the different branches of the department and displacing officers who were specialized in a certain area, like gangs or narcotics. Many of us felt it was going to be a failure. We didn’t see a need to fix something that wasn’t broken but our guess was that Lombardo was only trying to differentiate himself from his opponent, who was uniquely qualified for the job and known for his excellent leadership skills.
• No more Gang Unit, Vice Unit, Violent Crime Section, Street Narcotics Unit, to name a few. To us, it was insulting. Detectives, line supervisors, and civilian staff who had belonged to these now-disbanded units were uprooted and ordered to work cases in areas in which they had no specific expertise. And to make matters worse, we weren’t provided with the necessary time, training and resources to be successful in these new specialties.
• But officers and detectives need time to work large caseloads, which is difficult when they are expected to respond to everything required at a moment’s notice. Detectives are perpetually under pressure to make arrests and submit cases quickly. Management judges our worth based on the quantity of cases submitted, not the quality of our work. Statistics are everything.
• Since decentralization, I have seen caseloads as high as 70-80 per detective. There’s simply not enough hours or enough detectives to give each case — and the victims and their families — the due diligence they deserve. At the same time, Clark County continues to grow, leading to more crime and incident reports.
• Metro was decentralized in July 2015. By the following April, homicides were up 91% from the same point the year before. While the homicide unit was left intact, the gang unit had been disbanded and Lombardo himself admitted the surge in homicides was linked to gang violence. Assaults and robberies also shot up at least 20%. There’s no denying that decentralizing Metro hurt more than it helped. All for Lombardo’s political ambitions, it seemed.
• Politicians talk a lot about their records and qualifications, but nothing speaks louder than a genuine account of their tenure. If this all sounds fine to you, vote for Lombardo. If you’re looking for someone who has solid leadership, sound judgment and owns their mistakes, Lombardo’s not the guy for the job.

Read the full column here.

###