Liz Posner, AlterNet
Las Vegas Sheriff Joe Lombardo speaks to reporters (Screen capture)
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Unanswered questions still surround the mass shooting in Las Vegas
on October 1 this year. Days after shooter Stephen Paddock killed 59
people and injured over 500, confusing details emerged. Journalists
sparred with police at press conferences, grappling for missing details.
The security guard who discovered Paddock in his hotel room with 24
guns and was shot by Paddock later disappeared, only to reemerge as a guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. To shed light on this confusion, a new film, “What Happened in Vegas,”
explores the role of the Las Vegas Police Department after the mass
shooting. In short, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest coverups and
corruption, as well as repeated police brutality within the force.
At the root of the problem, the film explains, is that the
LVPD is run by a sheriff elected in large part by donations from MGM,
the corporation that runs the Mandalay Bay hotel. According to the
documentary, Las Vegas police changed their story multiple times on the
timeline of the shooting. One important detail the police lied about in
several instances is the timing of Paddock’s shooting of security guard
Jesus Campos. Why? It’s likely that the LVPD wanted to help the casino’s
legal case, and if they claimed Campos was killed while trying to
prevent Paddock’s rampage, as opposed to during or after, it could help
the casino’s lawyers later claim that the Mandalay Bay had taken
sufficient action to stop him. At least seven news organizations have
since sued the LVPD for failing to release all the information from the
night of the shooting, including the New York Times, the Associated
Press, ABC, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
The documentary also suggests that if the police and casino
had acted differently, the mass shooting might have been avoided. An
exclusive clip, below, reveals a little-known piece of the story of what
happened in Las Vegas earlier this year.
As Stephen Stubbs, an attorney working on behalf of the
victims, explains, casinos like the Mandalay Bay have a “special back
number” to a private wing of the police department which they use to
alert the police of possible criminal activity within their casinos
involving high rollers. Paddock was a regular at the casino, and known
to be a highroller by the hotel’s staff, so the Mandalay Bay didn’t call
911 when Paddock shot Campos. They called the back line instead, and
the operator didn’t link the shooting of Campos to the cascade of
bullets pouring out of Paddock’s hotel window onto the Route 91 music
festival.
“If they would’ve called 911, the 911 operator could have
linked the two quicker, and the police would have gotten there quicker,”
Stubbs said. “Less people would have died, and less people would have
been shot, if the Mandalay Bay didn’t treat their high rollers
differently, and if the LVPD didn’t allow casinos to treat high rollers
differently. This is the truth that [Sheriff] Joe Lombardo doesn’t want
to come out.”
As for the still unanswered question of why Paddock chose
to murder so many people that day, Stubbs has a theory. “From what I
understand, Stephen Paddock did this because he wanted to hurt these
casinos financially, and this was the best way he knew how.” But
culpability still points to the corrupt special relationship between the
MGM and the Las Vegas Police Department. “It didn’t have to be this
bad, if they would have treated him like anyone else.”
In addition, the documentary explores numerous instances of
police misconduct and several incidents in which police needlessly shot
and killed suspects. There’s the story of Trevon Cole, who had been
selling small amounts of marijuana on the side and whose wife was
several months pregnant when he was shot and killed by a police officer.
The police secured a warrant for his arrest (in reality, they lied to
the judge and provided evidence against an entirely different man named
Trevon Cole), and an officer went to his apartment and shot him in the
head. When the LVPD was criticized for Cole’s death, they launched a
smear campaign that tried to promote a false image of Cole as a
dangerous drug dealer. It’s a tactic the Las Vegas police often resort
to, the documentary suggests. “Often a dead person is vilified, and they
release negative details to the media,” says the father of one victim
of police violence. “They tried to turn my son into some kind of a
druggie. Erik was a West Point graduate… he was a very effective,
popular platoon leader.”
Of the high-profile police shootings in Las Vegas in recent
years, the Cole family’s attorney Andre Lagomarsino says, “all three
situations could have been avoided if the LVPD de-escalated the
situations, instead of escalating them.”
The entire documentary is available for viewing online.