Those who know life before the internet and cellphones may have heard Paul Harvey say those words before he opined on a specific topic during his radio broadcast. I thought of those words after reading a recent Review-Journal article. The title of the article was “Most Las Vegas officers who open fire have much less experience, police say.”

The article pointed out that in 2024, the number of officer-involved shootings (OISs) rose from the previous year. Assistant Sheriff Fred Haas told the RJ that one crucial factor that should be considered when considering how to reduce OISs is experience. Assistant Sheriff Haas pointed out that in 2024, most of the officers who decided to use their firearms had one to two years of experience.

First and foremost, I was not a participant in that interview. I am not aware of how much research was completed by the author, nor do I have any idea what additional information, if any, Assistant Sheriff Haas may have told the author. And maybe, that’s all they wanted to talk about. For those reasons, I want to clarify that I am not criticizing the article or the data within it. What I am doing is taking the liberty to expand on this topic.

While an officer’s tenure is certainly relevant to the maturation process of a street cop and the decisions he or she makes, it does not matter whether you have been a cop for six hours or 16 years, if a savage is pointing a gun at you or charging you with a knife or attempting to murder you or someone else, you must act.

Out of the 17 officer-involved shootings in 2024:

• 6 shootings involved suspects who were armed with firearms.
• 10 shootings involved suspects who were armed with a knife/edged weapon.
• 1 shooting involved an unarmed suspect who, while fleeing on foot, simulated pointing a firearm at an officer in low-light conditions.
• 1 suspect armed with a firearm shot at officers during a foot pursuit.
• 1 suspect armed with a firearm fled on foot. Instead of attempting to escape, the suspect posted up on a corner, creating an ambush. The pursuing officer turning the corner was greeted by a savage pointing a gun at him. Fortunately, the bad guy’s firearm malfunctioned, and the officer was able to shoot him first.
• 1 shooting involved a scumbag armed with a knife who was holding a woman hostage. The suspect was in the process of attempting to murder the victim when officers breached a window, shooting the bad guy before he could kill the innocent woman.
• 7 of the shootings involved officers exhausting less-lethal options before discharging their firearms.
• 1 shooting involved an officer shooting a home invasion suspect who, armed with a knife, was struggling with an elderly homeowner when they arrived on scene.
• 1 shooting involved a subject armed with a long gun inside a resort. Crisis negotiators were on the scene attempting to “de-escalate” the situation when the suspect made the conscious choice to charge toward SWAT operators while armed with his long gun.
• 1 shooting involved a random maniac who jumped out of his moving car armed with a knife and charged at police officers who were dealing with an unrelated subject at an intersection.
• 1 shooting involved a savage who, armed with a knife, had attempted to carjack a citizen in a Target parking lot. When confronted by a police officer and allowed to surrender and be peaceably taken into custody, he charged the officer, attempting to stab him.
• 5 of the shootings involved bad guys who, armed with edged weapons, charged at police officers.
• 2 of the shootings involved bad guys who, armed with a blunt object, charged at officers. In both cases, cops utilized or attempted to utilize less-lethal options before shooting the bad guy.
• 14 of the 17 shootings involved officers responding to a call for service.
• 16 of the 17 shootings involved a suspect armed with a deadly weapon.

Every one of these shootings had one thing in common. These officers, regardless of tenure, did exactly what the Department trained them to do. They responded to volatile situations and, when time permitted, utilized less-lethal options prior to delivering deadly force.

I believe there are additional crucial factors when considering how to reduce OISs:

• Don’t point a gun at a police officer.
• Don’t shoot at the police.
• Don’t charge at a police officer while armed with a knife.
• Don’t take a person hostage.
• Don’t try to murder the person you took hostage.
• Don’t break into people’s houses armed with a knife and attack elderly people.
• Don’t try to carjack a lady grocery shopping.
• Follow verbal commands to drop a weapon.
• Don’t arm yourself with a bat and try to use a cop’s head as a baseball.
• When you are tased, give up.
• When you are shot with a low-lethal munition, give up.

There are a ton more, but you get the point.

In every one of these applications of deadly force, in every shooting, the officer(s) were responding to the actions of the person they shot. That is because the other guy or gal always has a say in the matter.

To put things into perspective, in 2023, the estimated population in Clark County, Nevada, was approximately 2.3 million people. The tourist volume for the year was estimated at approximately 40 million people. There were over 400,000 dispatched calls for service by Las Vegas Metro Police. While I have not seen the 2024 statistics, it is no stretch to believe they will be similar. Add in proactive policing, follow-up investigations and the hunting of the violent offenders who murder and victimize our community, to only have 17 applications of deadly force is incredibly low. I believe that with continued training, the number of annual OISs has the potential to decline, and that is a good thing. However, there is one factor that will never be quantified, accurately estimated or replicated. It is the human factor.

It is when a human being, for whatever reason, on whatever day, at whatever time, whether being of sound mind or in an altered state, decides and commits to an action that has the potential to substantially harm or kill another human being and has to be stopped.

And when that call comes in, you get who you get. You get a cop who is in solo beat riding by themselves for the first day or the cop in the last week of their career and everything in between. But regardless of their time on, you will always get a cop who has committed to lay their life on the line for a total stranger if need be. And that should never be forgotten or discounted or minimized.

To the members of command staff: These types of interviews with the press and media are a must to maintain transparency and accountability for a police agency. Cops get it. But never forget that your officers and their families watch the news; they read the papers. They expect you to call the balls and strikes. And they also expect you to tell the rest of the story.