Las Vegas Police body-worn camera footage shows Mandalay Bay security surveillance room night of massacre
LAS VEGAS — The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officer’s body-worn camera footage released Wednesday as part of the court-ordered document release, provides insight into activity in the Mandalay Bay Hotel’s security surveillance room on the night of the October 1, 2017 massacre.
The video footage was captured as LVMPD officers responded to the security office. The entire video runs for three hours however the officers hadn’t arrived until 10:22 p.m., about seven minutes after Stephen Paddock had stopped firing, therefore it doesn’t cover what transpired prior to that time.
The Mandalay Bay Hotel has two separate surveillance rooms. The security surveillance room is located in the security office and that system covers all the non-gaming video surveillance cameras.
A separate gaming surveillance room is dedicated to all gaming activities, i.e. slots, table games, cashiers cage, etc. That system is monitored by surveillance observers who are specifically trained in table games and all areas mandated by Nevada Gaming Control Board regulations. Per NGCB regulations the gaming surveillance room has master control and recording of all cameras including those monitored by security officers in their surveillance room.
An MGM Resorts International insider told the Baltimore Post-Examiner that after the October 1 massacre the FBI had seized the Mandalay Bay’s surveillance digital recorders as evidence. The Baltimore Post-Examiner will have more on that in an upcoming story.
The digital video recorders overwrite automatically after seven days. Because of the amount of video footage that would have had to be reviewed, it would have been impractical to download all the footage onto other media and also to preserve the chain of custody, so taking the actual DVR’s made sense.
I only performed a cursory review of the footage that was released on Wednesday and as of yet haven’t had the opportunity to transcribe all the audio conversations that are heard.
At 10:21 p.m. when the two LVMPD officers are in the basement area of the Mandalay Bay on the way to the security office, there are hotel employees going about their business and one officer says to the other, “It’s unbelievable nobody knows about this shit.”
As they enter the security office one of the police officers says to a security officer, “Are you guys aware there are shots fired from the tower”, and the security officer responds, “Yeah.”
There are comments made by security officers working the monitoring consoles that they have problems with their radio system, not being able to communicate with some officers. The Baltimore Post-Examiner in our July 8 story, ‘Compromised evidence raises questions about Mandalay Bay security training, policies, and equipment’ documented Mandalay Bay security officers talking about faulty equipment during their recorded interviews with the police and the FBI.
Keep in mind that the video recorders time/date stamp uses the Zulu or GMT time standard therefore 05 would be 10:00 p.m. Pacific time and 08 would be 1 a.m. on October 2.
Toward the end of the video, at 3:11:03 you get a view of the gaming surveillance room as the police officers walk passed it toward the security room.
Doug authored over 135 articles on the October 1, 2017 Las Vegas Massacre, more than any other single journalist in the country. He investigates stories on corruption, law enforcement and crime. Doug is a US Army Military Police Veteran, former police officer, deputy sheriff and criminal investigator. Doug spent 20 years in the hotel/casino industry as an investigator and then as Director of Security and Surveillance. He also spent a short time with the US Dept. of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration. In 1986 Doug was awarded Criminal Investigator of the Year by the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia for his undercover work in narcotics enforcement. In 1992 and 1993 Doug testified in court that a sheriff’s office official and the county prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence during the 1988 trial of a man accused of the attempted murder of his wife. Doug’s testimony led to a judge’s decision to order the release of the man from prison in 1992 and awarded him a new trial, in which he was later acquitted. As a result of Doug breaking the police “blue wall of silence,” he was fired by the county sheriff. His story was featured on Inside Edition, Current Affair and CBS News’ “Street Stories with Ed Bradley”. In 1992 after losing his job, at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Doug infiltrated a group of men who were plotting the kidnapping of a Dupont fortune heir and his wife. Doug has been a guest on national television and radio programs speaking on the stories he now writes as an investigative journalist.