MGM Resorts International hires retired Las Vegas SWAT officers
LAS VEGAS – A former Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department member told the Baltimore Post-Examiner on Monday that MGM Resorts International, the owners of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, has hired former members of the LVMPD SWAT Team for positions in Security.
The Mandalay Bay Hotel was the location where on October 1, 2017, gunman Stephen Paddock fired from his 32ndfloor suite windows into a crowd of 22,000 concert-goers at the Route 91 Music Festival. 58 people were killed, and hundreds of others wounded in what is currently the worst mass shooting in modern American history.
Two names provided to the Baltimore Post-Examiner were retired LVMPD Lt. Chris Petko and retired LVMPD Officer, Manny Rivera, Jr. Both Petko and Rivera are former members of the LVMPD SWAT Team.
The Baltimore Post-Examiner also learned that three other former LVMPD SWAT Team members retired Sgt. Rod Hunt, Sgt. John Sheahan and Detective, Anton Gorup were also hired by MGMRI.
All five former SWAT Team members were hired between December 2017 and January 2018. All five were retired from the LVMPD prior to the October 1 massacre.
According to their LinkedIn accounts, all five men are employed by MGMRI; Petko is an Emergency Response Team Supervisor/Training Coordinator, Rivera is an Emergency Response Team Supervisor, Sheahan is an Emergency Response Team Supervisor/Training Coordinator, Gorup is an Emergency Response Team Supervisor and Hunt a Supervisor.
Chris Petko was one of four SWAT Team members who on Jan. 19, 1996 shot a man several times after he had earlier shot and wounded a Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper in the leg and then fired at SWAT officers when they arrived at the scene. A SWAT officer was hit in the arm. The suspect later died.
The Baltimore Post-Examiner did not receive a response from the MGMRI press information office on Monday when a request was sent inquiring what the function of the Emergency Response Team is at MGMRI, when was it formed, do all the MGMRI owned properties have such teams, are they in place on a 24/7 basis, and are they armed and trained to respond to active shooter and or terrorist incidents.
The LVMPD received widespread criticism after the October 1 massacre because the full LVMPD SWAT Team did not make entry into Stephen Paddock’s suite as Clark County Sheriff, Joe Lombardo and Undersheriff Kevin McMahill had told the press.
The entry was made one hour and five minutes after Paddock fired his last shots, by one SWAT Team member with an an-hoc team consisting of patrol officers and K-9 officers. To this day Lombardo has not revealed why the full SWAT Team was not available.
Earlier this year MGMRI, the owners of the property where the Route 91 Music Festival occurred stated they were donating a portion of the land to the LVMPD for a SWAT headquarters.
October 1, 2017, was not the first time that LVMPD SWAT officers had to enter an MGMRI property and later found someone dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
On December 10, 2014, the LVMPD SWAT Team responded to the MGM Grand Hotel for a report of a suicidal man with a gun in one of the hotel rooms. After several hours of negotiation, the SWAT Team made entry and found the man dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Las Vegas resorts normally will not respond to inquiries from the press concerning their on-site security forces.
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. Catch Doug’s Podcast: @dougpoppa1