Las Vegas Police do know the location of all surveillance cameras on strip, sources say
LAS VEGAS — During a court hearing the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s attorney Nick Crosby told Judge Stefany Miley on May 29 that the department may not have a list of all the surveillance cameras that are located along the Las Vegas Strip.
Law enforcement sources who spoke to the Baltimore Post-Examiner contradicted Crosby’s statement to the Court and said that it is absurd to think that the LVMPD doesn’t know the location of surveillance cameras along Las Vegas Boulevard.
They know what hotel-casino properties have video surveillance cameras said one source. Strip properties routinely are asked for copies of video surveillance footage when crimes occur on or near their properties.
The LVMPD also knows the location of every traffic camera located along Las Vegas Boulevard, the source said.
One retired LVMPD police officer told the Baltimore Post-Examiner on Friday that Crosby’s statement to the Court was pure bull. That officer said that the LVMPD for years has had dozens of their own video surveillance cameras located along the entire length of the Las Vegas Strip.
Those cameras, he said, are controlled by LVMPD personnel who are assigned to the Fusion Center. Those cameras have pan-tilt-zoom capability and can zero in on anything that occurs on the Strip.
The Baltimore Post-Examiner was told that as soon as calls came into the LVMPD Communications Center that shots were fired on the night of October 1, personnel at the Fusion Center would have immediately moved cameras and zoomed into the location.
Those police cameras also can zero in on hotel room windows.
As reports of multiple active shooter incidents were coming into the LVMPD Communications Center the night of October 1, personnel at the Fusion Center would have been moving their cameras to those locations also.
All the police video surveillance cameras are recorded.
Why the LVMPD’s attorney would tell the Court that the police would not know the location of their own surveillance cameras does seem disingenuous to say the least.
To date, the LVMPD has released several hours of video surveillance footage from the night of October 1, 2017, per court order. So, they must have known the location of at least those cameras.
In addition to all the video surveillance footage obtained from the hotels along the Strip, the police should also release all the recorded footage from their own cameras that were recording on the night of October 1, 2017, specifically in the areas of all the active shooter calls at multiple properties that occurred that night.
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 1991 and 1992 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