Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo delivers the annual State of the Department address at the Smith Center Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022.
Published Thursday, March 17, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Updated Thursday, March 17, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Metro Police are appealing a nearly $4,000 fine after the Occupational Health and Safety Administration determined a manager was hospitalized with COVID-19 after employees failed to wear masks in the office.
OSHA issued a $3,696 fine Jan. 28, weeks after the employee was hospitalized. No additional information was available on the person’s medical condition.
The fine was issued because Metro employees attended a meeting in the manager’s office without wearing masks and were within six feet of one other, according to OSHA.
Additionally, a symptomatic employee entered the manager’s office multiple times without wearing a mask, according to OSHA.
Metro “is aware of only one citation and is currently appealing it to OSHA,” said Officer Larry Hadfield, a spokesman for the department. Metro had no additional comment.
According to Nevada OSHA records, Metro has been the subject of 13 complaints of violating state COVID-19 guidelines. Five complaints are still listed as open, according to the OSHA logs.
The number of complaints is the most levied against any Nevada law enforcement agency since the onset of the pandemic, according to state OSHA logs.
The other complaints mainly involved allegations of officers not wearing masks while interacting with the public during traffic stops and not complying with social distancing guidelines.
OSHA investigates complaints under its jurisdiction and issues a notice of citation and penalty if it finds a violation, Nevada OSHA spokeswoman Teri Williams said.
More than 2,500 employees of Metro’s 6,000-plus workforce have tested positive for the coronavirus since March 2020, when the pandemic began, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said at his State of the Department address in February. At least five Metro officers have died.
The decision to appeal the OSHA fine by Lombardo, who is running for governor as a Republican, quickly drew ire from political rivals.
“From being wishy-washy on vaccines to instilling doubts about the effectiveness of masks, Lombardo has created a culture at Metro of confusion and disregard for COVID safety measures,” said Mallory Payne, deputy communications director at Nevada Democratic Victory, a group that works to get Democrats in office.
Lombardo in early February lifted Metro’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for new hires.
“We made the decision as the police department to put that mandate in place,” Lombardo said last month during a “Sheriff Jerry and Friends” podcast. “And I always presented it as a temporary mandate, because until we got the infection rate to come down, and ensure that I wasn’t having my officers hospitalized, you know, unfortunately, here at Metro, we lost six employees to the COVID or infection.”
His opponents in the GOP field for governor suggest Lombardo abandoned the mandate — an unpopular position among many Republican base voters — to score political points, and that he’s already shown his true colors.
“Everything he does is calculated politically to maneuver the system, but it’s not working,” said North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee, who is also seeking the Republican nomination.
Additionally, Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore, who is also running for governor, tweeted that Lombardo is not really a Republican because of his original support for mandates, saying that Lombardo “caved” to her demands to lift the vaccine mandates for new hires.
