Recent Stories (view all stories)

Officers are people, too

Policeman/author hopes to get prisoners to see cops in new light

Monday, May 12, 2008

So you’re sentenced to life in prison in the Nevada Department of Corrections. Your cellmate is a guy named Zeke who reeks. The guards caught you sneaking a spoon out of the cafeteria, so now they’re evil-eyeing you everywhere. You got in a fight with some freak in the yard, and now you’re locked down 23 hours a day, counting cockroaches like sheep before sleep. Randy Sutton has you right where he wants you. The Metro lieutenant just released his third book, a compilation of true stories about life on the police beat, written by officers across the country, and he wants you, prisoner, to read it. He wants you to see that police — you remember them, those people who put you behind bars — are human.

Transgender killer torn with guilt, searching still for identity

Life story riddled with abuse of alcohol, hidden tendencies

Thursday, May 8, 2008

The hairdresser who bleached Raven Navajo’s roots in jail wasn’t given much time or many tools, so the result was more mine shaft canary than blond — dingy yellow hair fried so thin it seemed to float on static electricity.

Prosecutors drop charges against Selimaj

Concern for children of slain ice cream truck driver cited; widower still may pursue suit

Saturday, May 3, 2008

All it took was one quiet court filing, a few papers slipped to a clerk Thursday afternoon, and the charges against Zyber Selimaj were dropped. The motion for dismissal is only a few pages long, but it may signal the Selimaj family’s move out of the courts and out of public consciousness.

We do caffeine, but not much hard stuff

‘Community urinalysis’ reveals we also ingest lots of nicotine, ephedrine but few illicit drugs

Monday, April 28, 2008

In Clark County, we take our coffee with cigarettes and ephedrine.

Chief defends cleared officer

Friday, April 18, 2008

Against his attorney’s advice, Henderson Police Chief Richard Perkins is visiting newspapers to talk about the shooting of the ice cream truck driver that has turned his department into a piñata for the past two months.

They’re strangers, and bedfellows

Seeking intimacy, diverse group gathers for Las Vegas’ first Cuddle Party

Thursday, April 17, 2008

A Cuddle Party is exactly what it sounds like. Adults getting together to cuddle. To sprawl on the floor and spoon in ratty sweats. To pile on one another like pound puppies. To satiate their “skin hunger.”

Shooting justified, inquest determines

Decision follows one hour of deliberation, two days of testimony

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Seven Henderson officers testified during the second day of the inquest. While each presented a slightly different version of events, their testimony was uniform on one point: a person wielding a knife and moving toward a police officer should be shot.

Haunting testimony, many firsts

Young sons describe mom’s killing on tape, and details police kept quiet are revealed

Friday, April 11, 2008

Arber Selimaj didn’t know how to spell his last name, and whispered most of his answers to a woman who, in a private room of a Henderson Police station, asked the 5-year-old boy what he remembered from the day he watched his mother die, and whether she had a knife — another word Arber didn’t know.

They saw Selimaj shot

Coroner’s inquest begins today in Henderson officer’s fatal shooting of woman

Thursday, April 10, 2008

When a courtroom fills this morning for the opening of a two-day coroner’s inquest into the Feb. 12 police slaying of a 42-year-old ice cream truck driver, 10 witnesses interviewed by an investigator working for the victim’s family will be wondering whether they’ll wind up on the witness stand.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Police guard trove of gangster monikers, often the only names by which suspects are known

Monday, April 7, 2008

Being little is big on the mean streets. Just ask Lil’ Capone, Lil’ Mizz, Lil’ Crook, Lil’ Crazy, Lil’ Ump, Lil’ Shiester, Lil’ Sweat, Lil’ Nutty, Lil’ Wee Wee, Lil’ C Rag, Lil’ Spit, Lil’ Mookie, Lil’ A, Lil’ B and Lil’s C through Z. This is just a small sampling, a lil’ sampling, really, of the thousands of nicknames Metro Police’s Gang Crimes Bureau keeps in its moniker file — a computer database of aka’s and street pseudonyms.

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