Dead man's family may sue police

An announcement about future legal action could come as early as today from the family of an unarmed, basketball-toting man shot to death by a Metro Police officer who was cleared Friday of wrongdoing.

Officer Bruce Gentner was exonerated Friday at a coroner's inquest when six of the seven jurors declared that the death of 32-year-old John Perrin in a hail of bullets on April 12 was justifiable.

The conclusion has raised questions about the inquest process and whether changes are in order.

Gentner, 27, testified that he believed Perrin was a drug dealer who had a gun that he was trying to wrest from his waistband to shoot the officer in the late-night confrontation in a dimly lit area near Rainbow Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue.

After Gentner fired a first volley of shots, he testified, Perrin refused to comply with his screamed orders. He told jurors he fired a second volley of shots, thinking his life was still in danger.

Gentner eventually emptied his semi-automatic pistol of all 14 bullets. Six .40-caliber bullets hit Perrin, including three in the back and one through the side that hit both lungs.

Perrin didn't have a gun, but there was a jar nearby containing a chemical used to manufacture methamphetamine.

An autopsy showed Perrin had a high level of methamphetamine in his system.

There was contradictory evidence at the inquest, including testimony from several witnesses who said they never heard the officer yell until after the first shots were fired.

There also were questions about the distance between the two when the shots were fired. Gentner said Perrin was 10 to 12 feet away and moving toward him, but the victim's blood was found 40 feet from where the officer's spent cartridges littered the ground.

The inquest verdict means that Gentner won't face criminal charges in county court.

Brent Bryson, the attorney for Perrin's family, hinted that the family is weighing a civil lawsuit against Gentner and Metro Police.

He said Friday that the family's next step will include a nationally known attorney. In fact he canceled an interview with the Las Vegas One cable news channel late Friday to travel out of state for a meeting with the lawyer.

The family also may request a probe by federal authorities into the circumstances surrounding Perrin's death, Bryson said.

The dead man's mother, Connie Perrin, choked back tears after the inquest as she called the verdict "Wrong, horribly wrong."

"Someone should be held accountable for the loss of my son," she said.

"It's a tragedy, a travesty for the citizens of Las Vegas and the citizens of the world who visit Las Vegas," Bryson said of the verdict. "In essence it's open season on the citizen population if you make a move an officer doesn't like."

Despite that, Bryson said, Gentner is now locked into a story that can be attacked.

Bryson called the inquest system "a joke" and said it is only to "rubber stamp whatever police want to do."

"We need an independent entity," the attorney said, saying that it is a conflict for the evidence to be presented by the district attorney's office, which has to deal daily with Metro on a multitude of cases.

Bryson contended that some tough questions weren't asked and contradictory evidence wasn't adequately explored.

Clark County Coroner Ron Flud defended the inquest system as a relatively quick way to have a public inquiry into deaths caused by police officers.

"If it is going to become adversarial, it belongs in District Court," Flud said.

"There isn't a place in the world where inquests are adversarial," he added. Most communities have no public system to examine the circumstances surrounding police shootings, Flud said.

The ultimate decision in an inquest is made by jurors, who are selected at random, Flud said, noting that he is open to changes in the system.

"Right now the inquest system is the law of the land," he said.

Statistically the inquest system favors the police. Only one officer since 1976 has been declared by a coroner's jury to have been criminally liable for a duty-related shooting death. That decision was overturned by a grand jury, which refused to indict the officer.

Gentner has become the 85th police officer in Clark County to be cleared at an inquest.

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