People protest outside as a fact finding review on the killing of Jorge Gomez by Las Vegas police takes place inside the Clark County Government Center, downtown, Friday, April 16, 2021.
Thursday, May 20, 2021 | 1:49 p.m.
Last year’s shooting death of an armed protester by Metro Police during a racial justice protest was justified, and the four officers involved won’t face criminal prosecution, the Clark County District Attorney’s Office said today.
The announcement was expected after District Attorney Steve Wolfson previously said a preliminary investigation determined charges were not merited.
Jorge Gomez was fatally shot June 1, 2020, by four plainclothes Metro officers responding to an unrelated shooting that left a fellow officer paralyzed about 3 miles away on the Las Vegas Strip, police said.
Police initially shot Gomez with beanbag rounds at the Lloyd D. George Courthouse after officers gave protesters dispersal orders, Metro said.
Gomez took off running and was subsequently shot by the plainclothes officers, who said Gomez pointed one a gun at them. They were not wearing body cameras.
Wolfson’s office today released a 79-page report it described as the “most comprehensive report of its kind released to date,” which rehashed findings Metro presented during an earlier fact-finding review.
“I doubt anyone in the community is surprised to see that District Attorney Wolfson declined to hold the officers who killed Jorge Gomez accountable,” Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the American Civil Liberty Union of Nevada, said in a statement.
“Our attorneys are going to analyze his office’s findings very carefully, but it’s been clear for years that our current procedure for police accountability is a sham process in which police investigate themselves and DA Wolfson’s office simply signs off on that investigation,” Haseebullah said.
“Our community cannot blindly accept the narrative presented by District Attorney Wolfson as factually or legally correct,” Jen Shomshor, the ACLU of Nevada’s senior staff attorney, said in the statement. “The fact-finding review process utterly failed to hold the officers accountable for the killing of Jorge Gomez, and our initial review of the report confirms that the District Attorney’s Office is concerned only with a shallow and conclusory analysis.”
A federal lawsuit against Metro filed by Gomez’s family is pending.
