Cinnamon King, left, widow of Metro Police Sgt. Douglas King, and Jenn Closi, widow of Metro Police officer Phil Closi, speak during an interview at the law offices of David Churchill Tuesday, June 7, 2022.
Sunday, June 12, 2022 | 2 a.m.
At the funeral of a Metro Police officer who dies in the line of duty, law enforcement officers escort the casket in the service’s opening procession.
During the service, an American flag is folded by the department’s honor guard and is presented to a surviving family member by a Metro executive staff member.
Afterwards, planes fly over the memorial service, the officer’s “end of watch” is called over the department’s radio system, and the officer is honored by a 21-gun salute, the playing of taps and, finally, a rendition “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes.
That was never the case for officer Phil Closi, a 21-year veteran at Metro who died Aug. 11, 2021, after a fight with COVID-19. He was 48.
Rather than a police motorcade escorting the procession at his Las Vegas memorial June 4, a group of about two dozen motorcyclists, a retired fire truck and a pair of state police cruisers led Closi’s mourners into Las Vegas’ Life Baptist Church.
There was no flyover, and no end-of-watch call. The honor guard was present to fold the Stars and Stripes, but nobody from Metro’s executive staff was there to present it to Closi’s widow, Jenn. It was instead presented by Gov. Steve Sisolak.
The bagpipe player at Phil Closi’s service volunteered to do so after learning Metro would not provide one.
“It felt like a punch in the gut,” Jenn Closi said. “That’s what it felt like.”
The Closis had been in a yearslong back-and-forth with Metro over a workers’ compensation claim that would allow him a medical retirement, when in July 2020 Phil Closi contracted the coronavirus. Metro ultimately ruled Closi likely caught COVID-19 outside the workplace, and his death was deemed outside the line of duty, and thus ineligible for the funeral honors in addition to a slew of benefits at the national and state level.
In a statement to the Sun, Metro said each time an officer dies, its Health and Safety Section investigates the circumstances surrounding the death. Then it’s up to Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo to make a final decision.
“For deaths that may be related to COVID-19, the investigation includes contact tracing,” the statement read. “The investigation is then forwarded to Sheriff Joseph Lombardo with a recommendation as to whether the death falls in the line of duty.”
In a separate statement from Lombardo, he said it’s “devastating for LVMPD, the families and for our community,” when an officer dies.
“We are grateful for their service, and they will never be forgotten,” Lombardo said.
‘You disrespected him at his memorial service’
In November, President Joe Biden signed into law the Protecting America’s First Responders Act, which extends through Dec. 31, 2023. A public safety officer who dies or is disabled due to COVID-19 is presumed to have contracted the virus in the line of duty if they were acting in an official capacity.
The law made significant changes to the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits program, which provides death and education benefits to surviving family members of officers who worked at a local, state and federal public safety agency. The payout at the time of Closi’s death was $365,670 — and has since risen to $389,825 for this fiscal year.
Jenn Closi said she waited until June to hold her husband’s memorial service in hopes Metro would change course and rule that Phil’s death happened in the line of duty. But as time went on, it was clear no such designation was coming.
“He gave his lungs for your department,” Jenn Closi said. “And now we’re not eligible because Joe Lombardo won’t sign a piece of paper.”
At least six Metro employees have died of COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, but only two have been designated as line-of-duty deaths: Lt. Erik Lloyd, who died July 19, 2020, and officer Jason Swanger, who died June 24, 2021. Their names were added to the state’s Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Carson City at a ceremony in May.
“Our husbands are no different from Swanger or Lloyd,” said Cinnamon King, whose husband, Sgt. Doug King, 36, also died from the coronavirus, weeks after Closi, on Aug. 23, 2021. Like Closi, King’s death was ruled outside the line of duty.
“(Lombardo) set the precedent, I believe, with the first two and that’s where the inequality for the department is coming in,” Cinnamon King said. “If he wouldn’t want to do it, then he should have fought it with Floyd and from the beginning. All or nothing.”
Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak speaks with Jenn Closi, widow of Metro Police officer Phil Closi, following a celebration of life memorial service for Metro Police officer Phil Closi at Life Baptist Church Saturday, June 4, 2022. Closi, a 21-year veteran of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department, died in August 11, 2021 after contracting COVID-19.
While at Closi’s memorial, Sisolak told the Sun he learned at the Carson City ceremony that Metro hadn’t designated line-of-duty honors for the other officers who have died of COVID-19.
Sisolak — a Democrat — has since urged Lombardo, the presumptive front-runner in a crowded Republican primary field to challenge him in November’s general election, to reconsider the decision but to no avail.
“I just feel it’s a grave injustice and I’m asking for the sheriff to reconsider his decision,” Sisolak said. “This man (Closi) put in over 20 years at Metro. Who knows where he contracted COVID. It was a pandemic that the country faced. I just wish that the sheriff or Metro would have a heart and reconsider this.
“I feel very, very strongly that this is just a poor decision and it should be rectified. There’s nothing the matter with saying you’ve reconsidered it, you got some new information and you’re going to consider it a line-of-duty death for the family. And to put your name on that memorial was important.”
In a statement to the Sun, Lombardo’s campaign spokesperson Elizabeth Ray said the sheriff believes Sisolak is trying to coax him into breaking the law.
“Gov. Sisolak is calling for Sheriff Lombardo to ignore the evidence and overrule a thorough investigation by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department,” Ray said. “What Gov. Sisolak is asking the sheriff to do amounts to committing fraud — something the sheriff is completely unwilling to do.”
For widows like Jenn Closi, the political optics don’t matter. But securing benefits she feels rightfully belong to her family are essential so Phil’s years of service aren’t for naught.
“My husband worked for 21 years and you disrespected him at his memorial service,” Jenn Closi said. “There were no uniformed officers. If you noticed, there was just the honor guard.
“This isn’t red, blue, left or right. This is about decency.”
King, however, feels differently.
“I think if you can’t even give us a reason why, and federally it’s presumptive that they should all be line-of-duty, then you’re just kind of cherry-picking who you give it to,” King said. “That’s not OK.
“How can he lead the entire state fairly if this is what he’s doing to his own officers?”
Longtime disability fight
Doctors told Phil Closi in 2017 that he had inflammation and scarring in his lungs resulting in just 51% lung capacity, likely due to exposure to exhaust, chemicals and noxious fumes throughout his tenure as an officer, according to medical records and court documents given to the Sun by Jenn Closi.
After helping direct traffic for a fuel fire near Nellis Air Force Base early in his career, Phil developed a slight dip in lung function, his wife said. His lungs again took a slight decline after helping evacuate residents from a wildfire near Mount Charleston in 2004.
By 2017, after spending the last five years as a bike cop patrolling the Las Vegas Strip, years of exposure to vehicle exhaust and secondhand smoke all compounded into a diagnosis of asthma and chronic respiratory insufficiency.
Phil’s doctor immediately recommended he be placed on light duty, effectively ending his days as a patrol officer. He then spent the next few years answering the 311 line.
A fight for medical retirement and disability ensued soon after Phil’s diagnosis. The case for his disability claim remains ongoing.
“I hate saying this line, but everybody who knows Phil heard it: ‘They want me to die before it’s over.’ ” Jenn Closi said. “And that’s what happened.”
Then, the pandemic came.
At the start of the shutdown, the Closis’ two children, Jacob (now 15) and Nicola (17), began homeschooling and withdrew from their respective hockey leagues. Phil used up all six weeks of paid leave he had before returning to work.
When Phil returned to work in April, he was directed by his doctor to wear a mask at all times, but one supervisor asked Closi to remove his mask while working the 311 phone lines because it prevented him from communicating clearly. An copy of the email with the request was shared with the Sun.
Because of Phil’s lung condition, doctors wanted to avoid this risk of any complications, so he and his doctors agreed he should hold off getting the COVID-19 vaccine until more data was available, Jenn said. That left him no option but to wear his mask religiously and socially distance when at all possible. He even got an air filter to put on his desk at Metro headquarters.
“He should have been in a bubble,” Jenn said.
In order to adequately accommodate his work restrictions, Closi was transferred in May 2021 to the evidence vault. Working from home wasn’t possible because the department didn’t have an extra laptop or a device to connect to the its internet, according to emails exchanged with another supervisor.
In July, just days before Phil and his family were supposed to drive to Florida for a vacation, Phil ended his last shift and sent a text message to Jenn saying something was wrong.
“I feel like I was hit by a bus,” the text message read.
During the family’s trek to Florida, Phil’s condition continued to decline. At first, he felt fatigued and he wasn’t eating much, but nothing out of the ordinary that might suggest it was something different from his lung ailment, Jenn said.
“It was really hard to decipher the symptoms,” Jenn said. ”It wasn’t until the fever hit that we started to panic and said, ‘OK, this is more than just your lungs.’ ”
Once in Florida, Phil saw an urgent care doctor July 26, when he tested positive for COVID-19, as did the rest of the family. By the end of that week, Phil had checked into the hospital, where he would die 12 days later.
Hours after Phil died, Jenn learned the family was no longer on Metro’s health insurance plan.
“That’s how I found out he wasn’t line-of-duty. They never told me; I was just waiting,” she said. “They took the health insurance the night he died. I was in Florida with COVID and two sick kids, but I couldn’t go to a doctor.”
Unvaccinated vs. vaccinated
Like Closi, Metro determined that Doug King likely contracted COVID outside of work, making him ineligible for the line-of-duty designation, his widow said.
But contrary to the Closis, Cinnamon King had worked at Metro as a civilian employee for 15 years and her benefits were not affected after Doug King’s death, she said. Metro said Doug likely caught COVID from family, but he had spent the last two weeks until his diagnosis working. “We had opposite days off, and we never slept in the same bed,” Cinnamon King said. “We didn’t sleep at the same time. Literally, he was with his squad more than he was with me, and the moment that he found out that I wasn’t feeling well, he stopped sleeping in the bedroom.”
Doug King was posthumously given an award for shooting a suspect who was seen stabbing a woman in September 2020, Cinnamon said, and he was one of the first officers on-scene at the Route 91 Harvest shooting on Oct. 1, 2017, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history that killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.
Metro began requiring proof of vaccination against the coronavirus in July 2020 for all new hires, but those employed prior to the mandate were not required to get vaccinated. In February, Lombardo said he had rescinded the mandate altogether.
Last year, Lombardo called the low rate of vaccination at Metro — 52.9% in August — “unacceptable” and pushed for employees to get vaccinated.
Lombardo had been saying he lifted the mandate because of a drop in COVID cases within Metro as of late January, and that while he encourages vaccination, it’s a personal choice.
Doug was never vaccinated against COVID-19. Cinammon said her husband was skeptical of its efficacy and long-term health risks. She’s concerned his vaccination status coincided with his line-of-duty designation.
“We get the flu shot every year, so it’s not like we were opposed to helping ourselves, but this is something that came out within less than a year and it was very scary to us,” Cinnamon King said. “He would save your life, a stranger’s life. He was allowed to be concerned what he put in his own body.
“It just seems like the sheriff … was like, OK we have too many officers (dying), so we’re just going to cut it at this one and say no to everybody else.”
Jenn Closi agreed.
“Vaccinated employees were definitely treated different from unvaccinated employees,” she said. “But my husband, it wasn’t a choice. It was a medical decision made with his doctors. It was like he tells everybody — it was not a political personal choice. We went into the doctor and we had a conversation and he told him to wait because of what he had going on.”
For King and Closi, both said it will be difficult to find peace unless their husbands are reclassified as line-of-duty deaths. The benefits are definitely a plus, they said, but after their husbands served for 17 and 21 years, respectively, they want the recognition they feel their husbands are entitled to.
Whether that’s the police memorial in Washington, Carson City, or here in Las Vegas.
“Now I’m mom and dad. I mean, Doug did half of, if not more than me, for everything,” King said. “We’re going to muddle through, I guess, but right now, it’s just keeping busy.”
If one silver lining can be found, Closi said this whole episode has only strengthened her resolve and she wants to be an advocate for police widows and injured officers. Especially when it comes to navigating confusing benefits claims when families are already facing the trauma of a sudden loss.
“I think my husband would haunt me for so many days if I let this go,” Jenn Closi said. “Obviously, I want to see this through to the end. I was a stay-at-home mom for as long as we’ve had the kids. So now, you know, I’ve lost that role of wife, and that’s upsetting.
“It was about money, and now it’s about telling the truth. I’m not going to stop telling the truth because you’re trying to intimidate me or make a mockery of my husband’s service. Phil’s not going to be the last one. Doug is not going to be the last one.”
