Dennis N. Griffin. Policing Las Vegas: A History of Law Enforcement in Southern Nevada. Las Vegas: Huntington Press, 2005. 214 pp.
This book bills itself as a history of law enforcement in Southern Nevada and is very comprehensive, but ultimately feels more like a collection of anecdotes, facts, and personalities than a cohesive narrative. Griffin is also a mystery writer, and his forte is serving his readers a nice, meaty story. That’s where Policing Las Vegas is the strongest–particularly in the chapters on the Mob and the 1992 race riots, where Griffin reads almost like an eyewitness account.
The early material, however, is paper-thin. While Griffin has my sympathies–there’s probably a lack of documentary evidence of the region’s police departments’ early years–there’s not much excuse for the scatter-shot presentation of the first six decades of this history. Chiefs are raised to honor and toppled from grace (usually with no explanation of why), Las Vegas sees milestones like its first patrol car and first female officer, and statistics about the city’s growth occasionally march in, but with little sense of flow or progress. And there’s certainly nothing to put what we’re reading into context: as Western towns go, was Las Vegas progressive or reactive in its policing? It has the feel of an author with limited sources writing a chronology rather than a true history.
In its later years, as newspaper accounts grow less telegraphic and living interviewees emerge, though, the book is quite good. As it happens, this uptick in quality coincides with the establishment of the unified Las Vegas/Clark County Metro Police Department in 1973. From here on in, Policing Las Vegas is rock-solid and far more readable. The reader almost forgets that the first 68 years of Las Vegas policing were covered in a perfunctory 42 pages. You don’t get the answer to life, the universe, and everything, but you do learn the basic history of Metro.
And what a history it is. Political squabbles over consolidation give way to a struggle with various organized crime figures. There’s some solid police work discussed here. And the long chapter on the 1992 riots reads almost like a primary source document. There are also stirring testimonials to Metro officers who have fallen in the line of duty and helpful appendices with various landmark dates and Metro initiatives.
The richness of the the material from 1973 onwards, though, only makes the books initial skeletal treatment stand out more starkly.
If you consider this a history of Metro with a longish preface about the pre-Metro years, you won’t be disappointed.