Bar fight preceded Las Vegas police officer’s resignation, citation says

In what initially was reported to authorities as an assault, then-Metropolitan Police Department officer John Squeo pushed and bit a man last summer outside a bar east of the Strip, according to police records.

Nine months later, he was off the Las Vegas police force.

The victim — a bar employee — suffered “bleeding, redness and swelling” on his “left back area,” according to Squeo’s citation, a copy of which was obtained Wednesday evening by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. What preceded the incident was not outlined in the one-page citation.

Police call logs show that it occurred around 12:45 a.m. June 20 in the parking lot of FreeZone, a bar and nightclub near Paradise Road and Harmon Avenue, where police were dispatched after a report of an “assault/battery.”

A request for comment from FreeZone was not returned Wednesday.

That morning, according to the citation, Squeo, 29, was cited for battery by the Metropolitan Police Department, the police force he served for six years. But in August, court records show, Squeo instead pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to “time served.”

Following the citation, Squeo, who joined Metro in 2014, was placed on paid leave through at least late February before resigning on March 21.

The nightclub encounter took place on the heels of the deadly police shooting of Jorge Gomez, an armed Black Lives Matter demonstrator, on June 1.

Attorneys retained by the Gomez family have said Squeo’s actions that evening instigated a series of fast-moving events that ended in Gomez’s death.

According to Metro, Squeo was among a group of law enforcement officers guarding the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse as thousands of people swarmed the streets of downtown Las Vegas to protest police brutality and racism.

As the protest was coming to an end, Gomez, who was armed and wearing a ballistics vest, walked toward the courthouse. His pickup truck was parked just a block away.

At the time, Gomez had a Glock 19 handgun holstered on his hip and a Glock 23 pistol, nestled into a carbine conversion kit, slung over his shoulder. A third weapon, which Metro said had been converted into a short-barreled rifle, later was found in his backpack.

From the top of the courthouse steps, Squeo fired nonlethal beanbag rounds at Gomez, sending him running in the opposite direction, his back turned to the officers.

Within seconds, four other Metro officers who happened to be driving past the courthouse fired a combined 19 rounds at Gomez, killing him.

The officers who fired the lethal rounds — Ryan Fryman, Dan Emerton, Vernon Ferguson and Andrew Locher — claimed that Gomez had raised one of his guns at the officers stationed outside the courthouse, prompting them to shoot.

But this month, during a public review of evidence, Detective Jason Leavitt, who led the investigation into the officers’ use of force, said no video evidence had been located showing Gomez pointing a weapon at police.

Shortly before Gomez was shot, a Las Vegas police officer was shot in the head at a Black Lives Matter demonstration outside Circus Circus.

Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.