New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas was ‘orderly,’ police say
America’s Party was plenty loud and extra cold by Las Vegas standards, but beyond that, New Year’s Eve stayed pretty tame.
Using the typical measuring stick for just how crazy things got — arrests — the festivities on the Strip and downtown were unremarkable.
Of the estimated 340,000 gathered in the resort corridor, only 19 face criminal charges from late Dec. 31 and into New Year’s Day, according to Las Vegas police. On Fremont Street, Metro arrested just three more.
Valleywide, Metro made nine arrests for driving under the influence.
All in all, that’s a total of 32 arrests — way less than 1 percent of all revelers.
Las Vegas police even declared this year’s bash as officially subdued.
“The 2014-2015 N.Y.E. celebration remains one of the most orderly within recent history,” the department said Friday in a news release.
Metro’s arrest numbers were just slightly higher than the those reported during the previous few years’ parties.
New Year’s celebrations a year ago saw 26 Metro arrests, including ten drivers arrested for DUI.
When the calendar flipped from 2012 to 2013, Las Vegas police made 21 arrests, including four on DUI charges. But that year, crimes were more violent. A man was arrested after shooting a gun inside Circus Circus, though no one was hurt. The same night and at the same resort, a man was arrested on rape charges.
For comparison, Metro made an average of 32 arrests per night at the three-day Electric Daisy Carnival in June. That electronic dance music event, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, drew about 134,000 each day.
Metro will follow its annual resolution to improve policing plans for next year by reviewing lessons learned and compiling data to present to major planners, department spokesman Jesse Roybal said Friday. That generally happens within a month of the holiday.
Police aren’t the only public officials that New Year’s keeps busy.
Clark County officials issued an advisory Wednesday evening because of the rise in air pollution expected from the fireworks, set off on the Strip and in backyards across the Las Vegas Valley. They do the same every Fourth of July, too, county Department of Air Quality spokesman Russell Roberts said Friday.
“Typically, what we see during those events is short-term spikes in inhalable particulates,” Roberts said.
Officials lifted the advisory a short time later because weather conditions kept the pollutants from lingering in the air, Roberts said.
Temperatures dipped into the 20s, Wednesday night and stayed there into New Year’s Day. Wintry precipitation made roadways that lead to Las Vegas hazardous.
A man was killed and several others were hurt in a multiple-vehicle crash on an icy stretch of U.S. 93 in northwest Arizona on Thursday.
It all started about 9:30 a.m. when a northbound Chevrolet SUV rolled on the highway near Wikieup, about 50 miles southeast of Kingman, according to the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
A Toyota SUV struck the Chevy before the Toyota was then hit by a Kia sedan, Department of Public Safety spokesman Bart Graves said. A passenger in the Toyota, Thomas Moeller Busselburg, 64, of Salt Lake City, died at the scene.
Graves said another passenger and the driver of another vehicle that was not involved in the crash who was trying to help were seriously injured. They were taken to hospitals in Kingman and Phoenix. The crash is still being investigated.
Reporters Kimber Laux, Steven Moore and Dave Hawkins contributed.
Contact Ricardo Torres at rtorres@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Find him on Twitter: @rickytwrites.
