More transparency: The DA and police shootings

For more than a year, officer-involved homicides in Clark County were stuck in a legal vacuum that undermined public confidence in the police.

The coroner’s inquests that had long aired the details of such citizen deaths had been halted because of police union challenges to badly needed hearing reforms. Meanwhile, police agencies were not handing over their investigation files to the district attorney’s office, and prosecutors weren’t asking for them.

As far as the criminal justice system was concerned, cases involving police use of deadly force did not exist.

That changed last week – finally – when new Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson issued decision letters in a pair of 2010 officer-involved homicides. In addition to offering the public a first look at witness statements, the circumstances that led to the deaths and the findings of medical examiners, Mr. Wolfson’s office provided determinations on whether officers acted within the law. In both cases, officers were cleared of wrongdoing.

Such reports have never before been issued in Clark County in response to police killings of civilians.

Review-Journal reporters immediately discovered one major discrepancy between Mr. Wolfson’s report and the facts of the August 2010 death of Eduardo Lopez-Hernandez: The decision letter failed to mention that Nevada Highway Patrol troopers used a Taser on Lopez-Hernandez after he was handcuffed. Police critics rolled their eyes.

The assertion that Mr. Wolfson’s office already is displaying bias toward police is premature. First, this was the district attorney’s first such report – ever – and it will be part of a much larger body of work by the end of the summer.

Second, the coroner’s inquest into Lopez-Hernandez’s death is scheduled for next week, the county’s first since October 2010 and the first under new protocols designed to reduce favoritism toward police. That hearing should augment the contents of the report by having witnesses testify under oath, and it could help reveal whether prosecutors are capable of questioning witnesses in a more objective manner.

Third, and most important, Mr. Wolfson was under no obligation to issue these decision letters in the first place. He could have followed the course of his recently retired predecessor, David Roger, and sat on his hands. But "there was a void in getting this information to the public," Mr. Wolfson said this week. "The public deserved to have some answers. … Was the public going to have to wait two years, three years to get through all these inquests?"

The issuance of the letters is a big step forward, not only in returning transparency to police killings, but in establishing a new, independent review process for them. Mr. Wolfson said he hopes to release decision letters on 17 other backlogged fatal police actions within 90 days.

The more information, the better – and that’s far better than none at all.