Last Thursday, the Metropolitan Police Committee on Fiscal Affairs agreed to settlement payments amounting to more than half a million dollars to be given to the Las Vegas Review-Journal due to lawsuits over public records.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal will be receiving a $600,000 Settlement Payout
During a hearing at Las Vegas police headquarters, the five committee members voted solidly to approve the settlement payments of $325,000 and $295,000 to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Last year, in two separate court decisions, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that Metro violated Nevada public records law in rejecting the Review-Journal’s requests for records about the deadly 2019 Alpine Motel fire and Nevada Highway Patrol trooper investigation in 2018.
The two cases were sent back to the District Court level, where the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Metro agreed to the settlement payments approved last Thursday.
The police department repeatedly denied the Review-Journal’s requests for records related to two cases way back in 2018 and 2019
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s chief legal officer Reimbursement for attorneys’ fees is an essential part of the public records law because without it, people could not afford to take the government and all its lawyers to court, and unhappily, most people can’t afford it, anyway.
In December 2019, the Alpine Motel fire in downtown Las Vegas killed six people and injured 13 others. Las Vegas Review-Journal has no access to the information to share with the public.
In 2018, a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter requested records related to an investigation by Metro into a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper who allegedly asked a confidential informant to kill the trooper’s wife.
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