“You can hate me now, but I won’t stop now.”Nas
It has come to my attention that Techcrunch is working on yet another piece on me. This time they seem to be curious about my donations to the Las Vegas Metro Police Department. To save everyone some time and from yet another unsubstantiated narrative, I thought I’d share how I’ve been helping the LVMPD become the most technologically advanced police department in the world.
There were several reasons why I wanted to do this project and why I wanted to do it in Las Vegas:
- Public safety is incredibly important and impacts everyone. My wife Felicia grew up in a very high crime area and saw many of her friends murdered. These murders may sound like statistics to some, but they destroy families and lives. The key to making citizens, police, and suspects safer is better intelligence. If you do not have 1 on 1 confrontations between people with guns, that helps. If you don’t have high speed car chases, and you don’t have to chase people over fences and onto roofs, that makes everyone much safer. If people know that they are unlikely to get away with crimes, they are less likely to commit them.
- Our American Dynamism effort has been amazing in making the best technology available to the public sector, but the public sector often has trouble budgeting for strategic technology projects. By donating the technology, I am able to give LVMPD a running start.
- The LVMPD is perhaps the best in the country as exemplified by their incredibly high murder solve rate of 92%, which is the highest in the nation. I believed further enabling the incredible officers of the LVMPD would yield great results and it has.
So what have we done so far that Techcrunch is investigating? We have been busy. There is much to investigate as there have been several areas of need.
First, the LVMPD needed to solidify the basic technology of the department. Las Vegas added major events such as F1 and the Super Bowl, but didn’t correspondingly increase police funding. Specifically, they were short on computer terminals for officers, so Felicia and I donated $800,000 worth of new computer terminals.
Next, Las Vegas was having difficulty retaining 911 operators. 911 is an incredibly stressful job and the attrition rate got so high that it was taking over 5 minutes to respond to emergency calls. In diagnosing the problem with Chief Mike Gennaro, we came up with a multifaceted solution. First, the LVMPD needed to fix the basic work environment. Felicia and I donated a new ice machine, a new cappuccino machine, and a new gymnasium to make a stressful job more pleasant. These new facilities were around $120,000. Next, we wanted to outfit them with the latest and greatest in emergency call technology, so we donated $400,000 to purchase technology from one of our portfolio companies, Prepared911. I am thrilled to report that attrition is way down and 911 calls are being answered in 30 seconds.
Finally, the LVMPD wanted to radically improve its intelligence and situational awareness. To do this we donated approximately $6.3 million dollars towards the purchase of two state-of-the-art public safety technologies from Skydio and Flock Safety, also a16z portfolio companies. These technologies have been deployed with great success in cities like San Francisco as recently described by Mayor London Breed.
The technologies put the LVMPD in a position of knowledge. For example, if someone steals a car with a baby in it, the Flock Safety system will locate and geotag the license plate, then a Skydio drone is automatically sent to monitor the situation. The camera feed from the drone will be sent to every police officer’s cell phone, so that they can approach the situation with the appropriate resources leading to a recovery of the child and a safe apprehension of the suspect.
The early results of these efforts have been spectacular and will get much better as the LVMPD approaches full deployment.
For the 911 emergency service, the YTD average through September 2024 for calls answered in less than 15 seconds is 95%, up from 66% for the same time period in 2023.
The general year over year crime statistics improved as follows:
Shootings
Decrease of 21.40%
Year 2023: 668
Year 2024: 525
Shooting Victims
Decrease of 24.20%
Year 2023: 302
Year 2024: 229
Homicides (current solve rate 94%)
Decrease of 20.79%
Year 2023: 101
Year 2024: 80
Property Crimes
Decrease of 10.90%
Year 2023: 57,126
Year 2024: 50,874
On just the Flock Safety stand-alone implementation, the LVMPD was able to achieve the following:
Stolen Vehicle Alerts
Increase of 48%
Year 2023: 2841
Year 2024: 4194
Suspects Arrested
Increase of 17%
Year 2023: 544
Year 2024: 639
Despite whatever Techcrunch writes, the LVMPD is just getting started and we are proud to support them in making Las Vegas the safest city in America for all of its citizens.
