LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill Monday touted his record fighting crime, caring for cops and employing technology in police work as he officially launched his bid for a second term.
McMahill made the announcement in a high-tech presentation at the Worre Studios in Las Vegas, saying he wanted to make the announcement in a way that's never been done before. With music, lights and video presentations, he succeeded.
The sheriff touted falling crime statistics, including a more than 30% drop in homicides and increasing the rate at which non-fatal shootings are solved, which he attributed to a new gun violence unit.
"In Las Vegas, come here and you shoot somebody, we're going to put handcuffs on you and put you where you belong, that's in jail," the sheriff said.
He spent a good deal of time talking about his initiative to take care of officers' mental health, with a new wellness unit. The first challenge was to allow officers to feel confident in asking for help, he said, and now 450 officers per month seek services in the unit.
In part as a result, McMahill said the number of officer suicides has fallen, and the department has gone two years without an officer taking his own life.
"We have a wall of honor at Metro, police officers who gave their lives heroically in the line of duty," he said. "What we don't have, is we don't have a wall for all of those that were so severely impacted by what it is that they see and hear and feel and smell and do every single day, because if we had a wall for that, for those that took their lives in the line of duty, that wall would be three or four times what it is for those that were killed feloniously in the line of duty."
And McMahill said the department has expanded the use of technology, including a fleet of donated Tesla Cybertrucks that will be unveiled on Tuesday. The list of tech also includes license plate readers, facial recognition technology, systems to detect and pinpoint where gunshots are fired and drones that can respond to calls and provide real-time intelligence to officers responding on the ground.
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But McMahill said his priority in a second term will be fatal traffic accidents.
"We are living in a time where you are far more likely, by a factor of two at minimum, to actually die on our roadways than you are to be killed by somebody else in our community," he said. "I want you to think about that as all these kids go and get their drivers license. I was actually more fearful of them potentially losing their life because of the bad driving behaviors of people in Las Vegas."
McMahill admitted that one piece of technology he advocated for — automated traffic enforcement cameras — failed to pass during the 2025 Nevada Legislature. But he said he'd advocate for it again, because the technology can change people's behavior where existing traffic enforcement cannot.
"But it's also very clear to me that I need to do a better job to make each and every single person in this community realize that traffic safety is your responsibility as well," he said. "This is not solely a police problem. We're not holding drunken and drug offenders responsible in the criminal justice system like they need to be. ... The reality of it is, if you kill somebody, you could potentially only do two years."
McMahill said his other initiative will be to spread his officer wellness program to other agencies, including fire departments and emergency medical services, all of whom also witness the often-harrowing aftermath of crimes and traffic crashes. And, he said, agencies need to work together to secure the city that he says remains a terrorist target.
"We need to take wellness regionally. We need to take security regionally, and we need to go in with the [Las Vegas] city marshals and every other aspect of law enforcement and first responder community and do it better than we ever have, because the community is going to need it when the time comes."
During his career, McMahill has held every rank in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, from patrol officer to undersheriff, over a career spanning more than 30 years.
He joined the department in 1990, after three years in the Army serving as a military police officer.
He retired not long after the 1 October mass shooting in 2017, but returned to run for sheriff in 2022, winning nearly 58% of the vote in the primary election against two other candidates, including a former Metro assistant sheriff.
McMahill is the eighth man to lead the department since it was created in 1973 out of a merger between the former Las Vegas Police Department and the Clark County Sheriff's Department.
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McMahill is known for having placed an emphasis on officer wellness, creating a new bureau to offer help for cops, both active and retired, who are feeling the stress of the job.
He's also credited with expanding the department's use of technology, from drones to a fleet of donated Cybertrucks to license plate readers to assist in law enforcement.
During the 2025 Legislature, McMahill personally traveled to Carson City to advocate for a bill to allow police to use automated traffic enforcement cameras in areas where traditional enforcement failed to curb speeding or red-light running. The bill failed to pass the session, although McMahill is still pushing for the tech.
McMahill's law enforcement career began in high school when he was a police explorer at age 15 in his hometown of Denver, Colorado. He joined the U.S. Army and served as a military police officer before coming to Las Vegas, where he was hired as a patrol officer in 1990.
During his tenure, McMahill established the department's Office of Community Engagement, designed to build relationships between police and community activists, faith leaders, non-profits and others.
