Sheriff: Arrest of sergeant accused of wrongful imprisonment is a ‘major stain’ on department

Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said the arrest of a Metro sergeant on suspicion of “a pattern of unlawful detentions” of citizens on the Las Vegas Strip was a “major stain” on the department.

McMahill said he was aware of a previous internal investigation into Sergeant Kevin Menon, who was arrested on August 30. He is accused of posing as a “suspicious person” to talk to people before arresting them. He is also accused of shoving a colleague and provoking people, leading to their arrest without probable cause.

Court records show that Menon was also the target of three federal lawsuits, all of which were ultimately dismissed. One lawsuit was settled for $75,000, which the defendants – Metro, Menon and another officer – paid to the plaintiff, a surgeon who encountered Menon during a traffic stop in 2018. The settlement was reached the same day Menon was arrested.

According to Metro spokesman Robert Wicks, the other two lawsuits were dismissed before the agency was notified. McMahill was unaware of their existence, he said in an interview on Tuesday.

“It's an embarrassment,” McMahill said of Menon's alleged actions. “It certainly doesn't bring humanity to everything we do, as I expect of my officers.”

A former internal investigation

McMahill said he was aware of a “previous internal investigation” into Menon “a few years ago,” but he had not yet received the full report.

While the sheriff said he did not know which incident the investigation relates to, it is separate from an allegation in Menon's arrest report, which said he filed a complaint about his own conduct without disclosing his involvement in the incident.

When a victim named in Menon's police report called 911 to report a wrongful detention, Menon put on a Metro jacket to file the report, but did not reveal that he had behaved like a “suspicious person” leading up to the victim's detention, the report said.

McMahill said he did not know whether the previous internal investigation into Menon was related to any of the lawsuits filed against him.

“I'll get a full report of what we know up front about all of this; it's just not everything,” McMahill said. “When we go back into it and sort of go through everything we missed and how we missed it – how we could have done it better, could have caught it earlier – all of those things will come to light.”

Metro early warning system

McMahill said Metro operates an early warning system that notifies the department when an officer's conduct raises concerns.

The sheriff said he did not know if Menon's actions triggered the early warning system. “It's a good indication of whether it's effective or not,” McMahill said, adding that Metro will review the system in the future.

“One of my big questions is: When you look at what an early warning system does, do we leverage all the different parts and components of an organization to incorporate things like litigation into that early warning system?” McMahill said.

The sheriff said he had evidence that complaints were included in the early warning system at times, but he did not know if this was common practice.

McMahill said that while it is “certainly a red flag any time one of my officers is sued,” the 2020 lawsuit filed against Menon and Metro, in which the plaintiff alleged he was wrongfully detained during a 2018 traffic stop, “did not raise any major red flags for me at the time.”

The lawsuit alleged that surgeon Martin Uwah was stopped in a parking lot and driven into the hood of a police vehicle without being given a reason for his arrest.

“We get a lot of complaints, there's no doubt about that. When you look at the bigger picture today, I think that's one of the reasons I ordered the review,” McMahill said. “I want to see how we could have done this better.”

Quotas: “That is 100 percent not going to happen”

In an interview with police, Metro Officer Erik Sanchez, who worked with Menon, said he felt the sergeant's actions “were probably related to his desire to arrest more people for statistical purposes.”

The idea that police officers are given quotas or targets for a certain number of arrests comes up “again and again,” according to McMahill, but is not true.

“I'm very interested in reducing violent crime, but I'm always interested in doing it in a constitutional way,” McMahill said, adding that quotas are “100 percent out of the question.”

Metro began investigating Menon after four unnamed officers from his area command contacted Gregory Stinnet, a Metro officer and secretary of the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, to share their concerns about their force's immediate supervisor.

“I’m really proud of my officers for going public with this,” McMahill said.

“That says a lot about the men and women of this organization as a whole. And while that's a huge stain and a huge challenge for me as we move forward, I think there are some bright spots as well.”

Contact Estelle Atkinson at [email protected]. Follow @estellelilym on X and @estelleatkinson reports on Instagram.