KVIG Informative

From 2016 to 2026, LVMPD officers have been arrested for domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, unlawful detention, and evidence tampering. The department has responded with suspensions and press releases. The oversight board watching them lacks the power to do much else.

In the span of two weeks last December, three LVMPD officers were arrested on domestic violence charges.

One strangled his girlfriend, who is also an LVMPD officer, to the point of unconsciousness. One held a family member at gunpoint and pressed the muzzle of a firearm against their face. One was accused of attempting to prevent a crime from being reported.

None of those cases are outliers. They are part of a documented pattern stretching back a decade, visible in LVMPD’s own press releases and confirmed by court records across Clark County.

The Record

LVMPD publishes press releases when its officers are arrested. The public record they create is incomplete but instructive.

In November 2023, Officer Joseph Ortega was arrested and charged with two counts of child abuse and neglect and two counts of domestic violence assault with a deadly weapon. Ortega had been with the department since 2017.

In October 2024, LVMPD Lieutenant Brian Boxler, a 16-year veteran assigned to the Summerlin Area Command, was arrested and charged with domestic battery by strangulation.

In November 2024, Officer Chandler Pike, 29, was arrested after his girlfriend texted 911 saying he had put a gun to his own head and then slapped and strangled her. She asked officers to enter through the garage so the doorbell camera would not alert him.

Pike had been with the department since 2020. He faced nine charges, including three felonies.

Two weeks later, Officer Tommy Dinh was arrested on multiple domestic violence charges. Prosecutors said he had held a family member against their will in 2023, pressing a firearm against their face. Then did it again in December 2024.

Dinh had been with the department since 2021.

In January 2025, Officer Robert Bell, a 26-year veteran, was arrested on assault with a deadly weapon, coercion, and first-degree kidnapping charges, all domestic violence related.

In March 2026, Corrections Officer Gevaughn Murphy was arrested on four counts of felony coercion, one count of child abuse, and four counts of domestic battery. He had been with the department since 2023.

In May 2026, Corrections Officer Quincy Brown was arrested on 17 charges including gross lewdness in the presence of a minor and soliciting prostitution. He had been with the department since 2017.

That same week, Officer Manuel Ramangmou was charged with oppression under color of office. Details of the underlying allegation were not immediately available in public filings.

The Menon Case

The most documented case of systemic misconduct in the department’s recent history belongs to Sergeant Kevin Menon.

Menon worked the Convention Center Area Command, which patrols the Las Vegas Strip. In spring 2024, his own squad reported him to the police union for what they described as possibly illegal tactics against members of the public.

An internal affairs investigation confirmed a pattern. Menon had been deliberately bumping into pedestrians, pretending to be a suspicious person to engage people in conversation, then ordering their detention without cause.

The majority of those targeted were Black men.

Menon also ordered subordinates to falsify their reports, according to arrest documents. When an officer wrote up an incident, Menon would instruct them to add details that were not true in order to justify the stop after the fact.

He was arrested August 30, 2024, on 13 charges including oppression under color of office with force, subornation of perjury, and battery on a protected person, after shoving a fellow officer who did not recognize him while in plain clothes.

“It is not just a mistake which led to a single unlawful detention,” arresting officer Matthew Pluck wrote in the arrest report. “It is a pattern of unlawful detentions which led to multiple arrests, detainments and violations of rights.”

Six weeks later, a search of Menon’s property turned up approximately 200 images of child sexual abuse material on two laptops. He was charged with two additional counts of possession of visual presentation depicting sexual conduct of a person under 16.

A grand jury indicted him in October 2024. His trial was set for March 31, 2025.

Vice and Theft

Menon’s case was not the only one involving misconduct within specialized units.

In September 2024, a vice section sergeant retired while under criminal investigation. A vice detective was suspended at the same time.

Former Vice Sergeant Sean Lucero, who retired while on suspension, was subsequently charged with felony theft and oppression under color of office. The charges relate to thefts from massage parlors during vice operations.

The charges against Lucero were first reported by investigative journalist Doug Poppa, whose podcast has consistently broken LVMPD misconduct stories ahead of traditional media.

Use of Force Trend

Criminal misconduct by individual officers does not exist in isolation from the department’s broader use of force record.

According to LVMPD’s own annual statistical reports, non-deadly use of force incidents reached a five-year high in 2023, with 947 reported events out of nearly 1.5 million total officer interactions.

In those 947 incidents, only eight resulted in any form of officer discipline, either a written reprimand or suspension, according to a July 2024 analysis by local press.

The department’s use of force reports are published publicly and cover deadly and non-deadly incidents in five-year windows dating back to 2012. They document incidents but do not track outcomes for the people subjected to that force.

The Oversight Gap

LVMPD has a Citizens Review Board, established in 1997 after a fatal off-duty officer shooting. Its mission, per its own website, is to serve as an independent civilian oversight agency to review misconduct complaints and internal investigations.

Former board member Ahmad Hasseebullah told local press that the board is composed of well-meaning people who do not have the tools they need to effectively review Metro.

“What is surprising to me,” Hasseebullah said, “is that year over year, the Nevada Legislature and state government will look at this and say, we need to do something about it. And then the most that we have is a Citizen Review Board.”

Board members can review allegations. They are not fully empowered to question a finding. They cannot compel testimony, subpoena documents, or override an internal affairs conclusion.

The department’s Internal Oversight and Constitutional Policing bureau conducts its own review of use of force incidents. That bureau reports to the sheriff.

What the Pattern Shows

The cases documented above span patrol officers, corrections officers, detectives, sergeants, and lieutenants. They involve domestic violence, sexual misconduct, child abuse, false arrests, evidence tampering, and theft.

They span officers hired as recently as 2023 and veterans with more than two decades of service.

In nearly every case, LVMPD’s public response followed the same template: the officer has been placed on suspension of police powers pending further investigation.

Whether that investigation led to termination, demotion, or reinstatement is rarely disclosed publicly. The department’s disciplinary outcomes are not routinely made available to the public and are not required by Nevada law to be.

The Citizens Review Board has no authority to compel that disclosure.

The Nevada Legislature has not acted to change either condition since 2016.

In the meantime, the press releases keep coming.