Breaking! Santa has a list. Joe Lombardo and LVMPD's spy apparatus uses tech tools to watch EVERYONE

An illusion of an anything goes Las Vegas has long persisted. A combination of brilliant marketing and easy pleasures have allowed this myth to carry around the globe. Now Political.tips has compiled proof showing that the Las Vegas Metro Police Department, led by Sheriff Joe Lombardo ,has an array of high tech surveillance equipment which has turned Clark County, Nevada into a quasi police state. A seventeen page document from Metro describes a program labeled "Fusion Watch." The stated goal of this undertaking is simple, "... to become the most advanced and effective virtual crime fighting unit in the world."

Thanks to a vast FOIA repository hosted by Muckrock , years of LVMPD tools and tactics have been uncovered laying out a pattern of ever increasing oversight mechanisms, not just capable of being deployed against suspected criminals, but the general population.

Also shown is a pattern of evasive answers and, in some cases, flat out refusals to honor media requests despite the open record laws enshrined in the Nevada Revised Statutes.

Among the toys at Lombardo's disposal: Long Range Acoustic listening devices, for which the LVMPD invoices for these can be found here. Additionally, the department also contracted for, and deployed, facial recognition software from Vigilant Solutions.

Many other requests for information relating to contracts and methods utilized by the Las Vegas area police department surveillance capabilities were obfuscated or simply ignored by the public records department staffers who received them. This included declining to process requests lacking an accompanying phone number, inclusion of which is not a requirement under state law.

In a world of ever decreasing privacy, transparency from leaders are a necessary trait. With Lombardo now running for Nevada Governor, and having already been caught omitting the facts of his positions on the campaign trail, a close eye must be kept by the entire state on him. A person who has the ability to wield immense power, the mechanisms to do so, and the character trait to hide it from the public, in opposition to what the law reads, deserves scrutiny equivalent to what Joe Lombardo's own 'Fusion Watch' calls for.