Amid legal tug of war, footage of Vegas massacre remains off-limits to the public

A broken window where a gunman opened fire from an upper story of Mandalay Bay resort on a country music festival across the street on the Las Vegas Strip, leaving 58 dead and more than 500 injured, shown on Oct. 2, 2017, in Las Vegas.

Paddock, lawyers for Las Vegas police were arguing in court against the request of media outlets – including the Los Angeles Times – for police bodycamera footage and 911 recordings made the night of the shooting.

The tug of war has resulted in police asking for – and being granted – a new judge to hear the case after another judge ordered the release of the requested items. In the meantime, the material – except for some edited video that was released days after the shooting – remains off-limits to the media.

Jackie Nichols, a lawyer for the police department, wrote in her brief last week that District Court Judge Richard Scott’s March 2 ruling was "clearly erroneous because the government's interest in non-disclosure significantly outweighs any interest

the public has in access.”

The department, when ordered to comply with the public records requests, also cited a heavy toll on manpower and said reproducing the records would be a burdensome endeavor. According to the department, there is almost 750 hours of body-camera footage that would require review and the redaction of some items, a process that could take as long as six months to complete.

There were also 2,000 calls related to the shooting, police said, and the department has only three analysts qualified to oversee redactions on 911 calls. The department also argued in briefs that the material is “extremely graphic and it is against LVMPD policy to assign a single person to review."

Police department lawyers estimate there are also 1,500 documents related to

the shooting. According to the brief, the department said "these documents will likely contain personal information that will require redaction. Like much of the other information requested, this will require employees to review and redact personal, identifiable information, requiring significant use of personnel."

Police said the cost could approach $500,000 to provide copies of all the material – a figure Scotti dismissed as unreasonable.

Barry Smith, executive director of the Nevada Press Association, said it was hard to see how police could argue there wasn't compelling interest in the largest mass shooting in modern American history. Further, he said, there isn't an active investigation by Las Vegas police, given that Paddock killed himself in the hotel room.

A 20-year-old mother was being held Tuesday on a $2 million bond on suspicion of first-degree murder after her two children were found dead in car seats inside a car, officials said.

The bodies were found outside the family’s home in the historic mining town of Superior, a historic mining town of about 2,900 people about 60 miles east of Phoenix. Superior interim Police Chief Christian Ensley said that members of his department had called Child Protective Services in early January because of concerns about the two children. The state agency said Tuesday it had received two calls about the children, including the one in January, but had never found evidence of child neglect or abuse.

Autopsies were being conducted to determine causes of death of the 2-year-old boy and 10-month-old girl and the Pinal County Sheriff's Office did not disclose what evidence had been found.

A state Senate committee in Hawaii on Tuesday called for a statue of former President Barack Obama to be erected in the state where he was born.

A water park company co-owner accused of rushing the world's tallest waterslide into service and a designer accused of shoddy planning were charged Tuesday in the decapitation of a 10-year-old boy on the ride in 2016.

With the latest charges, three men connected with Texas-based Schlitterbahn Waterparks and Resorts and its park in Kansas City, Kansas, have been indicted by a Kansas grand jury, along with the park and the construction company that built the ride. Caleb Schwab died on the 17-story ride when the raft he was riding went airborne and hit an overhead loop.

– Appeal-democrat news services