In the wake of a fatal shooting and barricade situation last week in a Las Vegas bus, the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada is looking at how to better employ video surveillance and how to prevent vehicle ads from blocking police from seeing into buses.
On March 25, the Strip was shut down for four hours due to a shooter, Rolando Cardenas, who killed one man and wounded another on a double-decker bus in front of the Cosmopolitan Hotel Casino.
Cardenas was arrested and charged with murder, attempted murder, battery and firearms charges.
The alleged shooter was sitting on the second level of the bus. All the passengers fled, but when he barricaded himself in the bus the police weren’t able to see if there were any hostages due to visibility issues. One side of the bus, including windows were covered with a white film advertising a shopping mall.
A spokesman for the commission said “Based on the shooting on (the) Las Vegas Strip, we are currently working with law enforcement and our transit contractors to hopefully resolve the issues that reduced law enforcement’s ability to see inside the bus.
Officials are also exploring adding live video recording capability to its video cameras, which currently only have a record capability.
