CCSD Police Use of Force Data | Ryan Rose

by Ryan Rose

What the Data Actually Shows

The report covers the 2025-26 school year. In that year, Clark County School District police documented 11 separate use-of-force incidents. Those 11 incidents involved a total of 21 people. That is the whole universe of the data set, and it is worth keeping that scale in mind as you read the percentages.

Of those 21 people, 18 were Black, two were Hispanic, and one was white. The district enrolls students of every background across more than 300 schools, and Black students were roughly 16% of total enrollment during that period. Put those two figures next to each other and you get the number that drove the headlines. Black students and adults represented up to 85% of the people CCSD police used force on, while representing about 16% of the student body.

The most common form of force in the data was pepper spray. That detail matters because pepper spray sits in a different category than a physical takedown or a weapon. It is a tool many school police agencies treat as a crowd-control or de-escalation option during a fight. It is also a chemical agent that can affect bystanders who were never part of the original incident.

Cheyenne High School in North Las Vegas had more incidents than any other campus in the district. The Review-Journal's reporting identified Cheyenne as the leading location in the data. The report did not attribute that concentration to any single cause, and neither will this article. A campus can land at the top of a list like this for many reasons, including the number of officers assigned there, how incidents get classified, and what a given school year happened to bring.

One more piece of context that belongs in any honest read of this report. The data exists at all because Nevada lawmakers passed a law in 2025 requiring school police agencies to collect and release use-of-force information. Before that law, this particular breakdown was not something a parent could look up. The 2025-26 numbers are essentially the first public baseline, which means there is no prior year in the same format to compare them against yet.

Close up of a police vehicle with emergency lights on, representing school district police response

Why It Matters to Las Vegas Residents

School safety is one of the first questions families ask when they start looking at neighborhoods in the valley. It comes up in almost every conversation I have with buyers who have kids. People want to know about test scores, they want to know about class sizes, and they absolutely want to know what the campus feels like day to day.

A report like this becomes part of that conversation whether anyone wants it to or not. Parents share it. It shows up in neighborhood groups and in comment sections under every local news post. And for families who already had questions about how their child is treated at school, a number like 18 out of 21 is not abstract. It confirms something they have been saying.

For other families, the reaction goes the other direction. Eleven incidents across a district with hundreds of schools and more than a quarter million students is, by any measure, a small number. Some parents will read this and conclude that CCSD police are used sparingly and that the district is being transparent about a rare event. That is also a fair reading of the same data.

Both reactions are going to show up in the same neighborhood. That is worth naming, because the way a school community handles a report like this tells you something real about that community. A school where parents, administrators, and officers can talk about this openly is in a better position than one where the topic is off limits. If you are new to the valley and trying to read a campus, watching how a school handles a hard conversation is more useful than any single statistic.

Police vehicles with flashing lights parked on a residential street near a neighborhood school

It also helps to separate two questions that people tend to blur together. The first question is how often force gets used at all, and the answer there is that it is rare. Eleven incidents in a full school year, across a district this size, is not a daily occurrence. The second question is who those incidents involve, and that is where the data raises something a district has to answer for. A number can be small and still be uneven, and the second question does not go away just because the first one is reassuring.

There is also a practical angle for renters and homeowners in North Las Vegas specifically. Cheyenne High School serves a real set of neighborhoods, and those neighborhoods are going to catch the attention that comes with being named in this report. Attention is not the same as a change in property values, and I want to be careful not to overstate that link. But it does mean local families should expect this to come up at board meetings and community forums in the months ahead.

Background and History

The Clark County School District operates its own police force. That is not unusual for a district of this size, and CCSD is one of the largest school districts in the United States. Officers are sworn, they patrol campuses, and they respond to incidents on school property the way a municipal department responds in a city.

What changed in 2025 was the reporting requirement. Nevada lawmakers passed a law that year requiring this kind of use-of-force data to be collected and made public. That law is the only reason these 21 names and 11 incidents exist as a public data set. Before it, there was no standard, statewide window into how often school police used force or who they used it on.

This is the pattern nationally as well. Over the last decade, more states have moved toward requiring police agencies of all kinds, including school police, to publish use-of-force records. The theory behind those laws is straightforward. You cannot have a useful public conversation about policing without numbers, and you cannot measure whether a policy change worked without a baseline.

The catch with a first-year baseline is that it is hard to interpret in isolation. We do not yet know whether 11 incidents is high or low for CCSD historically, because the comparable data was not collected before. We also do not know how CCSD compares to other large districts under the same definitions, because different states define and count force differently. The 2026-27 report, when it lands, will be the first chance to see a trend line rather than a single point.

There is a definitional wrinkle too. The data counts people, not just students. Of the 21 people involved, the reporting described force used on both kids and adults. That means a single incident on a campus can involve a student, a parent who showed up, or an adult who was not connected to the school at all. When you read a percentage built on 21 people, you are reading a mix, not a clean student-only number.

It is also worth remembering the broader pressure CCSD is under right now. The district announced a $51.6 million budget reduction this fall after enrollment dropped by more than 10,400 students year over year. Staffing questions touch every part of a school system, and this report arrives in the middle of that conversation rather than separate from it.

A row of red school lockers in a tiled hallway, a typical Clark County high school setting

What Happens Next

The most concrete thing to watch is the next reporting cycle. Because the 2025 law made this an ongoing requirement, CCSD will produce another set of numbers for the 2026-27 school year. That second report is when the public gets its first real comparison, and it is the number that will tell us whether anything actually shifted.

Expect this to come up at Clark County School District Board of Trustees meetings. Board meetings are public, they are the place where policy on school policing gets debated, and they are where community members can speak directly to the people who set that policy. If you want to influence what the district does with this data, that room is where it happens.

Watch also for whether the district makes any changes to its use-of-force policy, particularly around pepper spray, since that was the most common tool in the data. Any policy change would need to move through the district's own process, and it would be announced publicly. As of this writing, no specific policy change has been announced in response to this report. [NOT VERIFIED: any district response or policy revision after September 8, 2026]

Another thing to watch is whether the reporting format itself gets refined. First-year data under a new law often surfaces gaps in how incidents are categorized, and states frequently tighten those definitions after the first cycle. If Nevada adjusts what counts as force or how agencies have to break out the numbers, the 2026-27 report may not line up cleanly with this one. That is normal for a new requirement, and it is a reason to read year two carefully rather than assuming a change in the count means a change on the ground.

Finally, keep an eye on North Las Vegas community groups and on Cheyenne High School's own parent organizations. Campuses named in reports like this often become the focus of local organizing, both from families asking for changes and from families defending the officers assigned to their school. Whatever comes out of that process is likely to be more specific and more useful than the district-wide numbers.

Ryan's Take

I am a real estate agent, not a policy expert, so I am going to stay in my lane on the hard questions here. What I can tell you is how this kind of report moves through the market, because I watch it happen every time one lands.

Buyers with school-age kids read local education news. They read it more closely than almost any other category, and they bring it into showings. When a specific high school gets named in a story like this, I get questions about that attendance zone within days. That is not speculation, that is just what the calls look like.

Here is the part I would push back on, though. A single-year report with 11 incidents is not a reason to write off a neighborhood, and I would say the same thing to a buyer who wanted to use it that way. Cheyenne High School serves real families in real North Las Vegas neighborhoods, and those families are not a data point. If a campus is on your list, go walk it. Talk to the principal. Talk to parents at pickup. That tells you more than a percentage will.

What I do think is genuinely useful here is the transparency itself. Nevada now requires this data, and that means parents have a tool they did not have two years ago. Long term, districts that get measured tend to improve, and neighborhoods zoned to improving schools tend to hold their value. I would rather have the number and a hard conversation than no number and a comfortable silence.

A pen resting on a printed report with charts, representing public records data released under Nevada law

What You Can Do

If you want to engage with this rather than just react to it, there are a few practical steps. Start with the source. Read the Las Vegas Review-Journal's reporting linked at the bottom of this page so you are working from the actual figures rather than a summary of a summary.

Next, go to a Clark County School District Board of Trustees meeting, or watch one. Meeting schedules and agendas are posted publicly on the district's website, and public comment is part of the process. If you want the board to address school policing, saying so in that room carries more weight than a comment thread does.

If your child attends a CCSD school, talk to the administration directly. Ask how officers are assigned at that campus, what the school's process is when an incident happens, and how parents get notified. Individual schools vary a great deal, and the district-wide number will not tell you much about your specific building.

You can also look up your own campus rather than relying on the district-wide figure. Because the 2025 law made this information public, the underlying records are a public resource, not something reserved for reporters. Asking your school directly for its own numbers is a reasonable request, and how quickly you get an answer is itself a useful signal.

And if you are house hunting with kids, build school visits into your search the same way you build in neighborhood drive-throughs. Walk the campus during a school day if the office allows it. Go to a football game. Ask a neighbor with a student there what they actually think. Reports give you questions to ask, but the answers come from the people in the building.

Have questions about how this affects your home or neighborhood? Reach out to Ryan Rose or text/call 702-747-5921 anytime.