By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Well, cinema buffs, it looks like we have a new contender for the Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City.
It’s a 70-second piece-of-work entitled, “I’m Joe Lombardo.”
It’s a pithy little drama about a western state governor who, like most of the motorists in his vast state, is not too keen about coming to a complete stop before making a right turn at a red light. Allegedly.
Personally, I was impressed that a police officer actually pulled over a driver in Las Vegas for allegedly making a red light right turn without stopping.
In what probably appeared to be a routine red light violation for the LVMPD officer turned into quite the plot twist. The driver in this video taken May 15 was Gov. Joe Lombardo, who was the Clark County sheriff/Metro’s top lawman from 2015-2023 and is a supporter of red-light cameras to catch drivers. The actual interaction between the sergeant and Lombardo was only 15 seconds of the one-minute, ten-second video.
That a top elected official would name drop — his own — to take aversive action around a traffic citation is hardly shocking news.
But there were many different ways Lombardo could have handled the situation.
The pickup truck-driving governor with the guy’s guy demeanor chose to enlist the ol’ trusty, “Come on, man,” with the officer.
This whole caper produced quite a few headlines and social media posts this week.
But what grabbed my attention about the Driver Joe case was that he was pulled over for making a right turn at a red light without allegedly stopping.
I pay extra attention to drivers making right turns at red lights.
In Sept. 2022, I was bicycling on Hacienda Avenue heading west when I was biking through the Decatur Boulevard intersection. A motorist making a right turn from Decatur to Hacienda failed to stop at the red light and crashed into me while I was in the intersection. I suffered an injured leg, but recovered.
My friend, Christopher Chapman, who used to cover the Vegas Golden Knights for ESPN radio 1090 FM in Las Vegas, nailed it with this social media observation:
Oh, and by the way, on a Saturday bike ride only four days ago, I was stopped in a bike lane at a red light on Alta Drive at the Durango Drive intersection at about 7:30AM when a driver making a right turn at the same red light whizzed by me, passing me on my right shoulder by a distance of a few inches. The driver nearly hit me.
A second driver in the traffic lane on my left saw the near-hit, pulled down his passenger side window and said, “Unbelievable.”
Yes, making right turns at red lights without stopping is unbelievable and can cause trouble.
The Lombardo video was taken against the backdrop of a county coping with too many car crashes, injured driver and passengers and people killed in these tragedies. In fact, less than a year ago, Lombardo’s successor, current Sheriff Kevin McMahill told a Channel 3 reporter that he deserved a failing grade for the number of people killed in car crashes in 2025.
“I’m asking my officers to increase the numbers of stops and the focus on the violations that lead to these fatalities,” McMahill told the Channel 3 reporter in the December news report. “But I have to give myself an “F” quite frankly, on that, I failed. I haven’t driven those numbers down. I don’t accept failure.”
Consider that Clark County is home to 427 students hit by drivers in school zones in 2025 — an appalling and stunning number that prompted a school road safety group to recently release 75 road improvement recommendations to try and deter motorists from hitting kids at schools.
Lombardo’s office issued a statement that said, in part, “Governor Lombardo spoke with the officer, fully complied with all instructions and was promptly on his way.”
Here’s some free advice for the Lombardo re-election team. A way to reverse the bad PR is to have Lombardo start talking about traffic safety to reduce road violence in Las Vegas and across Nevada. I actually ride my bicycle on that same road where Lombardo was pulled over because it’s near the A’s baseball stadium that is under construction. I bike there all the time to take photos of the construction progress.
See you on the road, governor. Drive safe out there.
PSA