Name: Why Being a Cop in Las Vegas is Unlike Any Other City
Uploaded: 2025-06-16T14:00:07.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Why Being a Cop in Las Vegas is Unlike Any Other City' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Why Being a Cop in Las Vegas is Unlike Any Other City' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-16. Transcript available.

how did it start like how did it first start that you decided to become um join
the force in las
vegas i was a marine so when i was 17 i joined the marine corps and this was
way so this was
1987 that i went into the marine corps okay um paris island third battalion i
company super
hardcore and my dad was in law enforcement too and i cannot overstate the
importance of having
a strong male role model in your life my father i genuflect to that man he died
in 2017 and um
what i can say is that my dad i wanted to do everything like my dad so my dad
was in the
military my dad was in the army but i wanted to be a marine and my dad was in
law enforcement
so i was in the marine corps uh you know there was i was on embassy duty i
ended up going to embassy
duty which is like one of the best most challenging duties in the marine corps
if you go to the right
countries and uh i was in belgrade it was actually when i was in caracas when i
was in caracas there
was a and that's venezuela craques venezuela there was a um economics officer
who took a liking to me
and he knew i wanted to go into law enforcement he said to me he said in the 90s
the economy in vegas
is going to explode i got on a plane and within like a couple weeks flew and
took the test and then i
ended up in the academy in 92. wow yeah dude i bet the streets were hot in 92
were they crazy it was the
wild wild west vegas was the wild wild west if you you know everyone says that
their department is the
best i'm going to say that las vegas policing especially in the 90s i call it
the golden era
era of policing was just phenomenal i mean you really got to understand the
psyche of the human
being because so many people come to vegas to do whatever crazy thing they want
to do and and you got
to interact with people on that level and it teaches you a lot about people is
it is that a more fun
place to be in law enforcement do you feel like like i know that's a strange
word probably to use
with policing but is that a more entertaining place it is um it is because you
deal with everything they
deal with in la everything they deal with in new york and then vegas is just
you know they say new
york is a city that never sleeps it kind of i'm a new yorker it kind of does vegas
never sleeps vegas
can't sleep because it's coked up yes for sure or meth yeah coke or meth did
meth it was meth a
little bit popping it is because you know the area commands that you the area
command that you work
would kind of define what drug you would deal with primarily got it and so
there was a time where i was
working in the northeast and they used to call them it was called frank area
now they used to used to be
david area they call them frankites or davidites because they'd be up just tweaking
out doing stuff on
trailers and everything and um you know i there was a transition for me in my
life because i was a
straight-edge guy and i looked down on drugs and i didn't have a lot of uh i
guess empathy for people
who were using drugs and now i'm i've completely learned the opposite you know
oh yeah i bet you
i'm because you're firsthand right in front of those people all the time i got
to see like i would go
to a single wide trailer at 3 a.m ladies completely tweaked out of her mind and
her kids are awake all
nasty you know crying the neighbors have called spaghetti sauce on the walls
and i'd be pissed at
the mother and what happened throughout my career is i ended up seeing that
little girl that i was
trying to protect becoming the parent of a kid in the same type of situation it's
just cyclical you
know and then for the police to be judgmental i found that to be incredibly um
disheartening for me
and in fact if there's anything i think back in my life it is if ever i treated
another human being
improperly or if i didn't spend time with my children when i could have spent
time with my
children you know it it makes me get emotional sometimes when i can think of
specific situations
they i'll tell you a story man there was one time where i took a little girl
from her mom
and this is in vegas this is in vegas oh yeah all my police stuff is in vegas
there was a little one
time that she was the mom was completely took out she was slamming speed and
she was just up and just
doing all kinds of stuff and the neighbors was at some point called yeah the
slamming speed is
injecting it yeah he's injecting it okay and and so i go there and i remember i
had to take the little
girl from her mom and this girl was crying in such a way i recorded this that
it was almost as if someone
was literally though i wasn't pulling her heart out of her body now mind you
that's a kid who
loves their mom no matter what yeah you love your parent in spite of right and
and i'll always
remember in my mind that i have to learn to look at other people not only the
way that i'd want to be
treated but the through the experiences that i've had that's how i look at
people now you know once you get
older you you you can start to get emotional about just the simplest of things
oh yeah hell yeah jesus
most of this podcast is like that yeah i i yeah it's funny the little things
that'll trigger things
that you didn't have or things you admire so much or even a word sometimes that
um a phrase somebody will
use and it'll just like well you up with emotion um well i do think it's
interesting for for
people in police fire departments those types of jobs where yes you i'm sure
you develop a lot of
empathy but then also you are put under an unrealistic amount of stress a lot
of officers
are i would assume it seems like to me from the discussions i've had that a lot
of people get put
under um stress that they're not really even as a human equipped to deal with
so then at that point
it's probably tough for you to engage your best feelings and your best empathy
at moments when
you're under stress and then you also have to look out for your own survival i'm
not um debating you
with it i'm just saying i'm sure it's quite a juxtaposition you know um i guess
if you see a lot
of death how does that change your perspective or do you think it does for
officers or even just you
personally one time i was on a call where a guy hung himself and i was second
to arrive and there was
another cop in there and the guy was there he had cut him down but left the ligature
around his neck because
they didn't want to make sure that it was actually a guy and the guy was just
dead and the cop was
there playing with the guys um because a lot of people in vegas have those
video poker little
handheld video poker things i mean because this was a repeat they don't do it
on their phone they had
and the cop was just sitting there he was like just talking to me like yeah and
the guy was dead there
and this is i'm talking about stuff from the beginning of my career more so um
because i think
that that really kind of formulated how my mind looked at death and you know it's
evolved some but
that's those things stand on my mind and i was like how's this cop sitting here
playing this video
game and i was like that's why he's playing the video game right that's why he's
playing the video
game because he's got to sit up here with this guy he's an escape yeah what do
you want to sit here
and look and keep taking the guy's pulse or yeah it would be hard it would be
crazy if he's sitting
there yeah i mean anything else besides trying to occupy his brain you know
that same time period in my
career it also taught me a lot about what we do with our loved ones at the last
moment there was a
recall on domestics you get a lot of recalls there was this lady okay and on
domestics you mean by
domestic violence yes domestic violence and there was a recall you said it's a
recall
a lot of times you end up having to go back to the same address multiple okay
so that's a recall so
we got to recall back out to so and so and uh i remember it was really really
pretty um kind of
i'm guessing that because i wasn't maybe i'm in her early 20s i'm gonna guess
this lady was about
30 something really really pretty light-skinned black lady and she had some
kids and and she got
she had recently been divorced and so she got the two kids she got it was a son
and a daughter daughter
was about 14 and the son was about maybe nine i'm just guessing these ages and
i remember these kids
would like be so mean to their mom because the divorce caused them to pick
sides because the mom
ended up with the custody of the kids and the dad was a pretty violent guy and
she would always call
if he was coming through and i remember going and the kids were just so mean to
their mom
after maybe a third recall there was a call to the residents it was i was just
about to get off on
graveyard of gunfire and i showed up and the mom was laying on the sidewalk
shot in the face by the dad
and the kids were screaming my mom what am i going to do without my mom i mean
just screaming you can
feel that go through your whole body and you but you have to remain
professional in my mind i'm saying
but you never said that to her when she was alive you why didn't you know why
didn't you i didn't say
that to them because these kids are going through trauma why didn't you say
that to them to her when she
was alive so you know when i when i talk to people about policing you know it's
nice to tell stories
but is there a lesson that i can learn from this if someone watches that's why
i really like you man
because people relate to you dude and like there's some kid or someone watching
this that's like maybe
going through something and if they can take that away that you know what i'm
gonna say i love you or
i'm gonna hold back yelling and being rude to you just because i'm having a bad
day then this you know
to me is a win yeah i think it's hard for children to learn that i think one of
the things that i think
i know i don't have any children i've been a child but i don't have any
children but i think one of the
things is nobody teaches you kind of how you know a lot of times to interact
you know how to express
your feelings like and i think a kid they you kind of feel like they just are
going to know those things
naturally you know how to talk to their i mean i think parents probably talk
about how to speak to
your mother how to speak to your father but i think sometimes there is this
missing element sometimes
of like how to feel what a feeling is you know like kids may be confused they
may think something's
anxiety for a lot and it's really just a feeling you know it's like i i think
some of that i think
there's a missing piece of education there and i'm not even blaming it on
parents or anything i think
it's just a part of our maybe our culture um that could be more expanded upon
and maybe even classes
in school i know it sounds crazy no it doesn't it sounds real yeah but if
somebody would have told
me in school how to recognize if one of my friends might be struggling right or
how to like you know
approach an issue if there's some you know some type of thing goes on or if
somebody's um you know
like how i'm feeling about i think that could have been super helpful i agree
100 and as we get older
i think that we learn how to do it better but there's so many young people
suffering and you
know i hate to use the word term bullying because it sounds kind of corny but
like i don't i don't
like bullying in any way shape or form there's someone going through something
so difficult we have no
idea how you know that saying that says um be kind for everyone you meet is
fighting a very hard battle
you know i don't go to vegas as much you know i go to vegas a couple of times
out of the year for
just different things uh because obviously i still have some roots there but um
even being a new
yorker i spent so many years there the last time i came to went to vegas or
maybe it was last time
my daughter picked me up right my oldest daughter picked me up she's amazing
all my kids are amazing
but my oldest daughter picked me up and she says uh we coming back from the
airport and i we drive by
this apartment community and i without even thinking an apartment community
yeah by apartment community and
without even thinking i was like oh because when you when you're a cop you're
like okay that happened
there that happened there that that's all you think about and i remember i said
i said i'm gonna tell
i told her the story that there was this pizza delivery guy his girlfriend went
to pick him up from
work and she wrote on him on his last delivery and these guys come out from the
bushes and rob and shoot and
kill him i was the first to arrive i get there and this girl grabs my arm and
she's saying wake him up
wake him up and do you know this is by in the bible there's a story where this
woman walks by and i'm
not saying that i'm jesus by any shape but with a woman touched jesus and and
he said he felt you know
he instantly turned and knew that he was touched there's power that goes
through people when they're going
through things and like i that's why i feel like being a cop for that long i
don't know that the
human psyche is meant to be able to deal with going through that it's like you
go to work you're like
okay give me a conflict okay i'm done with that one give me another company all
right i'm ready give
me another conflict i go to lunch then i go home and gotta deal with my own
conflict you know what i'm
saying and you have to go to lunch dude what kind of lunch goes with a homicide
or a burning you know like
yeah oh yeah i'll have nuggets after a burning like but then you still have to
eat right but it's like
yeah you see ronnie's having you know eight pack of nuggets and they're like
dude calm down you had
four drownings this morning and you're out here just nuggeting up yeah i can't
even imagine i would
be so it'd be crazy to see a pairing menu for crimes and then different you
know i think if there's a
couple b and e's or whatever you know yeah i'll have a appetizer you feel me b
and e you mean breaking
and entering yeah i'm trying to work back i got you i got you he had a
detective on one time and we
we talked a lot at nauseam about like um the the stress that a lot of officers
feel he told this
amazing story about um he got called to a scene and the mother is in the yard
saying i think my son is
thinking of committing they look in the doorway the guy um takes his own life
with a shotgun shoots himself in
the um head now he has to go back now he's standing there talking mother when
it happens she's saying
this now this happened so he has this thing with the mother he still has to go
inside and make sure
everything's okay like is that exactly what happened who knows if somebody's
still in there with the
weapon you just don't know he can't get the door open because the body's right
there he finally is
able to get get it open maneuver and part of the matter from the guy's head
falls down the back of his
shirt disgusting so now he still has to deal with the other he has to fill out
reports it's four hours
before he even gets to think about and the whole time he has like you know but
yeah i just you guys
are like the drain of society you guys have to be this catch-all
Thank you.

Why Being a Cop in Las Vegas is Unlike Any Other City

how did it start like how did it first start that you decided to become um join
the force in las
vegas i was a marine so when i was 17 i joined the marine corps and this was
way so this was
1987 that i went into the marine corps okay um paris island third battalion i
company super
hardcore and my dad was in law enforcement too and i cannot overstate the
importance of having
a strong male role model in your life my father i genuflect to that man he died
in 2017 and um
what i can say is that my dad i wanted to do everything like my dad so my dad
was in the
military my dad was in the army but i wanted to be a marine and my dad was in
law enforcement
so i was in the marine corps uh you know there was i was on embassy duty i
ended up going to embassy
duty which is like one of the best most challenging duties in the marine corps
if you go to the right
countries and uh i was in belgrade it was actually when i was in caracas when i
was in caracas there
was a and that's venezuela craques venezuela there was a um economics officer
who took a liking to me
and he knew i wanted to go into law enforcement he said to me he said in the 90s
the economy in vegas
is going to explode i got on a plane and within like a couple weeks flew and
took the test and then i
ended up in the academy in 92. wow yeah dude i bet the streets were hot in 92
were they crazy it was the
wild wild west vegas was the wild wild west if you you know everyone says that
their department is the
best i'm going to say that las vegas policing especially in the 90s i call it
the golden era
era of policing was just phenomenal i mean you really got to understand the
psyche of the human
being because so many people come to vegas to do whatever crazy thing they want
to do and and you got
to interact with people on that level and it teaches you a lot about people is
it is that a more fun
place to be in law enforcement do you feel like like i know that's a strange
word probably to use
with policing but is that a more entertaining place it is um it is because you
deal with everything they
deal with in la everything they deal with in new york and then vegas is just
you know they say new
york is a city that never sleeps it kind of i'm a new yorker it kind of does vegas
never sleeps vegas
can't sleep because it's coked up yes for sure or meth yeah coke or meth did
meth it was meth a
little bit popping it is because you know the area commands that you the area
command that you work
would kind of define what drug you would deal with primarily got it and so
there was a time where i was
working in the northeast and they used to call them it was called frank area
now they used to used to be
david area they call them frankites or davidites because they'd be up just tweaking
out doing stuff on
trailers and everything and um you know i there was a transition for me in my
life because i was a
straight-edge guy and i looked down on drugs and i didn't have a lot of uh i
guess empathy for people
who were using drugs and now i'm i've completely learned the opposite you know
oh yeah i bet you
i'm because you're firsthand right in front of those people all the time i got
to see like i would go
to a single wide trailer at 3 a.m ladies completely tweaked out of her mind and
her kids are awake all
nasty you know crying the neighbors have called spaghetti sauce on the walls
and i'd be pissed at
the mother and what happened throughout my career is i ended up seeing that
little girl that i was
trying to protect becoming the parent of a kid in the same type of situation it's
just cyclical you
know and then for the police to be judgmental i found that to be incredibly um
disheartening for me
and in fact if there's anything i think back in my life it is if ever i treated
another human being
improperly or if i didn't spend time with my children when i could have spent
time with my
children you know it it makes me get emotional sometimes when i can think of
specific situations
they i'll tell you a story man there was one time where i took a little girl
from her mom
and this is in vegas this is in vegas oh yeah all my police stuff is in vegas
there was a little one
time that she was the mom was completely took out she was slamming speed and
she was just up and just
doing all kinds of stuff and the neighbors was at some point called yeah the
slamming speed is
injecting it yeah he's injecting it okay and and so i go there and i remember i
had to take the little
girl from her mom and this girl was crying in such a way i recorded this that
it was almost as if someone
was literally though i wasn't pulling her heart out of her body now mind you
that's a kid who
loves their mom no matter what yeah you love your parent in spite of right and
and i'll always
remember in my mind that i have to learn to look at other people not only the
way that i'd want to be
treated but the through the experiences that i've had that's how i look at
people now you know once you get
older you you you can start to get emotional about just the simplest of things
oh yeah hell yeah jesus
most of this podcast is like that yeah i i yeah it's funny the little things
that'll trigger things
that you didn't have or things you admire so much or even a word sometimes that
um a phrase somebody will
use and it'll just like well you up with emotion um well i do think it's
interesting for for
people in police fire departments those types of jobs where yes you i'm sure
you develop a lot of
empathy but then also you are put under an unrealistic amount of stress a lot
of officers
are i would assume it seems like to me from the discussions i've had that a lot
of people get put
under um stress that they're not really even as a human equipped to deal with
so then at that point
it's probably tough for you to engage your best feelings and your best empathy
at moments when
you're under stress and then you also have to look out for your own survival i'm
not um debating you
with it i'm just saying i'm sure it's quite a juxtaposition you know um i guess
if you see a lot
of death how does that change your perspective or do you think it does for
officers or even just you
personally one time i was on a call where a guy hung himself and i was second
to arrive and there was
another cop in there and the guy was there he had cut him down but left the ligature
around his neck because
they didn't want to make sure that it was actually a guy and the guy was just
dead and the cop was
there playing with the guys um because a lot of people in vegas have those
video poker little
handheld video poker things i mean because this was a repeat they don't do it
on their phone they had
and the cop was just sitting there he was like just talking to me like yeah and
the guy was dead there
and this is i'm talking about stuff from the beginning of my career more so um
because i think
that that really kind of formulated how my mind looked at death and you know it's
evolved some but
that's those things stand on my mind and i was like how's this cop sitting here
playing this video
game and i was like that's why he's playing the video game right that's why he's
playing the video
game because he's got to sit up here with this guy he's an escape yeah what do
you want to sit here
and look and keep taking the guy's pulse or yeah it would be hard it would be
crazy if he's sitting
there yeah i mean anything else besides trying to occupy his brain you know
that same time period in my
career it also taught me a lot about what we do with our loved ones at the last
moment there was a
recall on domestics you get a lot of recalls there was this lady okay and on
domestics you mean by
domestic violence yes domestic violence and there was a recall you said it's a
recall
a lot of times you end up having to go back to the same address multiple okay
so that's a recall so
we got to recall back out to so and so and uh i remember it was really really
pretty um kind of
i'm guessing that because i wasn't maybe i'm in her early 20s i'm gonna guess
this lady was about
30 something really really pretty light-skinned black lady and she had some
kids and and she got
she had recently been divorced and so she got the two kids she got it was a son
and a daughter daughter
was about 14 and the son was about maybe nine i'm just guessing these ages and
i remember these kids
would like be so mean to their mom because the divorce caused them to pick
sides because the mom
ended up with the custody of the kids and the dad was a pretty violent guy and
she would always call
if he was coming through and i remember going and the kids were just so mean to
their mom
after maybe a third recall there was a call to the residents it was i was just
about to get off on
graveyard of gunfire and i showed up and the mom was laying on the sidewalk
shot in the face by the dad
and the kids were screaming my mom what am i going to do without my mom i mean
just screaming you can
feel that go through your whole body and you but you have to remain
professional in my mind i'm saying
but you never said that to her when she was alive you why didn't you know why
didn't you i didn't say
that to them because these kids are going through trauma why didn't you say
that to them to her when she
was alive so you know when i when i talk to people about policing you know it's
nice to tell stories
but is there a lesson that i can learn from this if someone watches that's why
i really like you man
because people relate to you dude and like there's some kid or someone watching
this that's like maybe
going through something and if they can take that away that you know what i'm
gonna say i love you or
i'm gonna hold back yelling and being rude to you just because i'm having a bad
day then this you know
to me is a win yeah i think it's hard for children to learn that i think one of
the things that i think
i know i don't have any children i've been a child but i don't have any
children but i think one of the
things is nobody teaches you kind of how you know a lot of times to interact
you know how to express
your feelings like and i think a kid they you kind of feel like they just are
going to know those things
naturally you know how to talk to their i mean i think parents probably talk
about how to speak to
your mother how to speak to your father but i think sometimes there is this
missing element sometimes
of like how to feel what a feeling is you know like kids may be confused they
may think something's
anxiety for a lot and it's really just a feeling you know it's like i i think
some of that i think
there's a missing piece of education there and i'm not even blaming it on
parents or anything i think
it's just a part of our maybe our culture um that could be more expanded upon
and maybe even classes
in school i know it sounds crazy no it doesn't it sounds real yeah but if
somebody would have told
me in school how to recognize if one of my friends might be struggling right or
how to like you know
approach an issue if there's some you know some type of thing goes on or if
somebody's um you know
like how i'm feeling about i think that could have been super helpful i agree
100 and as we get older
i think that we learn how to do it better but there's so many young people
suffering and you
know i hate to use the word term bullying because it sounds kind of corny but
like i don't i don't
like bullying in any way shape or form there's someone going through something
so difficult we have no
idea how you know that saying that says um be kind for everyone you meet is
fighting a very hard battle
you know i don't go to vegas as much you know i go to vegas a couple of times
out of the year for
just different things uh because obviously i still have some roots there but um
even being a new
yorker i spent so many years there the last time i came to went to vegas or
maybe it was last time
my daughter picked me up right my oldest daughter picked me up she's amazing
all my kids are amazing
but my oldest daughter picked me up and she say