Las Vegas Police Initiative Expands Counterterrorism Efforts Globally

The new initiative, called the "Meridian Project," will station Las Vegas police officers in cities around the world to create a counterterrorism intelligence network.

By Kyle Chouinard

Source Las Vegas Sun

Feb. 24, 2026

3 min read

What to know

Las Vegas police announced the “Meridian Project,” a new initiative to expand counterterrorism operations globally with stationed personnel, a 24/7 real-time analysis desk and an additional intelligence squad.
Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said the department will build a global intelligence network to assess threats impacting Las Vegas immediately, citing recent high-profile incidents.
McMahill also unveiled “Project K.V.N.,” an artificial intelligence system designed to integrate departmental and corrections data.

Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill and Las Vegas police's 'Meridian Project.' — Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill introduces a new agency global counterterrorism initiative, the "Meridian Project," during his state of the department address Friday.

Metro Police is expanding its counterterrorism response beyond Clark County's borders through the "Meridian Project," a new initiative Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill detailed during Friday's state of the department address.

The project will station Metro personnel in cities across the world to establish a global intelligence network, create an additional counterterrorism squad and create a 24/7 real-time analysis desk. It launches this year.

"When something happens anywhere in the world that can impact Las Vegas, we will not wait days or weeks for a report," McMahill said at Fontainebleau. "The team will assess it immediately and provide real-time analysis to the decision makers — not only myself, but our elected officials here in our city."

McMahill said the counterterrorism team is overwhelmed, rattling off a list of recent high-profile cases in Las Vegas: the January 2025 Tesla Cybertruck explosion in front of Trump Tower, the recently discovered biolab in east Las Vegas and a foiled "ISIS-inspired" plot.

"Bottom line is: There is no choice anymore. We have to do this," the sheriff said. "Together, these efforts are going to strengthen our ability to understand, prevent and identify these threats before they reach our community. It's about foresight, it's about speed, and it's about prevention."

McMahill said there's been a "degradation" of what the department previously relied on for homeland security from the federal government with its "focus on more immigration-type issues."

He also said widely utilized programs through the New York Police Department are "not nearly as robust" as they once were.

"We all feel at Metro that we continue to be a target, and we must do something different about it," McMahill said. "It's about building a 24/7 global intelligence and counterterrorism capability to protect Las Vegas like never before."

McMahill also announced the development of an artificial intelligence "brain" for the department through "Project K.V.N.," which the sheriff framed as a continuation of his commitment to advance the department's technological capabilities.

"For years, we have a suspect that maybe we sent to prison seven years ago that had a particular M.O.," he said. "And all of a sudden, we have a robbery series that's similar to that one, but unless we still have those same detectives ... we forget that that individual was our suspect."

The AI "brain" would be able to consolidate the department's data with the prison system's to detect that someone with the same M.O. was only released months earlier, McMahill said.

"It's going to put timelines together. It's going to shorten Internal Affairs investigations," the sheriff said. "It's going to be able to take from our systems the things that take officers hours to do, to put together, and radically change where we're at."

Outside of McMahill's major announcements, he noted that crime largely fell between 2024 and 2025, with homicides alone down 21.7%. That downward trend has continued into 2026, he added.

There was also a 58.8% decrease in officer-involved shootings from 2024 to 2025, bringing the total to seven. However, McMahill said the department has faced a "difficult challenge" during the start of the year to keep that number as low.

"Go find any major city in the United States of America ... There are none of them below double digits," McMahill said. "Nobody in the country is even remotely close to what your police department here is in the valley."

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