Nye County manager reinstates McGill’s access to police databases

A top Nye County official reinstated Sheriff Joe McGill’s access to law enforcement databases this week.

The move came after state investigators found that sheriff’s office employees failed to document over 100 searches for people’s personal information.

Nye County Manager Brett Waggoner said he ordered that McGill’s access to the databases be reinstated Tuesday afternoon. The sheriff had been accused of misusing the databases, and had been blocked from them since April.

McGill has said Nye County IT Director Brad Adams initially restricted his access to the databases. Earlier this week, McGill suggested he continued to be blocked from the databases for political reasons.

“The decision to reinstate was made by myself as county manager to instruct Brad Adams to reinstate his access,” Waggoner said Wednesday in an emailed statement.

Adams did not respond to requests for comment.

Waggoner said he made the decision because of the state’s corrective action plan, which requires the sheriff’s office to retrain employees and participate in quarterly meetings with the Department of Public Safety.

The state also is ordering the sheriff’s office to update policies addressing database misuse, “up to and including top agency officials and the agency administrator,” according to the plan.

Officials were auditing over 100 searches McGill made in the database, plus searches from 15 deputies, McGill has said.

State officials since have found that office employees failed to properly document 102 searches in the databases.

McGill has maintained that all searches he made were for law enforcement purposes.

“We have been 100 percent cooperative with the state, and we continue to maintain that cooperation,” McGill said in a video statement posted Wednesday to the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.

The searches were made on state and federal Criminal Justice Information System databases, which contain information such as adult and juvenile criminal histories, DMV records, property information and warrants.

Unauthorized searching or dissemination of information from these databases can result in sanctions by state and federal officials and can be considered a misdemeanor criminal offense in Nevada.

State officials have said McGill, who is up for reelection in November, was not under criminal investigation for his searches.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240.