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Four Nye County Sheriff vehicles in a parking lot on North Blagg Road in Pahrump. A white Sheriff pickup sits nose out in the foreground, two black marked SUVs are parked nose in to the building beside it, and a second white Sheriff pickup stands further out in the lot. No emergency lights are lit and nobody is in any of them.
4 min read

The burritos are worth the stop. The four idling engines are not. Turn the key, NCSO.

Two white Sheriff pickups and two black marked SUVs on North Blagg Road, all four running with nobody inside while the deputies ate. No lightbars, no dogs, no prisoners. It burns our gas, it is not very neighborly, and Nevada has a statute that says do not do it.

Credit first. Bash N Jas's Tacos on N Blagg Road makes the best birria in Pahrump, and their food truck turns up at Bell Vista and Leslie. Four deputies buying breakfast at a family business is a good thing. Go eat there.

The problem was in the parking lot.

Some background first. Nye County is cutting. On 19 May the commissioners took up cost cutting measures "to minimize deficit fund balance in the General fund," and on 27 May they adopted the package 4 to 1, adding a rule that overtime authorizations now need a department head's signature.

Eleven weeks later, on the morning of 14 August, this reporter saw four Sheriff's Office vehicles outside, two white pickups and two black marked SUVs, all running and all empty. Three were nose in to the curb, one truck was nose out, and all four were tucked tight together. No lightbars, no emergency lights, no passengers, no prisoners, no dogs.

That is our gas

The Department of Energy puts police idling at 0.5 to 1.0 gallons an hour, so four vehicles burn two to four gallons for every hour they sit. One breakfast is pocket change. But it is the county's fuel card, and engines rack up hours while the odometers sit still. A county counting overtime signatures can count idle hours.

It is also not very neighborly, four engines running outside a small restaurant while the owners are inside serving you breakfast.

And there is a law

NRS 484B.530 reads in full:

The driver of any motor vehicle shall not permit the motor vehicle to stand unattended without first stopping the engine, locking the ignition and removing the key.

No police exception there. It says "any motor vehicle."

Police do get one. NRS 484B.700, subsection 3:

The driver of an authorized emergency vehicle... may park or stand without regard to the provisions of chapters 484A to 484E, inclusive, of NRS, if the driver makes use of a warning lamp.

NRS 484B.530 sits inside that range, so the exemption reaches it. It is real, and it is narrow. It applies if the driver makes use of a warning lamp, which is not a hazard flasher: NRS 484A.480 means the flashing red or blue emergency lights.

There were none on in that parking lot.

The statute's other privileges, running a red light or speeding, need the vehicle to be answering an emergency call. We will allow that a birria burrito is, in the everyday sense, an emergency. The Legislature was simply never asked.

Being fair

There are real reasons to idle. Radios, laptops and cameras run off the vehicle, and a locked car in a Pahrump August cooks. We would print the Sheriff's Office making that case. We understand the pull, too. We have had the birria.

But we have not put this to them, and we would rather say so than let you assume otherwise. This is one reporter in a parking lot with a phone camera and a copy of the statute.

So the invitation is open. Is there a written idling policy, how does the office read NRS 484B.530 with no warning lamp lit, and does the fleet track idle hours? Send it through our contact form and we will print it in full, unedited.

Otherwise, gentlemen: turn the key.

Sources

Continue reading

A Nye County Board of County Commissioners staff report dated May 6, 2026, requested by Sheriff McGill, listing the Sheriff Office capital fund request. The lettered list includes $19,000 Nighthawk, $80,000 for the purchase of 4 drones, and $43,000 Stationary LPRs.
11 min

NightHawk puts your car, your phone and your social media on one timeline. In Nevada, nobody needs a warrant to see where you drove.

The software takes license plate reads, phone extractions, call records, social media and GPS trails and fuses them into a single map and timeline that agencies can share with each other. It came before the Nye County commissioners twice and stalled twice, at two different prices. The third time it passed as one line inside a capital plan, and the vote was unanimous.

Read the full story
PahrumpSurveillance