A 17-year veteran of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Detective Mark McNett has been a homicide detective for the last 5 years. McNett loves being a homicide detective. “I hate to lose,” he admits. “I’m a very competitive person, and I consider an unsolved case a loss. We get paid to win.”

McNett is a gourmet cook and a scuba diver. However, his real love is playing the jazz trombone, which he wants to pursue a career in when he retires. “I hope to be able to play three nights a week and that’ll be it!”

McNett is also a devoted family man. He is married and has one grown son and has a dog, a Dalmatian.

Known for his meticulous, reflective demeanor, Detective Mike Wallace likes the mental challenges that come with homicide work. “It’s an intellectual job,” he says. “It’s like a chess match, and when you win the people you take off the street are people who truly should not be amongst society.

“You often hear it said that we speak for the dead, which is true, but what we really do is provide a voice for the victim’s family and speak for them,” Wallace says.

Wallace was in the midst of attending college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas when he joined the police department. Not thinking he’d be hired while still in school, Wallace took the police exam in order to practice for a potential criminal justice career after graduation. But when a job offer came, Wallace suspended his studies to start work as a patrolman.

That was 11 years ago and Wallace has been a cop ever since, spending the last year and a half on homicide. Only now is he resuming his college work, attending night and online classes with the goal of one day going to law school. But Wallace doesn’t want to practice as an attorney; he wants to teach criminal law and procedure.

Between his job, his studies, and being a single dad, Wallace doesn’t have much time for hobbies. He’s all but given up playing bass guitar but still loves listening to alternative rock bands like The Smiths, The Cure, Blink 182, and The Killers.