We presume you're referring to the item posted in Today's News late last week, confirming that former Scoundrel's Pub, located at the address you cite, had agreed to surrender its gaming license to state regulators following a series of shootings at the property, which had already been closed down back in December and was described at last week's hearing by Deputy Attorney General Ed Magaw as residing in "an unfixable location."
As you can see from green-box annotation we added to the Crime Map below, Scoundrel's was located in a strip mall still occupied by 84 Lumber, among other businesses, which sits a couple of blocks southwest of the Palms, and it's certainly had its share of unwanted drama in recent years. For example, back in June 2012 two people were shot there in the early hours of the morning in a suspected gang-related incident. It came a few months after the bar, in conjunction with a confederation of local motorcycle clubs, filed a lawsuit against Las Vegas Metro, claiming bikers' and their chosen bars' constitutional rights were being violated and the venues harassed by the cops, purely on the grounds of their clientele -- a premise which both subsequent and previous events tends to call into question.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal's coverage of last week's multi-disciplinary hearing at which board members of the Gaming Commission deliberated on several cases, including Scoundrels, Scoundrels, which had held a restricted gaming license since April 2005, had been under the scrutiny of Metro since all the way back to 2009, and between then and 2015 had seen no less than six gang-related shootings occur on property.
"In that seven-year period, Metro has received 144 calls for service, 97 of which have been classified as violent. Three shooting incidents in 2015 were detailed in the complaint, which noted that owner David John Zderic had attempted to sell the property but the sale fell through," the paper reported. An attorney representing the bar argued that it was the locale, and not the bar specifically, that was violent, but a complaint filed by the Deputy Attorney General argued that the owner had taken no adequate steps to improve safety and in fact had knowingly allowed illegal activity to go unchecked, while also being in violation of various county codes. While certainly not unprecedented, the Chairman of the Commission noted that the revocation of a property's gaming license was a rare occurrence, particularly on the grounds of endangering staff and patrons due to the level of violent crime.
However, regarding the query as to whether those venturing to the neighborhood in which Las Vegas Advisor's office is also located are taking their life in their hands, we would respond that you can run the risk of being shot at any time in any part of Las Vegas, not least with this year's well-publicized and alarming escalation in crime levels, particularly those of a violent nature, which by late April had already seen a 100 percent increase on the previous year and most recently had seen five separate homicides in the course of one weekend. According to the last figures we were able to find, which covered the year to-date, up to August 22, there had already been 111 homicides this year across the Vegas Valley.
The area between Flamingo Road and Tropicana Avenue, just west of the Strip, is a mish-mash of lower-end apartment complexes, cheap hotel accommodation, adult stores, strip clubs, and labyrinthine industrial complexes that are a natural magnet to clandestine and illegal activity -- Tropicana up to Decatur Boulevard (where the Orleans Casino is located) and further west, is a notorious and blatant corridor of street-walking prostitutes and drug dealers, and is not an area we'd advise navigating on foot, especially after dark, as you can see from the incidence of assaults (although we'd hazard a guess that most of these were of a hooker/pimp or dealer/customer variety, as opposed to being attacks on tourists). Judging by the incidence of vehicle thefts and break-ins, you'd be advised to exercise extra vigilance even when visiting by vehicle and choosing where to park, making sure that any remotely valuable looking items (and we include loose change in this category) are well hidden.
According to SpotCrime.com, a site that purports to list all incidents attended by Las Vegas Metro, in the space of the past month in a five-mile radius of our office, which is located just behind the Rio, there were 32 instances of assault and battery, including 12 involving a gun or other deadly weapon, plus two shootings, a stabbing, and an armed robbery. However, it may well come as a surprise to learn that the vast majority of these crimes took place not in the "ghetto," but rather on property at casinos, including the Mirage, Bellagio, The Cosmopolitan, Wynn, Luxor, and the Orleans, several of which experienced multiple incidents in that time-frame, which ties in with the findings of the previous QoD we linked to earlier in this answer that found most of the trouble these days is taking place in and around Strip-resort nightclubs.
Another (relatively) reassuring fact is that the vast majority of crimes in this whole area are of a minor and non-violent nature -- vandalism, burglary, theft, various disturbances of the peace, and a couple of cases of indecent exposure (which is filed as an assault, but is technically not a violent crime, although can be disturbing and traumatic nonetheless and a definite assault on the eyeballs!)
In conclusion, does Las Vegas have a rising crime problem? Yes. (Shortly before we penned this answer yesterday afternoon, a man was shot, non-fatally, on the Strip right outside the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood during some altercation.) But the same trend is true of many urban areas across the nation and no one is yet quite sure why. Metro is upping its presence on the Strip manpower-wise, having already installed a bunch of additional hi-tech surveillance cameras (although granted, these tend to be of use only after the fact and not in a preventative capacity).
The area pinpointed in this question is not remotely the most violent in town, with far more shootings, stabbings, and other assaults taking place in the east, northeast, and northwest corners of the valley. As a resident, the current writer would have to say that lunatics on the road causing traffic accidents is far more of a concern here in everyday life, and if you exercise common sense and a little more caution than you might at home, bearing in mind that criminals are aware that there's an above-average incidence of people carrying cash on their person in and around casinos, you should be fine. Do your homework before venturing to an area you're not familiar with, or when negotiating a sprawling hotel parking lot late at night, and you're probably no more likely, and probably less so, to be the victim of a violent crime than you are at home.
