Detective Sergeant Steve Riback aka the “Kosher Cop” fought the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for the right to wear a beard and yarmulke on duty (Photos: Tonya Harvey Family archives)

D etective Sergeant Steve Riback of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department calls himself the “Kosher Cop” and it’s not just due to his dietary restrictions or to the years-long court battle he waged against the department to accommodate his First Amendment religious rights to wear a beard and yarmulke on duty. In “Sin City” — the cash and casino capital of the world — being a high-profile Orthodox Jewish cop means giving a moral compass to this city of high-stakes gambling and all the vices that go with it.

“Well some people say there are more people praying to G-d in this town than in Jerusalem” Riback says. And that was before the terrifying spray of gunfire three weeks ago that left 58 concert-goers dead and hundreds more injured relegating the victims’ families and the citizens of this town to find some meaning and consolation in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

The overtly Orthodox detective sergeant says he wasn’t in a position to have deep religious conversations with other officers after the killings but there is a certain comfort in knowing there is a high-ranking officer with a strong spiritual core at a time when so many feel lost emotionally and spiritually.

While Riback and the officers in his squad spent the night of the shooting in a hospital identifying and interviewing victims (“In my almost 20 years of police work I have seen the absolute worst of the worst including death destruction chaos and unimaginable scenarios but never at this magnitude”) his own religious mentor Chaplain Rabbi Mendy Harlig was at Metro police headquarters to give emotional and spiritual support to the first-responders — the officers who initially rushed to the scene under a hail of bullets and drew the shooter’s attention away from the civilians — and to the families of the victims who had gathered there.

It was a closing of circuits: Detective Sergeant Riback — the hardworking straight-arrow police officer whose religious renaissance personal struggles and public service have made him an unintended hero in the battle of Light against Darkness — leading his investigative team in the field and his own rabbi the one responsible for introducing him to Torah 14 years before giving spiritual solace inside the department in the capacity of police department chaplain.