As I said in an earlier post, I lived in Vegas for a period, and have been back many times over the years both for vacation and for training. I never found Vegas to be that bad, in addition, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) publishes information on crime and the dangers of a city to alert Air Force members and prevent them from being harmed. These reports were made available to all new arrivals, and personnel there on temporary duty, none I read reflected a degree of danger as described above. Las Vegas is by far safer than Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlantic City or Miami, as well as several other places I have lived. While living there I did not notice any more murders, rapes, etc than in other cities. Robbery was, perhaps, above average, and there were a large number of suicides, but I attribute this to the fact that a lot of people come there to do themselves in, or choose to do so after losing a large sum of money, this is also true in Atlantic City. Many of the crimes there stem from bad drug deals, or prostitution adventures that did not work out as wanted.
Over the years I have found that you can find trouble any place you go, if you go looking for it. If Vegas were truly as bad as some attempt to lead you to believe, they why would so many of the largest corporations, fraternities, police groups, military units (to name a few) choose to have their conventions there? Vegas is just like any other city for the most part, you can get yourself in trouble if you are looking for trouble, but if you remain straight then there is little to fear.