Justice Department Finds Civil Rights Violations by Phoenix Police Department and City of Phoenix
Following a comprehensive investigation, the Justice Department announced today that the Phoenix Police Department (PhxPD) and the City of Phoenix (City) engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law.
Specifically, the Department finds that:
- PhxPD uses excessive force, including unjustified deadly force and other types of force.
- PhxPD and the City unlawfully detain, cite, and arrest people experiencing homelessness and unlawfully dispose of their belongings. This is the first time the Department has found a pattern or practice of conduct that focuses on the rights of people experiencing homelessness.
- PhxPD discriminates against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people when enforcing the law.
- PhxPD violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech and expression.
- PhxPD and the City discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities when dispatching calls for assistance and responding to people in crisis.
The Department also described serious concerns about PhxPD’s treatment of children. Finally, the Department identified deficiencies in policy, training, supervision, and accountability that contribute to PhxPD and the City’s unlawful conduct.
“The Justice Department has concluded there is reasonable cause to believe that the City of Phoenix and the Phoenix Police Department engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives its residents and visitors, including Black, Hispanic, and Native American people, of their rights under the Constitution and federal law,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The release of today’s findings report is an important step toward accountability and transparency, and we are committed to working with the City of Phoenix and Phoenix Police Department on meaningful reform that protects the civil rights and safety of Phoenix residents and strengthens police-community trust.”
“Phoenix residents deserve nothing less than fair, non-discriminatory, and constitutional policing,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Our comprehensive investigation revealed unlawful and unconstitutional practices in the Phoenix Police Department’s enforcement activities that impact some of Phoenix’s most vulnerable residents, including Black, Hispanic, and Native American people, homeless people, and those experiencing behavioral health crises. The police also used excessive force, delayed necessary medical aid, and infringed on the civil rights of those engaged in First Amendment-protected conduct, including demonstrations and protests. Our findings provide a blueprint and a roadmap that can help transform the police department, restore community trust and strengthen public safety efforts in one of America’s largest cities. We are committed to working collaboratively with the police department, city officials, and the public to institute reform and remedy the violations we identified in our investigation.”
The Department opened this investigation on Aug. 5, 2021. Career attorneys and staff in the Civil Rights Division’s Special Litigation Section conducted the investigation. The team conducted numerous onsite tours; interviewed PhxPD officers, supervisors, and command staff; spoke with City officials and employees; accompanied behavioral crisis responders, specialty squads that frequently interacted with unhoused people, and officers on ride-alongs; reviewed thousands of documents; and reviewed hundreds of hours of body-worn camera footage.
As it does in every case, the division met regularly throughout the investigation with City and PhxPD officials to provide feedback on the observations of the Department and its policing experts and on reforms to address the issues observed. Multiple subject-matter experts advised the division on the investigation. Collectively, these experts have decades of experience in assessing police tactics and training, internal investigations, 911 call-taking and dispatch, and statistical analyses. Department attorneys and staff also met with community members, advocates, service providers, and other stakeholders in the Phoenix area.
Consistent with its standard practice in investigations of other cities, the Department provided a detailed briefing on the findings to the City and PhxPD on Tuesday, and proposed that the parties agree in principle to negotiate expeditiously and in good faith to reach a comprehensive court-enforceable settlement with independent monitoring.
The Department conducted this investigation pursuant to 34 U.S.C. Section 12601, which prohibits law enforcement officers from engaging in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of rights protected by the Constitution or federal law, Safe Streets Act of 1968, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The Department will conduct outreach to members of the Phoenix community to explain the findings and for input on remedies to address the Department’s findings. Individuals may also submit recommendations by email at phoenix.community@usdoj.gov or by phone at 866-432-0335.
This is one of 11 investigations into law enforcement agencies opened by the Justice Department under Section 12601 since April 2021. Last year, the Department issued Section 12601 findings reports regarding two of those investigations: the Louisville, Kentucky, Metro Police Department and Minneapolis Police Department. The eight other investigations cover the Lexington, Mississippi, Police Department; Louisiana State Police; Memphis, Tennessee, Police Department; Mount Vernon, New York, Police Department; New York City Police Department’s Special Victims Division; Oklahoma City Police Department; Worcester, Massachusetts, Police Department; and Trenton, New Jersey, Police Department.
Additional information about the Civil Rights Division is available on its website at www.justice.gov/crt.
Information specific to the Civil Rights Division’s Police Reform Work can be found at www.justice.gov/crt/file/922421/download.
The Justice Department will hold a virtual community meeting at 6 p.m. PT / 9 p.m. ET. Members of the public are encouraged to attend to learn more about the findings. Please join the meeting at www.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_wc5Fgkk9TaueUHSmV0J_Eg
View the findings report here.
View the findings report in Spanish here.
DOJ: Phoenix PD Officers Routinely Violated Rights, Deployed Unjustified Deadly Force
from the if-you're-getting-investigated,
Every report delivered by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division can be described as “scathing” or “damning.” There are simply no exceptions to this rule. It’s not like the Civil Rights unit picks a US law enforcement agency out of the hat and then initiates an investigation. (Maybe it should? I mean, I’m sure there’s plenty of police misconduct flying under the radar at any given moment.)
No, if the DOJ opens an investigation into a local law enforcement agency it’s because that law enforcement agency has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons for months or years. And such is the case with the Phoenix, Arizona police department.
- It also noted there was more than a hint of a deep-rooted misconduct problem — one that definitely wasn’t made any better by the PD’s mass purge of internal investigation records back in 2019.
The DOJ’s report [PDF] goes further than these initial hints that something’s rotten in Phoenix. It says officers routinely deploy excessive and unreasonable force. It arrived at this conclusion despite the PD’s lack of up-to-date use of force records.
Officers use unreasonable force to rapidly dominate encounters, often within the first few moments of an encounter. Officers fail to employ basic strategies to avoid force, like verbal de-escalation or using time or distance to slow things down. PhxPD’s training has encouraged officers to use force when it is not lawful to do so, and to use serious force to respond to hypothetical, not actual, danger. P
More specifically, officers fire weapons at people who pose no immediate threat. Then they continue to shoot at people long after they’ve been rendered unable to pose a threat. Officers escalate situations seemingly for the sole purpose of deploying deadly force. And when they’re finally out of bullets, they delay rendering aid to those they’ve wounded.
- Two cases detailed in the report involve officers shooting suicidal people who only posed a threat to themselves.
- In another incident, officers shot a woman 10 times and did not render any medical aid until more than nine minutes after they had shot her.
- In another case, they waited fifteen minutes to provide any aid to a person they had shot.
If officers aren’t shooting people, they’re Tasing them, beating them, choking them, or firing non-lethal munitions at them from close range. And just because it’s less-than-lethal doesn’t mean its a reasonable use of force.
In one incident, a group of officers shot 40mm foam rounds, a Taser, and over 20 Pepperballs at an unarmed man within 20 seconds of announcing their presence. The officers planned to take the man into custody for two open felony warrants related to probation violations. They surrounded a storage facility where he stood outside a unit repairing a bicycle. One officer yelled, “Hands!” seconds before firing Pepperballs and yelling, “Get on the ground!” While the officer continued to pelt him with Pepperballs, another officer struck the man with a 40mm impact round. The man turned away, screaming. Then, a third officer advanced and fired a Taser, incapacitating the man. As he fell—nearly hitting his head on the wall of the storage unit—an officer fired another 40mm round.
Officers routinely engaged in violence against people who were never given enough time to comply with shouted, sometimes-contradictory orders from officers. In some cases, the order given to the person was immediately followed by an act of violence. Just as routinely, officers’ reports portrayed their use of force as “justified” due to the person’s supposed “refusal” to comply with their orders.
Then there’s stuff like this, which covers multiple areas of the DOJ’s damning report, all in a single anecdote:
In one example, two officers used excessive force after stopping a bicyclist who ran a red light. The man allowed the officers to search him. As one officer checked the man’s pockets, the man appeared to move something from one hand to the other. The officers grabbed him, told him to put his hands behind his back, and then pulled him to the ground. The man asked, “What am I under arrest for?” An officer said, “For not obeying a police officer.” The officers appeared to recognize they lacked a lawful basis for arresting the man, and one said, “We need to develop PC [probable cause].” Both officers then muted their body-worn cameras. PhxPD arrested him for resisting arrest and possession of marijuana. County and city prosecutors declined to pursue the charges.
There’s a lot more along these lines if you’ve got the stomach for it.
- Officers routinely violating protocol and internal policy to hogtie people in positions that increased their chance of death.
- Officers siccing dogs on cooperative arrestees and letting the dogs chew on them while they placed them in handcuffs.
- Officers continuing to punch, kick, or otherwise physically harm people who were already handcuffed.
Part of this is due to training. Too much of it, surprisingly. As the DOJ notes, Phoenix PD training materials actually encourage this sort of behavior. The chaser is everything else: a systemic failure to discipline officers and officers’ refusal to report force deployment.
There’s also a long section about the PD’s tactics when dealing with the city’s homeless population — efforts that directly contradicted a precedential court ruling by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court. And, like far too many law enforcement agencies in the United States, minorities are the most frequent targets for police harassment and violence.
PhxPD uses race or national origin as a factor when enforcing traffic laws. Officers cite a disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic drivers when compared to violations recorded by neutral traffic cameras in thesame locations. PhxPD also enforces traffic laws more severely against Black and Hispanic driver than it does against white drivers engaged in the same behaviors.
PhxPD enforces alcohol use offenses and low-level drug offenses more severely against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people than against white people engaged in the same behaviors.
PhxPD enforces quality-of-life laws, like loitering and trespassing, more severely against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people than it does against white people engaged in the same behaviors.
Another 20 pages or so is given over to discussing the Phoenix PD’s retaliatory actions against anti-police violence protesters and others engaged in protected First Amendment activities the officers didn’t care for.
Sadly, this is par for the course for DOJ investigations.
Every law enforcement agency investigated by the DOJ has pretty much the same list of problems.
This clearly shows there’s something wrong with cop culture in general.
It’s not a byproduct of the environment these officers work in.
No matter where the agency is located, the same sort of violence, abuse, and frequent rights violations are uncovered.
This will start the long, expensive, and pretty much ineffectual process of reforming the Phoenix Police Department.
A federal monitor with be put in place and the city will agree to a consent decree.
It will make things better in the short term, but very slowly and incrementally.
And the most likely outcome will be a lot of nothing.
Once the decree is lifted, most agencies tend to go back to doing what they’ve always done: pretend they’re a law unto themselves until the next round of investigations begin.
Filed Under: arizona, civil rights, department of justice, doj, investigation, phoenix, phoenix pd, phoenix police department, police accountability, police misconduct
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