The Phoenix Police Department routinely violates the constitutional rights of its most vulnerable residents, including minors, the homeless, minorities and those experiencing mental health crises. Report It was released Thursday by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Investigators documented Phoenix police falsifying incident reports, using unnecessary force and dangerous restraints, illegally detaining homeless people and destroying their property, delaying medical attention for injured suspects and assaulting people who criticized or filmed them. event.
The report concluded that “systemic problems” and “pervasive failures” in the department’s policies, training, and accountability mechanisms resulted in widespread use of unconstitutional tactics, excessive use of force, and unlawful retaliation against residents in violation of First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment Rights.
“Phoenix residents deserve fair, non-discriminatory and constitutional policing,” Christine Clark, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, said in a news release announcing the findings.
“Police enforce certain laws, including on drugs and low-level crimes, more harshly against blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans than against whites who engage in the same behavior,” the report added.
The Justice Department launched the investigation, known as a “pattern or practice” investigation, in 2021 after years of controversial police shootings and allegations of civil rights violations. Those calls for reforms have escalated, with police and prosecutors following the department’s violent and farcical response to the 2020 George Floyd protests. Attempts to charge more than a dozen protesters Assisting the fictional criminal gang “ACAB” (the acronym stands for “All Cops Are Bastards” and is a popular slogan among anti-police activists).
Justice Department investigators found that during the protests, police officers indiscriminately fired pepper balls, stun bags and other non-lethal munitions at protesters engaging in First Amendment-protected activities without legal basis. During the George Floyd protests, a police officer fired more than 1,000 pepper balls in one night. Police also issued false statements in support of arresting protesters.
In a training session reviewed by Justice Department investigators, an instructor used a photo of a protester being shot in the groin as a punchline. The coach also boasted about how search warrants at another protester’s home and workplace left the man “simultaneously unemployed and homeless.”
Even though the Phoenix Police Department was banned from using neck restraints after 2020, officers continued to use dangerous and unnecessary compression restraints on suspects. The report recounts an example in which officials
Stopped a group of trespassers in a parking lot, ordered them to sit on the curb, and asked everyone to show identification to check for outstanding search warrants. An officer approached a man who stood up to get his wallet and said to another officer, “He won’t listen, let’s hook him.” The man told officers he tried to follow instructions, but two officers grabbed him. grabbed him, broke his wrists, and threw him to the pavement. “You broke the law, I didn’t do anything!” the man protested. An officer can be heard on the body-worn camera saying: “There’s nothing illegal, man!” as he wrapped his hands Around the man’s neck. The officer wrote in the report that he did not “apply pressure to the man’s throat or squeeze his throat in any way.”
Phoenix police will not change their aggressive and insulting behavior when dealing with minors. The report points to numerous examples of police using excessive force and unprofessional language against teenagers.
The report also criticizes Phoenix police for harassing homeless people through unlawful detentions, identity checks, searches and arrests, despite a binding ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals barring the city from sheltering homeless people without available shelter space. to criminalize homelessness.
“Without suspicion of a crime, police woke people sleeping in public places, asked them to identify themselves, detained them to ask questions unrelated to their welfare, and told them to leave,” the Justice Department wrote. “This encounter are coercive, unnecessary, and often result in a violation of the Constitution.”
The report also found that Phoenix police retaliated against citizens who criticized or filmed them during daily interactions, even though filming police officers is a right strictly protected by the First Amendment. In one instance, a man leaned out of a car window and filmed police officers. “Officers surrounded the vehicle, pointed a gun at the man’s head from less than a foot away, and then booked him with a felony riot,” the report said.
In another incident, an officer repeatedly Tasered a handcuffed suspect for calling him a “bitch.”
This is not just a problem of rogue officers. According to the Justice Department report, Phoenix police received training that the best way to de-escalate a situation was to use immediate and overwhelming force.
“In some of the training we observed, trainers encouraged officers to use force without warning or within seconds of arriving on the scene, regardless of whether the person posed an obvious risk to officers or others,” the report said. “In a PhxPD video used to train 40mm operators, a PhxPD officer fires a 40mm impact round at a man standing directly in front of a toddler in a crib. When someone during the training expressed concern that if the officer did not take action, the toddler could be hit.
In fact, the police had a motive for shooting: Investigators found that the police department “took weapons from officers who did not regularly use them.”
City leaders and police officials did not welcome the Justice Department’s findings or recommendations. this arizona republic report“,” One city leader said federal oversight would make the department ‘neutral,’ while a police leader said the report’s findings were filled with ‘innuendos’ and ‘half-truths.’
The Phoenix report is the third major Justice Department civil rights investigation into the Metropolitan Police Department to be released under President Joe Biden. Last year, it released a report on widespread police violations of civil rights minneapolis and Louisville.
