Justice Department investigation: Phoenix police violate civil rights

The Department of Justice today released the results of a three-year investigation into civil rights violations by the Phoenix Police Department. In a press conference this morning, Kristen Clarke, the Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, listed a litany of disturbing findings, including that Phoenix officers routinely use excessive force, unlawfully detain homeless people, discriminate against Black, Hispanic and Indigenous people, violate the rights of protesters and discriminate against people with disabilities.

Clarke acknowledged that the findings were “serious,” even compared to other investigations her office has conducted. She noted that this is the first time the Justice Department has found that a department systematically discriminated against homeless people.

“Based on a comprehensive review, we have concluded that there is reasonable cause to believe that the police and the city are engaging in a pattern or course of conduct that violates the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution,” Clarke said. “We have also found violations of the Safe Streets Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

In a prepared 15-minute speech, Clarke reviewed the key findings of the investigation, including:

• Officers in Phoenix “often escalate situations without appropriate cause” “within the first few minutes or even seconds of an encounter.”
• Officers improperly use tasers, projectiles, leg restraints, police dogs, deadly force, and neck restraints.
• In addition, officers regularly delay medical care and use excessive force against injured people.
• The Phoenix Police Department trains its officers that “escalation is de-escalation, meaning that you might escalate a situation with force, including deadly force, in order to defuse it.”
• The department “not only instructs officers to be proactive in their use of projectiles, but has also implemented a ‘use it or lose it’ policy, which involves taking away officers’ weapons if they have not fired enough of them.”
• Thirty-seven percent of all Phoenix Police arrests and citations for misdemeanors involved homeless people.
• Police in Phoenix routinely stop, detain, and arrest homeless people without reasonable suspicion that they have committed a crime, and then confiscate and destroy their property.
• Black drivers in Phoenix are 144 percent more likely to be arrested or cited for minor traffic violations than white drivers.
• Black people are arrested for marijuana possession almost seven times more often than white people.
• In Phoenix, Native Americans are 44 times more likely than whites to be charged or arrested for possession or consumption of alcoholic beverages.
• The department takes retaliatory action against people who criticize the police.
• Phoenix sends armed police officers to respond to mental health incidents, even when other options are available and police involvement is not required.
• The police treat children like adults and regularly harm them.

Justice Department officials will likely ask the city of Phoenix to sign a legal settlement agreement known as a settlement agreement. The agreement requires the agencies to submit to independent oversight by the federal government to ensure the reforms are implemented.

Phoenix police spokespeople did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Shortly after the press conference ended, Mayor Kate Gallego issued a statement to the media.

“Just now, at the same time as the public, the City of Phoenix received the federal government’s investigation report,” Gallego said. “The City Council will meet this month – in closed session on June 25 – to seek legal advice, better understand the report and discuss next steps. I will carefully and thoroughly review the investigation findings before making any further comments.”

Gallego and Phoenix City Council members previously said they would not agree to a settlement without seeing the results of the Justice Department’s investigation.

However, Clarke said in her remarks that the city had not been able to solve its problems alone.

“The Police Department claims it was unaware of these significant racial disparities,” Clarke said. “But long-standing and frequently expressed community concerns about discriminatory policing, as well as blatant bias within the police force, should have prompted the department to analyze its own data. Instead, the Police Department ignored the data, ignored these unequivocal warnings, and failed to expose its own discriminatory policing patterns.”

The Justice Department’s investigation began on August 5, 2021, after years of high-profile incidents of misconduct and the police department’s highest number of shootings in the nation. In a press release that day, Justice Department officials said they intend to investigate “all types of use of force by PhxPD officers, including deadly force.” In addition, investigators said they would determine whether the department retaliated against people exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and protest, discriminated against people based on race, ethnicity or disability, or unlawfully destroyed the property of homeless people.

Over the past decade, Phoenix police have been involved in more fatal shootings than any other police department in the country, except for the Los Angeles Police Department. In 2018, Phoenix police shot 44 people – more people than any other police department in the country. By comparison, New York police officers shot 23 times in the same year – the NYPD had nearly 40,000 officers. Phoenix had just 3,000.

Ten years of data on police use of force obtained by The Arizona Republic show that Phoenix officers are more likely to use force against people of color than white people. In 2019, officers were five times more likely to use force against Black and Native American people. Phoenix officers have also frequently used deadly force against people with disabilities or mental illness, including a case in 2017 when Muhammad Muhaymin tried to use a bathroom with his service dog. Police restrained Muhaymin and knelt on him while he repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe.” Muhaymin, who suffered from claustrophobia and schizophrenia, died in a pool of his own vomit. None of the officers involved faced disciplinary action.

In 2019, at least five Phoenix police officers were fired for various misconduct incidents — several of which drew national attention to the police department. One of the officers was fired after cellphone footage showed him pointing a gun at a 22-year-old Black man and saying he was going to “slap a f***ing cap on his f***ing head!” Another was fired after a nonprofit organization published a barrage of offensive Facebook posts from 72 members of the Phoenix Police Department. In the posts, officers and sergeants mocked Muslims for using goats as sex slaves, shooting former President Barack Obama in the face, and killing protesters.

That same year, a Phoenix police officer shot 19-year-old Jacob Harris in the back, killing him as the teenager fled from police. The officer faced no consequences. Instead, three of Harris’ friends who were with him at the time – Johnny Reed, Sariah Busani and Jeremiah Triplettt – were charged with murder under Arizona’s murder statute. Reed, who was 14 at the time, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. All three remain incarcerated to this day. Jacob Harris’ father, Roland Harris, had previously met with Justice Department officials to discuss his son’s death.

During today’s press conference, Clarke referred to Harris’ death.

“Phoenix police officers shot a man and fired multiple rounds at him after he fell to the ground. They then sent a police dog to drag him back to them,” Clarke said. “The pain they inflicted on him was extraordinary, but for nine minutes the officers did not render medical aid. Tragically, the man died.”

In 2021, Phoenix police officers and prosecutors from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office falsely claimed that Black Lives Matter protesters were members of a fictitious gang in order to bring serious criminal charges against the protesters. It wasn’t the first time Phoenix police officers abused their authority over protesters: Police officers also created a trophy coin to celebrate when officers shot a protester in the groin in 2017.

Homeless people have reported for years that Phoenix police officers frequently throw away their belongings when searching encampments or citing people for camping violations. Even after the Justice Department’s investigation, Phoenix police officers reportedly continued to improperly dispose of homeless people’s belongings, including identification cards and Social Security cards.

Phoenix city officials have repeatedly pushed back against the Justice Department’s investigation even before the results were released. In January, a Phoenix city attorney sent Justice Department officials a letter asking them to conclude the investigation with a nonbinding “technical assistance letter” rather than a settlement. Such letters give agencies guidance on reforms but are not enforced by outside observers.

The Phoenix Police Department states on its website that it is a “self-correcting agency” that has made many reforms in recent years. Likewise, the city said in January that the Justice Department could trust Phoenix to change the police department on its own. Since January, police officers in Phoenix have shot and killed eight people.

In her prepared remarks for today, the Justice Department’s Clarke said the department and the city have not done nearly enough to fix their systemic problems.

“The city recently released a reform report outlining what the city has already done and what it plans to do in the future to achieve constitutional policing. However, many reforms have not yet been implemented. Other reforms exist on paper but are not in practice. Overall, these efforts are simply not enough to cover the full extent of what we know today.”

This is a breaking news story and may be updated.