The Justice Department’s misconduct investigation into the Phoenix Police Department is growing increasingly contentious after nearly 2½ years, with city officials saying they are unwilling to cede control to federal authorities.
Phoenix officials have decried Justice investigators as uncollaborative and mounted a campaign to counter the department’s findings before a federal report is released to the public.
The 2,600-officer police force has been ranked among the most violent in the nation, leading the United States with 23 fatal police shootings in 2018. Its officers also faced sanctions for using excessive force and false charges against protesters during social justice demonstrations in 2020.
City leaders acknowledge some misconduct by officers, but they argue it does not constitute a systemic pattern of unconstitutional policing. They point to recent changes to the police department, including a new use-of-force policy, additional officer training and a city oversight office to monitor internal police misconduct investigations.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland launched the wide-ranging “pattern or practice” probe in August 2021, as the Biden administration sought to bring greater accountability to law enforcement after the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville sparked a national outcry in 2020.
Since then, leaders in Minneapolis and Louisville have accepted reports of systemic misconduct and agreed to negotiate a plan for federal oversight expected to last years. They are the only two of the Justice Department’s 11 police misconduct investigations started under Garland that have been completed. Such probes typically take up to two years.
In Phoenix, the escalating standoff demonstrates the Justice Department’s ongoing challenges in compelling local law enforcement agencies to make sweeping changes more than three years after tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the country demanding action to rein in abusive policing against Black and Brown communities.
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In a letter sent to top Justice officials Thursday, Phoenix officials said federal investigators have denied requests from city leaders to review a draft of the report and warned that the “heavy hand of federal oversight … is not the appropriate remedy” in one of the nation’s largest police departments.
The city’s legal team, led by Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general, included a 50-page summary of steps the Phoenix police have taken to curb excessive force and bolster accountability.
Although Phoenix officials “welcome the additional insights that the DOJ findings report may bring, they are not willing to hand over PPD’s continuing reform” to federal authorities, according to the summary, which was obtained by The Washington Post.
If the two sides cannot reach a settlement, the Justice Department would be forced to sue the city to obtain a consent decree, which would place the Phoenix police under the oversight of a federal judge and an independent monitor. Such arrangements cost local jurisdictions up to several million dollars annually and sometimes stretch on longer than a decade, with mixed results.
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In their correspondence, Phoenix officials asked the Justice Department to instead issue a technical assistance letter — a document that would outline federal guidance and support but lacks enforcement power. They argue that consent decrees have hampered cities from making changes quickly by adding layers of administrative oversight.
Interim police chief Michael Sullivan, who took over in September 2022, said in an interview last week that “the city has been invested in reform well before I got here.”
Sullivan spent two years as a high-ranking official in the Baltimore Police Department, which has been under a consent decree since 2017.
“I was brought here to be a reform chief. That can happen in a lot of ways,” he said. “I don’t want to say there is one cookie-cutter approach that is necessarily the best.”
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Justice officials declined to comment on the specifics of the Phoenix investigation. In a statement, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said federal authorities use investigations and consent decrees “to foster greater cooperation between law enforcement officers and the communities that they serve, which in turn increases public safety.”
Legal experts said technical assistance letters have largely failed to bring major improvements to local policing because there is little recourse for the federal government to enforce the provisions. The Justice Department has not settled a misconduct investigation with that method since 2012, when it issued a letter to the Harvey, Ill., police department, which had 61 officers at that time.
“Through years of practice, technical assistance letters are almost always entirely ineffective,” said former Justice official Christy Lopez, who was involved in the federal lawsuit that forced the Ferguson, Mo., police department to agree to a consent decree in 2016. “When an investigation is closed out with a technical assistance letter, it can embolden police abuse and police violence.”
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Civil rights activists in Phoenix called the city’s criticism of the Justice Department a transparent attempt to influence public opinion and preemptively soften the blow of the federal investigation.
“They’re more interested in protecting the reputation of the police than in protecting community members,” said Jared Keenan, legal director of the ACLU in Arizona, which has sued the city and police over the alleged mistreatment of homeless people.
Share this articleShareActivists have accused police of conducting sweeps to clear out a homeless encampment known as “The Zone” and improperly disposing of people’s personal belongings, including Social Security cards, portable stoves, food stamps and tents.
Phoenix officials said they have added services for homeless people aimed at reducing their encounters with police, including creating an Office of Homeless Solutions in 2022.
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The Justice Department has investigated dozens of local and state police departments since Congress granted it the authority in 1994 after public outcry over the Los Angeles police beating of motorist Rodney King, a Black man, in 1991.
In announcing the Phoenix probe in 2021, Garland said investigators would examine the police department’s alleged use of excessive force, discrimination against minorities, retaliation against police protesters, and mistreatment of the homeless and mentally ill.
The Justice Department’s investigation in Phoenix has lasted longer than in other jurisdictions, beset by disagreements over federal requests for information that local officials viewed as violating privacy laws. Federal investigators have made eight visits, interviewing police leaders, city officials and community activists, touring police facilities, and reviewing data and policies.
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Local officials say they have provided investigators with 147,000 documents, 20 terabytes of data, 22,000 videos from body-worn police cameras related to the use of force, and an estimated 200 recordings of emergency 911 calls.
Phoenix, with a population of about 1.6 million, had the deadliest police force in the nation’s 10 most populous cities from 2013 through 2021, according to a study by Mapping Police Violence. The organization found that the Phoenix police had 131 deadly encounters, a rate of 75 people killed per million, far more than San Antonio, which ranked second with a rate of 42, and more than twice the rates in the other eight cities.
Phoenix officers have fatally shot at least 111 people since the beginning of 2015, according to The Washington Post’s database that tracks deadly shootings by police. That number outpaces the number of fatal shootings over that same period by police in Chicago and New York, both of which have much larger populations.
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In 2017, after Phoenix police used smoke grenades and batons to clear protesters outside one of President Donald Trump’s rallies in the city, police officers purchased a commemorative challenge coin depicting a protester being struck in the groin.
In October 2020, during the months of nationwide social justice protests after Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, 15 protesters arrested by the Phoenix police were charged as a street gang by the Maricopa County attorney’s office. A judge found the charges unwarranted, and three assistant police chiefs were reassigned and a prosecutor was fired in the fallout.
In their letter to the Justice Department, Phoenix officials acknowledged that those incidents were unacceptable. But they argued that the cases were isolated and do not amount to a pattern of misconduct, and they said the department has made significant improvements.
Among the changes is a new use-of-force policy, being phased in this year, that will require officers to intervene in cases of excessive force and provide medical attention to injured civilians. Officers will undergo 20 hours of training on the policy by summer, officials said.
“We started doing a lot of things the last couple of years before anyone told us to do it. I think that deserves consideration,” said Phoenix City Council member Kevin Robinson, who served 36 years on the city’s police force.
Carlos Garcia, a former council member who has been critical of the police, said federal oversight cannot fix all of the department’s problems. But he said such intervention is necessary to ensure the police department follows through on promised changes.
“I absolutely don’t think we’ve done reforms that have changed things,” Garcia said.
The political leadership structure in Phoenix could further complicate the Justice Department’s path to a settlement.
In most jurisdictions, federal officials have negotiated with a mayor. In Phoenix, government operations are overseen by a city manager; Mayor Kate Gallego (D) is a member of the nine-person City Council, whose majority approval is required for any legal settlement.
In a letter to the city in November, Clarke said federal authorities would not acquiesce to the city leaders’ request for a draft of the investigation’s findings unless they reach an agreement in principle to negotiate a consent decree and accept an independent monitor, as is the Justice Department’s standard practice.
Council members have rejected that arrangement and pointed to the experience of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. The county was sued by the Justice Department in 2012 after local officials rejected a federal investigation that found the sheriff’s office, under the leadership of Joseph Arpaio, had racially profiled Latinos.
In 2015, Justice officials reached a settlement, and the sheriff’s office has been under federal oversight ever since.
In October, Sheriff Paul Penzone, Arpaio’s successor, announced his resignation effective Friday, about a year before his term was set to expire. He expressed frustration over federal intervention, saying such oversight “is more concerned about internal punishment than it is about external public safety.”
“I’m not sure what the upside is for the city of Phoenix, our families, our children, our taxpayers, to be in a consent decree,” Phoenix City Council member Ann O’Brien said. “That would handcuff our police chief and the department from implementing programs and operations in the best interests of the citizens.”
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez in Phoenix contributed to this report.
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