PHOENIX – As the U.S. Department of Justice continues its investigation into the Phoenix Police Department, members of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office providing some insight to the Phoenix City Council, explaining their own dealings with a federal investigation.
Phoenix Police has been under investigation by the DOJ since August 2021, over patterns of practice regarding five areas of focus including use of force, responses to first amendment protests and people experiencing homelessness.
Maricopa County has spent 250 million dollars on their consent decree in the last 10 years and the current sheriff is stepping down saying he is unable to run the agency effectively with the DOJ involvement.
Fox 10 reported on the meeting, saying that Maricopa County reported that it can take several years to be in full compliance.
Phoenix City Councilors must decide what they will do when the DOJ Investigation is complete and last month, they requested a copy of the investigative report before deciding.
The DOJ refused.
During the meeting, Phoenix City Councilmember Jim Waring expressed his opposition to a consent decree.
“Why the hell would anybody ever accept a consent a decree?” Waring said. “You might as well fight it out, no matter how long it takes. It’d probably be cheaper, and the end result, if we’re gonna have officers leaving, and citizens are gonna have to pay higher taxes to pay all these legal bills to be less safe. Why would anybody even entertain the notion of a consent decree?”
The refusal of Phoenix to sign up for a consent decree before actually reading the results of the investigation is the first time a major city has done that.
While we would call their actions brave, it’s actually plain common sense. How could any political group say yes to, what has been an abject failure over the last 30 years, while at the same time knowing that it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and higher crime.
What would be brave is to do what must be done next.
The DOJ Dilemma
If Phoenix rejects the DOJ demands, the DOJ has two options: leave or file a federal lawsuit.
The DOJ has a problem. They can’t leave because that would signal to every potential “victim” city in the future that you could actually say no (which they can because of this thing called federalism). They also don’t want to go to federal court. That would require actually proving their case along with the specific details of their investigation.
The DOJ has never done this successfully and they are fully aware that their investigation lacks the actual evidence to prove a “pattern and practice” issue with Phoenix PD.
If there was actual evidence, then the DOJ would have no problem showing the city councilors the evidence. If the evidence is solid, it always holds up to scrutiny but while the DOJ will demand transparency by others, they are extremely secretive.
It’s always a clue when others don’t want light to shine on their work.
The DOJ Play
The DOJ has only one option and that is extreme pressure on the city councilors. That began a month ago when a well known local activist conducted a wild press conference in front of the police department demanding a consent decree.
After the council doubled down this week on wanting to actually see evidence, the DOJ will employ their next move with their long time friends, the mainstream media.
Phoenix is about to be inundated with local and national stories about the importance of consent decrees. None of the articles that are about to come out will actually tell you what you need to know.
They won’t mention the spike in violent crime, the fleeing of police officers, and the extreme cost involved with this so called “reform.” The content you have read on this website won’t be mentioned and here is how you can tell you are being played.
None of these DOJ “puff” pieces will mention specific data points like crime, employee retention, and up front dollars spent (25-50 million). The media will interview a few citizens, they will stoke emotion and of course talk about race and that pesky ambiguous word “public trust.”
We trust that our audience knows exactly what is going on and we pray that our city councilors are brave because in the coming weeks, they will have to be.
