The next few weeks will be vital for the city of Phoenix, their residents, and the politicians tasked with making a decision on whether they will hand over law and order to the federal government in a historically failed means called a ‘police consent decree.’
Since the launch of this website, our goal has been to inform you, with facts, what consent decrees have done to communities across the nation. There are no shortages of tragic examples and we have even pointed to peer reviewed research to show you this in an evidentiary manner. Collectively, that research and so much more can be found here. In fact, every article we have produced can be found here so we encourage you to investigate this issue completely.
Factual information is powerful and it certainly seems that many of the politicians have been paying attention and have publicly stated that they would not sign off on a DOJ Consent Decree until they can examine the evidence collected.
That is a first for a city the size of Phoenix and those politicians should be commended for their intended diligence.
And the DOJ has made their play
Yesterday a claim was filed against Phoenix PD for racial profiling and the plaintiff’s attorney and advocacy groups held a press conference in front of the police department.
Make no mistake. This appears to be a coordinated effort to put pressure on city officials and is a typical strategy in past DOJ Investigations.
Sources have advised us that just yesterday the DOJ sent a letter to the Phoenix City Council asking them to sign an “agreement in principle” to sign a consent decree in the future. The DOJ wants the City to commit to a consent decree even before the DOJ’s findings are released. This is exactly what the DOJ did in Minneapolis and Louisville and would be incredibly reckless for the Council to do.
It is not a coincidence that on the same day a public display, led by known anti-police activist, Reverend Maupin, took place, that the City Council was asked to sign away control of their police department.
Here are some of the comments in that press conference:
“This is the umpteenth time that they have racially profiled someone…There is an endless litany of people who have been maimed, mistreated, and murdered by the Phoenix Police Department, and it really is time for it to come to an end.”
“We’re going to bring out somebody every day until the consent decree is signed or until the chief has been fired and they get somebody else in there who’s willing to cooperate.”
“We’re hopeful that we will be able to clean this up with or without the feds’ help, but if the city of Phoenix won’t do it, the feds will.”
Emotion Over Facts
There is a stark difference in that press conference, designed to intimidate Phoenix Politicians and what we have been trying to do for months.
Maupin is well known to us here in Phoenix. According to AZ Central, Maupin is a convicted felon and there are a series of other interesting items about him here.
But there is no need to focus on the man mouthing the words. We want you to focus on the words.
Did you notice what was actually said?
Was any evidence given by Maupin?
The only tangible story told was about a black man that was detained for 45 minutes as police were looking for a suspect in the area. It was determined that the man was not the suspect and he was released but calling it racial profiling is odd?
The police were looking for a black man that committed a crime and seizing the wrong person is rare but it does occur. Law enforcement has to make split second decisions with very limited information and according to Maupin, the man was eventually released presumably after law enforcement obtained that additional information.
We don’t go over that story to defend Phoenix officers because it’s obvious there is much more to the story and unlike Maupin, we need additional information to make a determination but our point is this.
Is that all they have?
Is this the reason to turn our agency over to the federal government and bring crime and mayhem to our community as it has done in other cities? The DOJ likely has other stories but will they be factual or similar to this emotional appeal?
Maupin said very little after this specific story. He said police are murdering and maiming people without any specific details. He said that he was “going to bring out somebody every day until the consent decree is signed.”
Maupin probably will.
But when he does, listen carefully. Is he presenting facts or emotional rhetoric designed to intimidate?
We believe our politicians are smarter than this and they can discern between factual evidence and emotional, vague rhetoric designed to inflame.
Ultimately, all of this is not necessary.
We are not running away from a DOJ Investigation into the Phoenix Police Department.
We simply want to see the evidence.
If the DOJ had the evidence, there would be no need to hide it and there certainly wouldn’t be a need for what we saw this week.
