The new year in Phoenix has brought a turn of events in the multiple year, 6 million dollar saga, that has been the DOJ investigating the Phoenix Police Department. The DOJ wants the city council to sign an agreement for a consent decree but when the council asked for the actual results of the investigation, the DOJ told them no…twice.
The DOJ operates in complete secrecy and that secrecy extends to their investigation practices, methodology, and even the full investigative report. In fact, if Phoenix agrees to a consent decree, they will likely never see the full report.
Whether Phoenix signs off on a two decade and two hundred million dollar scam or not, the DOJ will release their summary findings and it will not be a surprise. Each one reads very similar and we will detail what the Phoenix report will say in a future article but we want to set the foundation with past summary reports and just how the DOJ manipulates information to bully their way into destroying communities.
This week, several “pro” consent decree stories ran and there is no doubt that it is designed to sway the politicians to sign Phoenix over to a federal government takeover of their law enforcement agency. None of the stories discussed actual facts like crime rates or the loss of employees but one media report caught our attention.
In what appeared to be a propaganda video from a prisoner of war, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina told ABC15 that his agency “deserved this consent decree.”
Albuquerque Chaos
Since it appears that the media is using Albuquerque as the “model” for consent decree success, let’s take a quick look at a city that you will never take your family to.
The year following the 2014 Albuquerque Consent Decree, the murder rate went up 43%. In the second year, it went up another 43% and in the third year, it went up 15%.
That’s a 101% increase in murders in 36 months following a consent decree and overall crime followed, including an 85% jump in robbery.
But that was the first three years, surely it gets better?
You can add another 50% from the last three years with 2022 shattering the all time homicide record in the city.
Since agreeing to a consent decree in Albuquerque, overall violent crime has risen 80% while the budget ballooned 38% and staffing was reduced by 11%.
So when we say you are hearing propaganda in an effort to push politicians in Phoenix to agree to this disaster, we mean it. What else would you call a media story touting the success in Albuquerque when it became 150% more deadly, 80% more violent, and lost staffing as the budget exploded?
What About Police Shootings?
The DOJ came to Albuquerque because they were concerned about how many “police shootings” They cited 20 fatalities from 2009-2012. This is what the summary report said and this concern is exactly what the summary report will say for Phoenix:
Based on our investigation, we have reasonable cause to believe that APD engages in a pattern or practice of use of excessive force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and Section 14141. We find this pattern or practice in the following areas: (1) Albuquerque police officers too often use deadly force in an unconstitutional manner in their use of firearms. To illustrate, of the 20 officer-involved shootings resulting in fatalities from 2009 to 2012, we concluded that a majority of these shootings were unconstitutional.
So how successful was this consent decree?
In 2022, Albuquerque broke the single year record for police shootings. The three year period back to 2018, had 30 fatality shootings, a 33% increase from the concern that brought the DOJ to town. The 2023 data has not yet been released but a source has informed us that 2023 broke the 2022 record.
This is the success that every agency experiences with a police consent decree. Police use of force follows the decreases and spikes in overall criminal violence and when violence increases, so do police shootings.
Back To That Summary Report
Now that you understand how you are being lied to on how successful consent decrees are, let’s take a look at the summary report by the DOJ. The Phoenix report will be very similar and we know that because we have read them all. Here’s the language again:
Based on our investigation, we have reasonable cause to believe that APD engages in a pattern or practice of use of excessive force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and Section 14141. We find this pattern or practice in the following areas: (1) Albuquerque police officers too often use deadly force in an unconstitutional manner in their use of firearms. To illustrate, of the 20 officer-involved shootings resulting in fatalities from 2009 to 2012, we concluded that a majority of these shootings were unconstitutional.
It sounds outrageous until you really read it and understand what is being done here.
If the majority of shootings were unconstitutional, then why didn’t the Albuquerque District Attorney prosecute the officers involved in those shootings? Where was the federal prosecutor?
There wasn’t any deadly force with constitutional issues. If there were, where are the federal charges? Where are the indictments? Where are the details?
What is the reasonable cause based on?
The United States Supreme Court has never given the Department of Justice the authority to determine what reasonableness is (Graham v. Connor, 1989) so how are they making that claim?
The DOJ is not the arbitrator for what “unconstitutional” is?
Do you know who is? THE COURTS.
The Scam
That is the scam with all of this. As long as the DOJ can bully a signature from dumb politicians, they never have to prove anything.
They simply say it and move on.
Then, after a decade, and violent crime has skyrocketed, police shootings increase and budgets have exploded, the DOJ has the guts to tout the success of consent decrees.
The only logical direction the Phoenix DOJ Investigation ends is in a federal court room. Albuquerque has been destroyed because their politicians simply agreed to the destruction without any factual evidence.
If the DOJ has a case, this should be where they want to go as well. The evidence doesn’t lie and it’s time to show it.
