Investigation of the

City of Phoenix and the

Phoenix Police Department

United States Department of Justice

Civil Rights Division

June 13, 2024

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................. 4
BACKGROUND .............................................................................................................. 7
A. The City of Phoenix and PhxPD ................................................................. 9
B. Recent Events ............................................................................................ 9
INVESTIGATION ........................................................................................................... 11
FINDINGS ..................................................................................................................... 13
A. PhxPD Uses Excessive Force in Violation of the Fourth Amendment ...... 13
1. PhxPD Uses Unreasonable Deadly Force ........................................ 14
2. PhxPD Uses Unreasonable Less-Lethal Force ................................. 24
3. PhxPD’s Training and Weak Oversight Contribute to the Pattern of
Excessive Force ............................................................................... 35
B. PhxPD and the City Violate the Rights of People Experiencing
Homelessness.......................................................................................... 41
1. Homelessness in Phoenix ................................................................. 41
2. Homelessness and PhxPD ............................................................... 43
3. PhxPD Detains, Cites, and Arrests Homeless People in Violation of
the Fourth Amendment ..................................................................... 44
4. The City and PhxPD Seize and Dispose of the Property of Homeless
People in Violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments ....... 49
5. Unconstitutional Detentions and Property Destruction Harm People
Who Are Homeless ........................................................................... 53
C. PhxPD Discriminates Against Black, Hispanic, and Native American
People When Enforcing the Law .............................................................. 55
1. PhxPD Engages in Racially Disparate Law Enforcement that Harms
Black, Hispanic, and Native American People .................................. 56
2. PhxPD Claims It Is Unaware of Any Evidence of Discriminatory
Policing Despite Longstanding Community Concern ........................ 66
D. PhxPD Unlawfully Restricts Protected Speech and Expression ............... 72
1. PhxPD Retaliates Against Protestors by Using Indiscriminate Force 73
2. PhxPD Retaliates Against Protestors with Unlawful Arrests Based on
Unsupported Allegations ................................................................... 75

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 3. PhxPD Retaliates for Speech Protected by the First Amendment
During Daily Encounters ................................................................... 81
4. PhxPD Retaliates Against People for Attempting to Record Police
Activity .............................................................................................. 83
5. Policies, Training, and Supervision Fail to Protect First Amendment
Rights................................................................................................ 84
E. The City and PhxPD Discriminate in Their Response to People with
Behavioral Health Disabilities ................................................................... 86
1. Phoenix’s Emergency Response System Defaults to Sending Police
to Behavioral Health Calls, Though Alternative Responses Are
Available ........................................................................................... 89
2. PhxPD Violates the ADA by Failing to Make Reasonable
Modifications when Officers Interact with People with Behavioral
Health Disabilities ............................................................................. 95
F. PhxPD Fails to Modify Practices During Encounters with Children ........ 101
CONTRIBUTING CAUSES TO VIOLATIONS............................................................. 105
A. PhxPD Lacks Effective Systems to Hold Officers Accountable for
Misconduct ............................................................................................. 105
1. PhxPD Fails to Accept Complaints of Officer Misconduct ............... 106
2. PhxPD Fails to Conduct Thorough and Fair Investigations ............. 108
3. PhxPD Fails to Adequately Discipline Officers Who Engage in
Misconduct ...................................................................................... 110
4. The City’s Implementation of the Office of Accountability and
Transparency Does Not Provide Effective Handling of Civilian
Complaints ...................................................................................... 112
B. Poor Policies and Deficient Training Contribute to PhxPD’s Systemic
Legal Violations ...................................................................................... 112
C. PhxPD Does Not Adequately Supervise Officers ................................... 114
D. PhxPD Tolerates Disrespect Toward the People It Serves .................... 116
RECOMMENDED REMEDIAL MEASURES ............................................................... 119
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................ 126

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
On August 5, 2021, the Department of Justice opened a pattern or practice investigation
of the Phoenix Police Department (PhxPD) and the City of Phoenix (“the City” or
“Phoenix”). Our investigation revealed systemic problems within PhxPD that deprive
people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law. We found pervasive failings
in PhxPD’s policies, training, supervision, and accountability systems that have
disguised and perpetuated these violations for years.

FINDINGS

The Department of Justice has reasonable cause to believe that the City of Phoenix
and the Phoenix Police Department engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that
deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law:

• PhxPD uses excessive force, including unjustified deadly force and other
types of force.
• PhxPD and the City unlawfully detain, cite, and arrest people
experiencing homelessness and unlawfully dispose of their belongings.
• PhxPD discriminates against Black, Hispanic, and Native American
people when enforcing the law.
• PhxPD violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech and
expression.
• PhxPD and the City discriminate against people with behavioral health
disabilities when dispatching calls for assistance and responding to
people in crisis.

Our investigation also raised serious concerns about PhxPD’s treatment of children and
the lasting impact aggressive police encounters have on their wellbeing.

In the years leading up to our investigation, PhxPD officers shot and killed people at one
of the highest rates in the country. Some city officials blamed a “more violent
population” for the number of shootings, rather than police conduct. But we found a
significant number of the shootings did not meet constitutional standards.

PhxPD relies on dangerous tactics that lead to force that is unnecessary and
unreasonable. PhxPD has taught officers a misguided notion of de-escalation. Rather
than teaching that de-escalation strategies are designed to eliminate or reduce the need

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to use force, PhxPD has misappropriated the concept and teaches officers that all
force—even deadly force—is de-escalation. According to one police official, this
distorted view of de-escalation is “ingrained in the vernacular of the department.”

The harm caused by unconstitutional policing is not spread evenly across the City’s
population. PhxPD targets people experiencing homelessness, retaliates against people
who criticize the police, and disproportionately uses force against people with
behavioral health disabilities. Officers enforce certain laws, including drug and low-level
offenses, more severely against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people than
against white people engaged in the same behaviors. And despite these disparate
outcomes and longstanding community complaints, the City still claims it is “unaware of
any credible evidence of discriminatory policing.” 1

Like many other cities, Phoenix has a significant unhoused population. The problem of
homelessness stems from multiple social, economic, and other factors, many of them
beyond the control of the City and PhxPD. The Department recognizes that the city
leaders have undertaken action to address homelessness, including soliciting grant
funding, establishing new hotel shelters, and designating new resource centers, among
other actions. This Report does not address the root causes of the homelessness
problem faced by the City and PhxPD, but instead focuses specifically on law
enforcement encounters and interactions with those experiencing homelessness. While
city officials recognize that being homeless is not a crime, officers nevertheless roused
people sleeping in public to send them to a small and dangerous part of Phoenix known
as the Zone. The practice of stopping, citing, and arresting unhoused people was so
widespread that between 2016 and 2022, 37% of all PhxPD arrests were of people
experiencing homelessness. Many of these stops, citations, and arrests were
unconstitutional. A federal court order has been insufficient to change these entrenched
policing practices. In 2022, a court ordered the City to stop enforcing certain laws
against unhoused people, seizing their property without notice, and destroying property
without an opportunity to collect it. But PhxPD did not train officers how to follow the law
nor supervise them to ensure they did. Property collection practices improved in highly
visible areas, but elsewhere in the City, seizing and destroying personal property still
fails to meet constitutional standards.

Police officials are aware that PhxPD’s practices in responding to protests served to
erode public trust. We found officers used indiscriminate force against protestors,
falsified allegations to arrest protest leaders, retaliated against people critical of the
police, and prevented people from lawfully recording police conduct. PhxPD’s recent

1 The Phoenix Police Department: The Road to Reform at 25, available at

https://www.phoenix.gov/policesite/Documents/DOJ/PPD_RoadtoReform_January2024.pdf
[https://perma.cc/S2CA-TXAD].
5
commitment to protecting free speech is important, but it would be premature to claim
any new efforts are working.

Stated commitments by city and police officials have also not prevented violations of the
Americans with Disabilities Act. The City has invested $15 million in programs to send
non-police responders to appropriate behavioral health calls. But the City and PhxPD
have not supported 911 call-takers and dispatchers with the training they need. Too
frequently, they dispatch police alone when it would be appropriate to send behavioral
health responders. Officers act on the assumption that people with disabilities are
dangerous and rarely modify their approach. Officers resort to using force rather than
de-escalation tactics that would likely help a person with behavioral health disabilities
follow directions. As a result, people with behavioral health disabilities suffer harm such
as force, trauma, and criminal consequences, rather than receiving emergency mental
health care.

Despite the unlawful practices we describe in this Report, we spoke with dozens of
officers and city officials committed to serving the people of Phoenix with thoughtfulness
and respect. Ensuring public safety in Phoenix presents unique challenges. Police
officers have been asked to take the lead in addressing issues better handled outside
the criminal justice system altogether. We acknowledge the considerable efforts they
exert to provide vital services.

Some at PhxPD have acknowledged the need for change, and current leaders have
committed to important reforms. PhxPD developed a new use-of-force policy and is
training all officers on de-escalation and the duty to intervene. A citywide Crime
Reduction Plan, unveiled in 2023, is a first step toward understanding the enforcement
decisions officers make and whether those actions have an impact on crime. These and
other efforts are commendable and can help PhxPD become the “self-assessing, self-
correcting” department that Interim Chief Michael Sullivan envisions. But in the past,
PhxPD has announced reforms that failed to curtail unconstitutional practices. And in a
2024 report detailing these and other changes, the department admitted that many of its
reforms are still in the planning stage. This leads us to believe that PhxPD will need to
be held accountable to implement the reforms we identify at the end of this Report. As
one former PhxPD official told us, “How does the public ever trust us if we can't even
police ourselves? Law enforcement will not work if the public doesn’t trust us.”

The Department of Justice expects to work constructively with the City and PhxPD to
ensure the reforms necessary to remedy this unlawful conduct are timely and fully
implemented.

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BACKGROUND
With over 1.6 million people, Phoenix is the largest city in Arizona and the fifth largest
city in the United States.2 Unlike denser cities, Phoenix itself is sprawling, at over 500
square miles. Located in “the Valley of the Sun,” Phoenix is the county seat of Maricopa
County and is the quickest growing large city in the nation, adding nearly 200,000
people since 2020.

The City’s rapid development has created challenges. State officials project an
insufficient water supply for Phoenix residents over the next century given the City’s
growing population and drought-like conditions. In 2023, the state began limiting new
construction amid severe water shortages. These shortages are compounded by
Phoenix’s extreme heat. Phoenix experiences more triple-digit temperature days than
any other large metropolitan area in the country. The City experienced its hottest
summer on record in 2023, with temperatures exceeding 110 degrees for a month
straight.

2023 map of racial density in Phoenix Phoenix also bears the

geographic and economic scars
of segregation. Real estate
practices throughout the
twentieth century reinforced the
relegation of non-white
communities to the south side of
the City. The federal
% Minority • Hispanic,
Black, and Native American
government’s Home Owners’
-
0% - 20%
20%-40%
Loan Corporation created the
-
-
40%-60%
60%-80% redlining maps of the 1930s,
deeming these neighborhoods
- 80%-100%
Parks

“hazardous.” Restrictive
covenants were written into
deeds across central and
northern Phoenix, prohibiting
non-white people from home
ownership in particular
neighborhoods.

2
City of Phoenix, Planning and Development, Phoenix Statistics and Census Data,
https://www.phoenix.gov/pdd/planning-zoning/phoenix-statistics-and-census-data
[https://perma.cc/CW5K-3BRL].

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Decades later, segregated residential patterns remain. The south side of the city was
historically the location of heavy industry in Phoenix and thus has a higher
concentration of pollution-producing industries, including transportation centers,
interstates, recycling and landfill centers, and factories.

Though Phoenix remains segregated, its

Phoenix Population: 1990-2022
demographic makeup has shifted
80% significantly over the last 30 years. In
1990, around 980,000 people lived in
Phoenix, with a racial and ethnic
70%

60% breakdown of about 72% white non-

Hispanic, 20% Hispanic (of any race), 5%
50% Black, less than 2% Asian, and less than
40%
2% Native American.3 Today, Phoenix’s
population of 1.6 million is approximately
30% 43% Hispanic (of any race), 41% white
non-Hispanic, 7% Black, 4% Asian, and
2% Native American.4
20%

10%
Phoenix’s segregation is compounded by
0% economic inequality. Nearly 15% of
1990 2000 2010 2020
Phoenix residents live below the poverty
line. Hispanic, Black, and Native
... Black Non-Hispanic ... Hispanic American residents are affected by
... Native American Non-Hispanic ... White Non-Hispanic
poverty at twice the rate of the white
population in Phoenix.

Phoenix has a significant population of people experiencing homelessness. As the

broader Phoenix metropolitan area expanded to embrace nearly a million new residents
between 2012 and 2022, its unsheltered homeless population tripled. Higher home
prices and too few affordable housing options have overwhelmed the City’s shelter
system. Since 2021, the City has dedicated $140 million to address homelessness
through shelters, affordable housing, and mental health and homeless services.

3
See U.S. Department of Commerce, 1990 Census of Population, General Population Characteristics,
Arizona, at Table 6, available at https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1990/cp-1/cp-1-
4.pdf [https://perma.cc/9UH9-ZU7G]. Though the Census Bureau uses the term “American Indian and
Alaska Native,” or “AIAN,” we use the term “Native American” in this Report.
4
Quick Facts: Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce,
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/phoenixcityarizona/PST045222#PST045222
[https://perma.cc/263S-CSQF].

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A. The City of Phoenix and PhxPD

Phoenix has a council-manager form of government. The City is governed by the

Phoenix City Council, comprised of the mayor and eight council members each serving
four-year terms. The mayor is elected in a citywide election. Former councilmember
Kate Gallego has served as mayor since 2019. Phoenix’s City Manager, Jeff Barton,
was appointed in 2021 by the City Council. Mr. Barton is responsible for the City’s day-
to-day management and operations, including its 14,500 employees and its budget of
over $3 billion. His office also oversees the police department.

PhxPD is the largest police force in Arizona with over 2,500 sworn officers, of whom
68% are white, 5% are Black, 21% are Hispanic or Latino, and 6% identify as other
races. Women comprise 13.5% of the workforce. PhxPD also employs 900 civilian
employees. In 2023, the City Council raised PhxPD’s annual budget to nearly $1 billion.

In July 2022, the City Manager named Michael Sullivan as the Interim Chief of Police.
PhxPD’s current leadership also includes two Executive Assistant Chiefs who oversee
the Operations Section and the Administration, Accountability, and Transparency
Section, as well as numerous Assistant Chiefs. Specialized units, such as the Training
Bureau and the Professional Standards Bureau, are centrally housed within PhxPD’s
Administration, Accountability, and Transparency Section. All patrol units are located
within the Operations Section, and PhxPD divides patrol operations among seven
precincts throughout the City. Each precinct is led by a commander whose primary
responsibility is directing enforcement activities and supervising officers.

B. Recent Events

Jeri Williams served as Chief of Police from 2016 to 2022. During her tenure, the former
Chief oversaw a tumultuous period in PhxPD’s history, including controversies, lawsuits,
and calls for external reviews. Following the protests of 2020, PhxPD and the Maricopa
County Attorney’s Office falsely claimed that 15 people arrested at a protest were
members of a criminal street gang and sought charges against them that carried multi-
year prison sentences. In response, former City Manager Ed Zuercher commissioned an
independent investigation to determine PhxPD’s role in and responsibility for violating
protestors’ civil rights. After the report was released in August 2021, former Chief
Williams received a one-day suspension for her role in the gang charges, and the
former City Manager ordered PhxPD to make changes to policies and procedures.

During his tenure, Interim Chief Sullivan has started implementing certain reforms,
including updates to PhxPD’s use-of-force policy and training. “I saw some uses of
force that made me think that we need to do something different,” he told Justice

9
Department investigators. The agency has also introduced a new Crime Reduction Plan
and hopes to use data to inform crime control strategies and understand how PhxPD
enforcement impacts different populations. Interim Chief Sullivan has emphasized his
wish for PhxPD to become a “self-assessing, self-correcting agency.”

10
INVESTIGATION
The Department of Justice initiated this investigation pursuant to its authority under the
law enforcement misconduct statute and the Americans with Disabilities Act to
determine whether there is reasonable cause to believe that PhxPD and the City are
engaging in a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct that deprives people of their rights
under the Constitution and federal law.5 When such reasonable cause exists, the
Department has the authority to bring a lawsuit seeking court-ordered changes.

Our investigative team consists of career employees from the Civil Rights Division of the
Department of Justice. Subject matter experts assisted us. Collectively, these experts
have decades of experience in assessing police tactics and training, internal
investigations, 911 call-taking and dispatch, and statistical analyses. These experts
reviewed documents and data and provided invaluable insights that informed the course
of this investigation and this Report.

We conducted our investigation to ensure a thorough, independent, and fair

assessment of policing in Phoenix. We interviewed city officials, including former City
Manager Ed Zuercher, current City Manager Jeff Barton, former Chief of Police Jeri
Williams, and Interim Chief of Police Michael Sullivan. We also interviewed PhxPD line
officers, supervisors, and commanders. We spent significant time meeting with officers,
participating in over 200 hours of ride-alongs, and observing trainings. We visited every
PhxPD patrol precinct and rode with officers during every patrol shift.

We heard from hundreds of people who have interacted with the police department,
including prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, civil rights lawyers, community
organizers, faith leaders, protestors, members of neighborhood associations, children,
and people experiencing homelessness.

We reviewed information from the City and from other sources. We reviewed relevant
police records, including policies, trainings, internal investigations, and hundreds of files
documenting enforcement activity, such as pedestrian and traffic stops, arrests, and
uses of force. We reviewed hundreds of hours of body-worn camera video. Assisted by
statistical experts, we analyzed PhxPD’s data on stops, citations, and arrests, as well as
data on PhxPD’s response to 911 calls for service.

5
See 34 U.S.C. § 12601; see also 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq. A pattern or practice exists where
violations are repeated rather than isolated. Int’l Bd. of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 336
n.16 (1977). A pattern or practice does not require the existence of an official policy or custom. United
States v. Colorado City, 935 F.3d 804, 810 (9th Cir. 2019).

11
We thank the city officials, PhxPD officials, and rank-and-file officers who have
cooperated with this investigation and provided us with insights into the operation of
PhxPD. We are also grateful to the many members of the Phoenix community who have
met with us during this investigation to share their experiences.

12
FINDINGS
We have reasonable cause to believe that PhxPD and the City engage in a pattern or
practice of conduct that violates the Constitution and federal law. First, PhxPD uses
excessive force, including unjustified deadly force and unreasonable less-lethal force.
Second, PhxPD and the City violate the rights of people experiencing homelessness by
unlawfully detaining, citing, and arresting them and by unlawfully disposing of their
belongings. Third, PhxPD discriminates against Black, Hispanic, and Native American
people when making stops and arrests. Fourth, PhxPD violates individuals’ First
Amendment Rights. Fifth, PhxPD and the City discriminate in their response to people
who have behavioral health disabilities. Finally, we have serious concerns about
PhxPD’s treatment of children, and the lasting impact aggressive police encounters
have on their mental and physical wellbeing.

A. PhxPD Uses Excessive Force in Violation of the Fourth

Amendment

We reviewed PhxPD’s force practices with the understanding that officers routinely
place themselves in harm’s way to keep the public safe. To resolve dangerous
situations, officers must sometimes use force, including deadly force. They have the
right and the obligation to protect themselves and others from immediate threat of bodily
injury or death. We evaluated PhxPD’s use of force with these principles in mind.

The use of excessive force by a law enforcement officer violates the Fourth
Amendment. The constitutionality of an officer’s use of force is assessed under an
objective reasonableness standard: “[T]he question is whether the officers’ actions are
‘objectively reasonable’ in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them, without
regard to their underlying intent or motivation.”6 To determine objective reasonableness,
one must pay “careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case,
including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate
threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or
attempting to evade arrest by flight.”7 This evaluation may also include how the suspect
responds to warnings, whether “less intrusive” means are available to resolve the
situation and whether the person has a behavioral health disability.8

6
Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 397 (1989).
7
Id. at 396.
8
Vos v. City of Newport Beach, 892 F.3d 1024, 1033–34 (9th Cir. 2018) (“Other relevant factors include
the availability of less intrusive force, whether proper warnings were given, and whether it should have
been apparent to the officers that the subject of the force used was mentally disturbed.”).
13
In conducting our investigation of PhxPD’s force practices, we reviewed every PhxPD
police shooting from January 2019 to December 2022. Not all investigative records
were made available for shootings that occurred after February 2022, but we reviewed
all available body-worn camera video for each shooting that year. PhxPD also did not
provide all the requisite information for police shootings in 2023 or 2024, but we did
review the department’s “critical incident briefings” and other publicly available
information.9 To evaluate PhxPD’s use of less-lethal force, we reviewed hundreds of
incidents in which officers reported using force. We also reviewed the use-of-force
policies in effect from 2016 to the present and observed dozens of hours of training. We
spoke to officers, supervisors, and commanders. We interviewed people whom officers
used force against and witnesses to those incidents. We interviewed family members of
people who were injured or killed by police officers.

We have reasonable cause to believe that PhxPD engages in a pattern or practice of

excessive force, including deadly force. Officers use unreasonable force to rapidly
dominate encounters, often within the first few moments of an encounter. Officers fail to
employ basic strategies to avoid force, like verbal de-escalation or using time or
distance to slow things down. PhxPD’s training has encouraged officers to use force
when it is not lawful to do so, and to use serious force to respond to hypothetical, not
actual, danger. PhxPD’s precipitous force tactics put officers and others at risk and
result in constitutional violations.

1. PhxPD Uses Unreasonable Deadly Force

PhxPD uses unconstitutional deadly force. We identified several patterns:

• First, officers violate the Constitution when they fire their weapons at
people who present no immediate threat of harm, and they continue to
shoot at people after they are no longer a threat.
• Second, officers shoot when their own actions have created or greatly
magnified the risk they face. We identified unconstitutional shootings that
likely could have been avoided absent officers’ reckless tactics.
• Third, officers unreasonably delay rendering aid to people they have shot,
and at times use significant, unreasonable force against people who are
already incapacitated, sometimes even unconscious, as the result of police
gunfire.

9
Phoenix Police Department, Police Transparency Critical Incident Briefings,
https://www.phoenix.gov/police/transparency [https://perma.cc/V5YU-CSVA].

14
 • Finally, officers use restraints that put people at risk of asphyxiation,
including neck restraints and other compression holds to the back and neck
against people who do not present an immediate threat, including those
who are restrained and have committed no crime.

For big city police departments, PhxPD has one of the highest rates of fatal shootings in
the country per year. PhxPD typically reports more than 20 police shootings each year
and sometimes significantly exceeds that number.

The below chart shows the number of police shootings since 2018.
PhxPD Police Shootings by Year: 2018-2023
50
45
40
35
22
30
25
20 17 13
14
15
3
10 22 6
5 12 11 10 12
7
0
2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

■ Fatal (74) ■ Non-fatal (75)

City officials have speculated that the high number of shootings may be attributed, in
part, to Arizona gun laws, which authorize open and concealed carry of firearms.10
According to PhxPD records, 76% of police shootings since 2018 involved a person
carrying a gun. But possession of a weapon alone without threatening behavior does
not justify deadly force.11 That guns are commonly carried in Arizona increases the
need for PhxPD to prepare officers to use good judgment, de-escalate dangerous
situations, and minimize the force used to safely resolve a situation, whether or not
people are armed.

10
In some circumstances, state law explicitly allows the “defensive display of a firearm.” A.R.S. § 13-421
(“The defensive display of a firearm by a person against another is justified when and to the extent a
reasonable person would believe that physical force is immediately necessary to protect himself against
the use or attempted use of unlawful physical force or deadly physical force.”).
11
Curnow v. Ridgecrest Police Agency, 952 F.2d 321, 324–25 (9th Cir. 1991) (officers were not entitled
to qualified immunity where suspect holding gun was not pointing it or facing officers).
15
 a. PhxPD Officers Fire Their Guns at People Who Present No
Immediate Threat

PhxPD officers fail to properly assess whether to shoot once they see a person holding
a weapon, even when the person presents no immediate threat. In one case, an officer
shot and killed a suicidal man moments after he pulled a knife from his pocket and told
the officers he wanted to die. The manager of a group home called the police because
the man threatened to jump out a window. When officers arrived, the man stood at the
top of an interior stairwell with his hands to his side. At first, officers spoke with the man
calmly. One officer asked, “Are you trying to fight? Is that what you’re trying to do?” “I’m
trying to die,” the man said, and pulled out a small pocketknife. The officers pointed their
weapons and threatened to shoot him if he did not drop the knife. The man took two
steps down the stairs. As the first officer said, “If you take one step…,” the second
officer fired his Taser, which was not effective. The man took another step, and the first
officer shot him three times. Because the man was not physically aggressive, told
officers he wanted to die, and never threatened the officers, the shooting was
unreasonable.12

In another incident, an officer shot a man holding a knife to his own throat and saying he
wanted to die. Two officers responded to a call of an attempted armed robbery and
found the man in an empty area of a commercial parking lot. One officer drove up to the
man and got out of her car saying, “Hey! Stop! Let me see both your hands right now.
Stay right there. Stop! You come any closer I’ll fucking shoot you!” “That’s what I want,”
the man responded as he held the knife to his neck. For two minutes, the man paced
back and forth asking the officers to shoot him in the head. The officers told the man
they wanted to help him and that they would kill him if he came closer. The man made
no threatening statements or gestures. But when he slowly stepped within about 20 feet
of one of the officers, still holding the knife to his neck and saying, “Go ahead, ma’am,”
the officer shot him once in the lower abdomen. The man fell to the ground and began
to scream, “Help me!” One officer kicked the knife away and both waited for backup,
guns pointed at the man as he writhed on the ground. Officers with ballistic shields
arrived and approached the man nearly five minutes later. They searched and
handcuffed him, while he continued to yell for help.

At times, officers continue to shoot after any threat has ended. Under the Fourth
Amendment, justification for deadly force, or any force, may end after the first gunshot.
“[T]erminating a threat doesn’t necessarily mean terminating the suspect. If the suspect
is on the ground and appears wounded, he may no longer pose a threat; a reasonable

12
Vos, 892 F.3d at 1034 (“[I]ndications of mental illness create a genuine issue of material fact about
whether the government's interest in using deadly force was diminished.”)

16
officer would reassess the situation rather than continue shooting.”13 In one case, a
PhxPD officer unnecessarily fired a second shot at a man who had already fallen to the
ground. Two officers responded to a call that a homeless man had threatened someone
with a knife. When they found the man, they immediately jumped out of their car and
chased him, yelling at him to drop the knife. An officer fired one shot at the man as he
ran away from them, causing the man to fall. After pausing for a second, the officer fired
a second shot at the man as he lay on the ground. The officer’s decision to shoot again
was unreasonable.

b. PhxPD Officers Use Tactics That Place Themselves in Jeopardy

and Increase the Risk of Deadly Encounters

PhxPD officers place themselves in situations of tactical disadvantage that substantially

increase the likelihood that they will fire their guns. In some cases, officers ignore
tactical fundamentals, such as using cover or concealment when encountering a
potentially armed person. In other cases, officers create conditions where they are
exposed or highly vulnerable. These poor tactics can result in unconstitutional force.

Officers sometimes ignore a position of safety and cover and step directly into harm’s
way. In one case, officers shot and killed a man sitting in a parked car after they
exposed themselves to an avoidable and dangerous situation. The officers responded
to a call about a man with a knife and spotted a man sitting behind the wheel of a
parked car. They blocked his car and approached him. They spoke with the man for a
few moments, but he refused to get out of the car and instead rolled up his window. An
officer then noticed the man held a gun in his hand.

The officers had boxed in the car with a patrol SUV, so there was little risk the man
could flee. The officers could have backed away, cleared the immediate area of
bystanders, and taken cover behind nearby vehicles. Instead, one officer positioned
himself inches from the driver’s side window and pointed his gun at the man, shouting
commands.14 That officer summoned a second officer to stand next to him, exposing
both officers to the armed man. A third officer approached the opposite side of the car

13
Zion v. Cty. of Orange, 874 F.3d 1072, 1076 (9th Cir. 2017).
14
Officers standing in such a position—sometimes described in tactical training as a “kill zone”—are not
only at grave risk to their own safety but are also far more likely to discharge their weapons in response to
any sudden movements—whether or not the person is attempting to cause harm. See, e.g., Belotto,
Counter-Ambush Tactics for Patrol Officers, 52:6 Law and Order 98 (2004).
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/counter-ambush-tactics-patrol-officers
[https://perma.cc/2USF-HMEZ].
----------------- -

17
and broke the front passenger window. Body-worn camera video showed that the driver
flinched as the third officer broke the window, but the video did not capture whether the
man did anything with the gun in his hand. Almost immediately, the first two officers
fired 16 rounds into the car, killing the man.

In another case, an officer effectively set the stage for a shooting by stepping in front of
a moving car and firing into it. While stopped in traffic, officers saw a car that matched
the description of a car reported stolen at gunpoint. Despite the risks of confronting a
potentially armed suspect in the middle of traffic, the officers got out of their car to make
an arrest. One officer placed himself in front of the car. The driver tried to steer slowly
around the officer to flee, but the officer twice moved to remain in the path of the car. As
the car began to accelerate, the officer backpedaled and then fired at the car as it
steered around him and sped away. The officer’s partner also shot at the fleeing car.
The teenage driver and teenage passenger were wounded. The officer’s decision to
place himself in harm’s way made the use of deadly force more likely and risked the
lives of the officers, the teens, and bystanders.

PhxPD officers sometimes magnify the risk of serious injury by abandoning cover and
shooting when there is no threat to officers or the public. In one case, officers noticed a
man throwing rocks at their vehicle as they passed him. They stopped down the road
and called dispatch to request that an officer come to the scene with less-lethal
projectiles—weapons designed to stop, but not kill, a person who presents a threat. But
the officers did not wait for a less-lethal weapon to arrive. Instead, they drove back to
the man, stopping within throwing distance of him, and got out of their car with guns
drawn. The officers shouted at the man to drop the rock he was holding. When he
started to throw another rock, officers unreasonably fired four shots and killed him. In
2023, the City of Phoenix agreed to pay the man’s family $5.5 million to settle a
wrongful death claim. On April 10, 2024, PhxPD announced that Interim Chief Sullivan
terminated one of the officers and overturned a PhxPD review board’s finding that the
shooting was within policy.

c. PhxPD Delays Medical Aid to Incapacitated Suspects and Uses

Unreasonable Force on Wounded People

After a shooting, seconds count. Delays in providing emergency treatment can prove
deadly long before medical personnel arrive. The Fourth Amendment requires police to
provide objectively reasonable care following a serious use of force.15 But we reviewed
body-worn camera footage depicting people lying motionless, seemingly unconscious,

15
See Tatum v. City and County of San Francisco, 441 F.3d 1090, 1099 (9th Cir. 2006); Ostling v. City of
Bainbridge Island, 872 F. Supp. 2d 1117, 1129–30 (W.D. Wash. 2012).

18
while PhxPD officers stood by at a distance without rendering aid or allowing minutes to
pass before starting CPR. In some cases, officers reported the person was “down,” the
situation was secure, or the suspect’s weapon was out of reach, but they still failed to
provide medical assistance.

In one incident, officers shot a woman 10 times, then waited more than nine minutes to
approach her, even though she lay immobile on the ground. Before the shooting, the
woman appeared suicidal, at one point telling an officer, “You’d better call for backup,”
and, “If you touch me, I’m going to kill myself.” When the woman pulled out a gun, two
officers shot her. A third officer fired two stunbag rounds, projectiles filled with ballistic
fiber material that fire at approximately 180 miles per hour. After the woman fell, officers
did not try to communicate with her or find out if she was conscious. Instead, they
continued pointing their weapons at her and remained behind their patrol vehicles as
more officers arrived to assist. About six minutes after the shooting, with at least six
officers watching the woman, one officer said that the woman appeared to be still
breathing, but not moving. An officer said that they should keep holding weapons on the
woman and wait for a police dog, which never arrived. Nine minutes after the shooting,
a group of officers finally approached the woman and attempted lifesaving measures.
She did not survive her injuries.

Sometimes, officers not only delayed providing medical aid, but used significant force
on people who were incapacitated after being critically wounded. Officers can
reasonably seek to ensure that a downed suspect no longer poses a threat. But it is
unreasonable to use significant force on an immobile suspect merely to see if they are
conscious.16 In one incident, after shooting a man, officers fired multiple rounds from a
less-lethal projectile launcher and sent a police dog to drag the man back to the officers.
Video shows the object that had been in the man’s hand landed approximately eight
feet away from him and he made no significant movement toward it. Yet over nine
minutes passed from when officers shot the man to when they moved in to complete the
arrest and render aid. At least a dozen officers were on the scene who could have
provided lethal cover for other officers to approach and secure the man without further
use of force. Instead, they released a dog that bit the man’s leg and dragged him back
to the waiting officers. The man did not survive the shooting.

16
Tan Lam v. City of Los Banos, 976 F.3d 986, 997 (9th Cir. 2020) (though the man was moving after
being shot, he was not a threat to the officer, so the court upheld the jury’s verdict that the officer violated
the Fourth Amendment when using force against the man the second time).
19
 “Give him a couple pops.”

Officers responded to a call that an unknown man with a gun had entered a home.
As the man walked into the backyard, he pointed a handgun at the officers. One
officer shot him in the chest with a rifle, and the man fell forward on top of his gun.

A supervisor directed – “If you're not seeing any signs of life, we're going to
move up with less-lethal and give him a couple pops before we approach.”

The man remained motionless on the ground for four minutes as numerous
officers pointed guns and shouted commands at him. Multiple officers confirmed
the man was not trying to get up, retrieve his weapon, or otherwise threaten
officers. Over the course of nine minutes, the supervisor ordered the man shot
with stunbag rounds from roughly 10 yards away. The pain inflicted from such
rounds would be extraordinary, but the first two stunbags elicited no reaction to
suggest the man was conscious or presented a threat. Yet the supervisor ordered
officers to fire more rounds at the man.

After officers fired the sixth stunbag round at the man, one officer said he would
need gloves to provide CPR. “No rush, guys, no rush,” the supervisor
responded. The officers waited, fired two more rounds, then approached the man.

Fifteen minutes had passed since officers shot the man with a rifle. By then, his
heart had stopped. Paramedics pronounced the man dead at the scene.

d. PhxPD Officers Routinely Use Neck and Compression Restraints

that Put People at Risk of Serious Injury or Suffocation

Improper placement of a person who is being restrained can cause positional or

mechanical asphyxiation, resulting in serious injury or death in minutes. Keeping
handcuffed people on their chest can restrict their breathing, and applying pressure or
bodyweight to their head, neck, or back increases the danger. These types of
compression restraints limit the amount of air entering the lungs.17 Because of these
risks, law enforcement agencies have long advised officers to roll a handcuffed person

17
Compression restraints can include rear neck restraints, back compression techniques, knee-to-neck
maneuvers, rear C-clamps, or rear arm bars, among other restraints. When these restraints dangerously
constrain the chest from taking in enough oxygen, they constitute deadly force. They also present a high
risk of spinal injury.
20
onto their side or into a seated position, which does not restrict breathing.18 Yet, PhxPD
officers routinely keep handcuffed people face down and apply pressure to their head,
neck, and back—even when the person is plainly in distress or says they cannot
breathe.

PhxPD officers use these dangerous compression restraints against people

experiencing a behavioral health crisis who do not present a risk to officers or others. In
one incident, officers knelt for several minutes on the neck of a suicidal man who
claimed to have stabbed himself with a nail file. Officers found the man sitting alone in
his car in a parking lot. As they approached from all sides, the man asked, “What have I
done?” and began to cry. One officer grasped the man’s left hand as the man held his
mobile phone in the other, saying he wanted to record the encounter. A second officer
entered the car and grabbed the man’s right hand but was unable to apply handcuffs.
The first officer pulled the man onto the pavement and more officers moved in to
restrain the man—four in all. They held him face down on the asphalt for roughly three
minutes. One officer knelt on the back of his neck. Another held his hands on the man’s
neck. Two other officers grabbed his legs and body. One officer then fired a Taser into
the man’s back while another officer still held his neck.

Once handcuffed, the man spat on the pavement and told officers they had no right to
treat him that way. Officers warned him not to spit at them, and once again pushed
down on his head, neck, and back. After a few moments, the man stopped talking, his
breathing became shallow, and he lost consciousness.

We saw other incidents in which officers applied dangerous compression restraints

against people who were handcuffed, or against people who were defiant but not
aggressive, sometimes even after they showed signs of serious physical distress. In
one instance, PhxPD officers pressed a deaf man’s neck and head down for over 20
minutes after they had handcuffed and restrained him with leg ties. The man was crying
and dry heaving, but when he tried to roll to his side, four officers pushed him back onto
his stomach. The officers had been informed before arrival the man was deaf, but they
repeatedly shouted at him to stop moving. One officer pressed his knee to the man’s
neck and upper back for more than four minutes, removing it only after another officer
pushed down on the man’s head to put him into a spit hood. The four officers kept their
weight on the man’s neck, head, and body, even as his breathing shallowed. The man
began to cry, cough, and eventually scream, before an EMT finally arrived.

18
See, e.g., Department of Justice, National Law Enforcement Technology Center, Positional Asphyxia—
Sudden Death (June 1995), https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/posasph.pdf [https://perma.cc/9KEA- 3LHA].

21
PhxPD also used similar compression holds on people suspected of committing minor
offenses. When a teenager objected to an officer pressing his knee into the boy’s head,
the officer responded: “I know I am, purposefully.” The teen was suspected of
trespassing in an empty warehouse to attend an illicit party. In another incident, when a
woman asked if an ambulance was on the way after an officer knelt on a man’s neck,
the officer said, “I put my knee on his skull to protect his head.” The man was suspected
of using drugs at a bus stop. Under the Fourth Amendment, such minor offenses do not
justify potentially lethal restraints absent a significant risk of serious injury or death to
officers or others.19

Like dangerous compression holds, neck restraints can severely limit oxygen from
getting to the brain and lead to significant trauma, loss of consciousness, or death. Neck
restraints are deadly force.20

Restraining the neck of a person who poses little threat is clearly excessive force.21 Yet
PhxPD officers use neck restraints casually, without regard for the risk of serious harm
they can pose. One officer applied a chokehold even as a man gasped for breath, went
limp, and tapped his hand on the ground to signal his submission. Another officer urged,
“Keep going. He doesn’t get to tap.”

After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, PhxPD banned “carotid controls,” neck
restraints designed to slow the flow of blood to the brain and cause unconsciousness.
PhxPD also expanded training on what trainers called “compassionate restraint.” PhxPD
shared a department-wide video training that demonstrated various carotid replacement
techniques, including other “control holds” across the side of the neck. Trainers in the
video stated, “If you are a big fan of the carotid and really miss the use of the carotid,
we’ll give you some ideas for what you can use that are still within our policy.” The video
failed to discuss the potential danger of these restraints should they block air or blood
flow. As one trainer explained: “The idea of compassionate restraint is I decide how
compassionate I am going to be based on the given circumstances.”

19
Hunter v. Durell, No. C16-1445-MJP, 2018 WL 6249789, at *11 (W.D. Wash. Nov. 29, 2018) (collecting
cases).
20
Int’l Ass’n of Chiefs of Police, National Consensus Policy and Discussion Paper on Use of Force, 15
(July 2020), https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/2020-
07/National_Consensus_Policy_On_Use_Of_Force%2007102020%20v3.pdf [https://perma.cc/V7XE-
BU56]; see also American Academy of Neurology, AAN Position Statement on the Use of Neck Restraints
in Law Enforcement, (June 9, 2021), https://www.aan.com/advocacy/use-of-neck-restraints-position-
statement [https://perma.cc/7R48-3D7L](“Because of the inherently dangerous nature of these
techniques, the AAN strongly encourages federal, state, and local law enforcement and policymakers in
all jurisdictions to classify neck restraints, at a minimum, as a form of deadly force.”).
21
Barnard v. Theobald, 721 F.3d 1069, 1076 (9th Cir. 2013) (emphasis in original).
22
 PhxPD trainers demonstrate “compassionate restraint.”

Despite the change in policy, officers continue to use potentially deadly neck restraints.
In 2021, an officer squeezed a man’s neck with both hands because the man stood up
to get his identification from his back pocket. Officers stopped a group of people in a
parking lot for trespassing, ordered them to sit on the curb, and asked each person for
identification to check for outstanding warrants. An officer approached one man who
stood up to get to his wallet, and told another officer, “He’s not listening, let’s just hook
him.” The man told the officers that he was trying to follow directions, but both officers
grabbed him, twisted his wrists, and slammed him down on the sidewalk. The man
protested, “You’re breaking the law, I didn’t do anything!” One officer can be heard on
body-worn camera saying, “It’s not breaking no law, bro!” as he wrapped his hands
around the man’s neck. In his report, the officer wrote he did not “apply pressure to the
male’s throat or squeeze his throat in any way.” PhxPD’s Professional Standards
Bureau found the officer’s conduct departed from PhxPD training but stated PhxPD
policy did not prohibit control holds to the neck.

23
 The officer’s incident report reads: “At no time did I apply pressure to the male’s throat or squeeze his
throat in any way.”

2. PhxPD Uses Unreasonable Less-Lethal Force

Less-lethal force includes tactics and weapons that are less likely to cause death or
serious injury. The force may range from low-level physical tactics, such as restraining a
person’s wrists while handcuffing, to more serious force, like firing Tasers or releasing
police dogs. Less-lethal force can be extremely painful and result in serious harm or
even death. PhxPD policy requires officers to report a range of less-lethal force. The
below chart shows less-lethal force incidents reported from January 2019 through
March 2022.22

22
These totals do not reflect a full accounting of PhxPD's use of impact weapons, particularly
Pepperballs, because PhxPD has only required a force report if an officer intended to hit a person with a
projectile.
24
 Reported Uses of Less-Lethal Force:
January 1, 2019 to March 31, 2022
1600 1463
1400

1200

1000
813
800
564
600 480
430

III
400 280
212
200

0
Soft Empty
Hands
Hard
Empty
Taser Restraints Trip or
Tackle
I
Impact
Weapon
I • -
Other
Force
124

Canine
79

Chemical
Agents
Hands

We found that officers use unjustified less-lethal force against people who are
handcuffed, people in crisis, and people accused of low-level crimes. Officers rely on
less-lethal force to attempt to resolve situations quickly, often when no force is
necessary and without any meaningful attempt to de-escalate.

a. PhxPD Shoots Projectiles Prematurely and Indiscriminately

The immediacy of PhxPD officers using force, sometimes within the first seconds of an
encounter, is a defining aspect of the pattern or practice of excessive force we found. It
is particularly pronounced in PhxPD’s use of less-lethal projectiles, such as Pepperballs,
40mm impact rounds, and stunbags. These impact weapons present serious risk of
harm.

A Pepperball gun is a high-pressure air launcher that fires projectiles filled with a
chemical powder similar to pepper spray. Courts have observed that the weapons are
difficult to aim precisely over long distances, and they can cause serious injury if they
strike a vital area of the body.23 A 40mm launcher (40mm caliber) fires foam rounds at
approximately 170 miles per hour. PhxPD officers use these weapons excessively,
sometimes firing multiple rounds in quick succession at unarmed people.

23
Nelson v. City of Davis 685 F.3d 867, 878-79 (9th Cir. 2012) (Pepperball round struck an individual in
the face, causing “significant damage to his eye, causing temporary blindness and a permanent loss of
visual acuity.”).
25
Officers shoot projectiles to surprise or confuse people and then offer little time for them
to follow commands. In one incident, a group of officers shot 40mm foam rounds, a
Taser, and over 20 Pepperballs at an unarmed man within 20 seconds of announcing
their presence. The officers planned to take the man into custody for two open felony
warrants related to probation violations. They surrounded a storage facility where he
stood outside a unit repairing a bicycle. One officer yelled, “Hands!” seconds before
firing Pepperballs and yelling, “Get on the ground!” While the officer continued to pelt
him with Pepperballs, another officer struck the man with a 40mm impact round. The
man turned away, screaming. Then, a third officer advanced and fired a Taser,
incapacitating the man. As he fell—nearly hitting his head on the wall of the storage
unit—an officer fired another 40mm round.

PhxPD officers also shoot projectiles abruptly and without evidence the person is an
immediate threat. For example, officers shot dozens of Pepperballs at a man suspected
of taking his mother’s car without permission. The man was leaving a laundromat when
an officer immediately fired Pepperballs at him, and continued to fire after the man was
on his knees and had curled his body onto the sidewalk. Officers reported the reason
they fired projectiles on first contact was the man’s prior charges of aggravated assault
on a police officer and resisting arrest. A person’s criminal history cannot be the sole
basis for officers to use force.24 Using force without assessing whether the man posed
an immediate threat was unreasonable.

Projectiles as “Overwhelming Force”

PhxPD’s investment in less-lethal projectiles stems, in part, from the high number
of police shootings in 2018. Ten of PhxPD’s 44 shootings that year involved the
Special Assignments Unit (SAU), a tactical squad. A lieutenant who previously
oversaw the SAU told us the goal in acquiring 40mm launchers and Pepperball
guns was to equip SAU officers with tools to use “overwhelming force” in lieu of
shootings. Officers told us that quickly using more less-lethal projectiles would
reduce the need for lethal force. PhxPD not only instructed officers to be
“proactive” with projectiles, it took the weapons away from officers who did not use
them enough.

24
See Ruvalcaba v. City of Los Angeles, 64 F.3d 1323, 1328 (9th Cir. 1995) (in evaluating the
reasonableness of a seizure, one relevant factor may be officers’ awareness of a person’s criminal history
when “police officers are confronted with multiple factors indicating danger”); Estate of Elkins v. Pelayo,
No. 1:13-CV-1483 AWI SAB, 2022 WL 1123117, *26 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 14, 2022) (a suspect’s “known
criminal history is admissible as part of the totality of the circumstances” evaluating the reasonableness of
the force).
26
 PhxPD has expanded deployment of 40mm and Pepperball weapons throughout
the department. Evaluation of these new weapons focused primarily on reducing
police shootings without enough attention to whether officers used projectiles
reasonably. Indeed, PhxPD reported the pilot was successful because, in 2021,
there were fewer overall shootings. Former Chief Williams explained: “Early
indications show this program is proving very successful in preserving life while
combating crime. We also believe less-lethal options have contributed to a 50%
drop in officer involved shootings in 2021.” But officers only started using the
weapons in late October 2021, and police shootings increased in 2022. In any
event, the analysis of the reasonableness of force does not start and end with
whether an officer fired a gun. PhxPD’s use of less-lethal projectiles violates the
Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive force.

b. PhxPD Uses Unreasonable Force Immediately, Without Giving

People Warning or an Opportunity to Comply

PhxPD’s “force first” practices are not limited to the projectile weapons described above.
Officers quickly resort to physical force, such as tackling or using “compassionate
restraints,” to immediately subdue a person, regardless of the crime or the threat. These
tactics often lead to excessive force.

In one incident, an officer grabbed a man by his hair and threw him to the ground before
he could obey the officer’s orders. Officers approached the man in a parking lot after he
was seen in a stolen car. The man had his hands up, but less than two seconds after
yelling at him to lie down, an officer grabbed him by his hair with one hand, while
pointing a gun at him with his other hand. The officer threw the man to the ground and
wrapped his arm around the man’s neck while three other officers pulled the man’s legs
and hands in different directions. “Put your arm behind your back!” one commanded.
The man responded, “I’m trying!”

Sometimes, PhxPD officers unnecessarily use force before even trying to speak to a
person. In one incident, officers arrived at an apartment complex to the sounds of
yelling and screaming. An officer rushed into an apartment without announcing his
presence, lifted a woman from behind, and pulled her outside. The officer then kicked
her legs out from under her and slammed her face-first into the sidewalk, splitting her
chin on the concrete. The woman was bleeding on the ground less than 40 seconds
after the officers got out of their car. From review of the body-worn camera footage, it is
unclear the woman even knew it was a police officer who grabbed her.

27
When a person is confused by an officer’s commands, or has no time to obey them,
officers report this as “resistance” to explain force that follows. But “[a] desire to resolve
quickly a potentially dangerous situation” does not justify “force that may cause serious
injury.”25 For example, officers grabbed a man and slammed him to the ground seconds
after confronting him. A gas station attendant called police about a shirtless man
trespassing and fist-fighting outside. When an officer arrived, he approached a man
fitting the description and told the man to put his hands behind his back while grabbing
his arms at the same time. In response, the man said, “For what?” and looked over his
shoulder. The officer immediately swept the man’s legs from under him, slamming his
body to the pavement. “I’m not fucking playing with you, dude,” he said. The man
suffered a head laceration that required stitches.

PhxPD officers also resort to force quickly when investigating minor crimes, or at times
no crime at all. In one example, two officers used excessive force after stopping a
bicyclist who ran a red light. The man allowed the officers to search him. As one officer
checked the man’s pockets, the man appeared to move something from one hand to the
other. The officers grabbed him, told him to put his hands behind his back, and then
pulled him to the ground. The man asked, “What am I under arrest for?” An officer said,
“For not obeying a police officer.” The officers appeared to recognize they lacked a
lawful basis for arresting the man, and one said, “We need to develop PC [probable
cause].” Both officers then muted their body-worn cameras. PhxPD arrested him for
resisting arrest and possession of marijuana. County and city prosecutors declined to
pursue the charges.

In another incident, an officer tackled a man without warning for allegedly shoplifting
$38 worth of food from a grocery store. A grocery store customer called police, and
officers soon located a man fitting the description walking on a sidewalk near two other
people. As the officers pulled up, one yelled “Stop!” out the window. The man continued
to walk, seemingly unaware that the officer was yelling at him. Seconds later, both
officers jumped out of the car, ran at the man, and pushed him to the ground. Later, one
officer bragged to the other, “You like that impact push, though? Sick.” His partner
agreed, “That was good, yeah.”

25
Deorle v. Rutherford, 272 F.3d 1272, 1281 (9th Cir. 2001).

28
 c. PhxPD’s Misuse of Leg Restraints Results in Unreasonable Force

PhxPD officers bind people’s legs and arms together and keep them face down,
creating a serious risk that the person will be unable to breathe.26 PhxPD uses a
restraint called the “hobble,” which consists of an adjustable nylon cord that can be
used to bind a person’s ankles, knees, or elbows. According to the manufacturer, the
hobble includes a “sit-belt” that circles a person’s waist and can be connected to leg
restraints. This belt is intended to allow officers to safely restrain a person while keeping
them in a seated position.

The left image shows use of the "hobble" restraint according to the manufacturer. The right image shows
a typical application by PhxPD.

PhxPD training instructs officers to roll a person restrained in a hobble into an

upright, seated position. Instead, PhxPD officers connect leg restraints to handcuffs
behind a person’s back and keep the person face down on their stomach, including
during transport in a police vehicle. This position inhibits breathing and is particularly
dangerous for a person under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Several people have

26
That is because this technique creates a “four-point restraint,” which is similar to a hog-tie position.
Since 2002, the International Association of Chiefs of Police have recommended that “law enforcement
agencies eliminate or seriously limit the use of the hog-tie position and similar four-point restraints.”
International Chiefs of Police, Training Key 541: The Four-Point Restraint (2002). That document also
warned that positional asphyxia can occur, and therefore recommended that “when four-point restraints
are absolutely essential for control of a suspect, they should be used with great care, and the condition of
the suspect should be continuously monitored.” Id.; see also Slater v. Deasey, 789 Fed. Appx. 17, 21 (9th
Cir. 2019) (denying qualified immunity where an individual died after being placed in a hobble in a
position similar to a hogtie).
29
died in PhxPD custody after being restrained in this way. Despite the serious risk of
harm, PhxPD does not require supervisory review of the use of the hobble.27

In one example, an intoxicated man lost consciousness after officers held him face
down with his hands and feet restrained. Officers responded to a call about a person
passed out in a car. They arrived to find the driver unconscious behind the wheel with
the engine running. Officers saw a bag of pills and woke the driver, who became upset
and resistant. After a struggle, the officers held the man face down and connected leg
restraints to his handcuffs behind his back. Officers left him face down, with one officer
kneeling on his upper back. Though the man’s breathing became louder and more
labored, officers held him lying on his chest for nearly a minute. Only after he did not
respond to questions did they roll him to his side and see that he was unconscious. Six
other officers also did not act when the man’s breathing became labored.

“Don’t hogtie me, please!”

PhxPD officers arrested a man at a group home for allegedly assaulting a staff
member. After being handcuffed, the man began to struggle. Officers bound his
hands and feet behind him, and then tightened the cord to bring them together.
They left the man face down on the floor, hogtied in the manner explicitly
prohibited by policy.

Within one minute, the man began to complain he could not breathe. Officers
called for medical assistance as the man began to vomit. The Fire Department
arrived and cleared the man for transport . Officers carried the man to a patrol car
and laid him in the back seat, still hogtied. “You’re going to be okay, child. Stop
complaining,” they told him.

During transport, officers realized the man was throwing up again. They stopped
and opened the car door to find the man face down in vomit.

For a second time, officers called for medical aid. They removed the hogtie
restraint and permitted the man, still handcuffed, to sit up. Covered in his own
vomit, the man lurched out of the police car and collapsed face down on the
ground. “I can’t breathe, I need some water,” he begged. “Stop being a baby,” one
officer said.

27
PhxPD Operations Orders 1.5.

30
 The Fire Department arrived and cleared the man again. When it was time to go,
the man pleaded, “Don’t hogtie me, please, please.” The officers again bound his
hands and legs together and placed him face down in the grass.

d. PhxPD’s Use of Tasers is Unreasonable

Since the early 2000s, PhxPD has equipped patrol officers with conducted electrical
weapons, or Tasers. Officers use Tasers often. Of the 2,711 incidents in which officers
reported force between January 2019 and April 2022, 21% involved the use of a Taser.

Tasers have two modes. In probe mode, an officer fires two barbs into a person’s body,
striking the skin to send incapacitating jolts of electricity.28 If deployed successfully,
Taser probes temporarily override the central nervous system. This neuromuscular
incapacitation can stop a threat. In drive-stun mode, an officer presses a Taser directly
against a person’s body, pulling the trigger to activate electricity. Drive-stun mode does
not induce neuromuscular incapacitation and can even provoke someone to fight
back.29 In both modes, a Taser can deliver excruciating pain, ignite flammable
substances, and cause secondary injuries resulting from a fall. Contact with Taser
electrodes in drive-stun mode may also burn the skin and cause permanent scarring.30

PhxPD officers fire Tasers at people with little or no warning and when people pose no
threat. Officers rarely attempt de-escalation before firing a Taser. Officers fire Tasers at
people with their hands up, after they surrender, or when they are restrained. We also
saw many instances in which officers used Tasers in drive-stun mode to handcuff
people who either refused or were unable to put their hands behind their backs. It is
unreasonable to use Tasers against people who are under control.

Officers use Tasers against people who show signs of a behavioral health crisis. In
many incidents we reviewed, officers failed to recognize that a person’s disability may
impact whether they can understand commands or comply with them. For example,
officers fired a Taser to subdue a suicidal man who asked a 911 operator to “have the

28
Bryan v. MacPherson, 630 F.3d 805, 824 (9th Cir. 2010) (explaining that, in probe mode, the taser
fires a pair steel barbs that strike a person to send an “electrical impulse instantly overrides the victim's
central nervous system, paralyzing the muscles throughout the body”).
29
Marquez v. City of Phoenix, 693 F.3d 1167, 1171 (9th Cir. 2012), as amended on denial of reh’g (Oct.
4, 2012) (“‘Drive-stun mode’ does not incapacitate the target, but instead encourages the suspect to
comply by causing pain.”).
30
Axon Enterprise, Inc., TASER Handheld Energy Weapon Warnings, Instructions, and Information: Law
Enforcement at 1–2, 5 (Rev. Sept. 20, 2022).

31
cops kill me.” When officers arrived at the man’s apartment, he stepped out into the
middle of the street and waved. With a cigarette in one hand, he touched his head with
his other hand in a finger-gun gesture and called to the officers, “Shoot me here.”
Officers noted that he was unarmed as he ambled around ignoring their commands.
With little warning, one officer called “Taser!” and immediately pressed the trigger,
causing one of the metal darts to embed itself in the man’s forehead. (Paramedics were
later required to pull out the dart.) A second officer then fired four stunbag rounds,
striking the man in the back and chest. Firing a Taser at someone in the head, inches
away from his eye, carries a heightened risk of serious injury or death. PhxPD found the
Taser and stunbag deployment within policy, even though both were unreasonable and
used against a man who was, at most, a risk only to himself.

At times, officers fire Tasers simply because someone does not follow commands. For
example, moments after providing a warning, an officer fired two Taser probes at a
naked unhoused man holding only a pair of sweatpants. The man was standing outside
a strip mall explaining that it was “his home” and that he works for God. Four officers
surrounded him, and one warned, “Hey, sir, if you don’t put your pants down, I will tase
you.” At the same time, another officer commanded, “Put your pants on.” Less than ten
seconds later, the first officer tased the man. The man presented no threat warranting
the use of a Taser.

PhxPD supervisors sometimes encourage officers to use Tasers inappropriately and

excessively. In one instance, within minutes of arriving on the scene of a behavioral
health crisis, a PhxPD sergeant sprayed a man in the face with pepper spray for seven
seconds and then fired a Taser at him. The man’s mother had called 911 because he
stopped taking his medication and slapped her in the arm. Officers who arrived spoke
calmly with the man and decided to seek emergency mental health treatment and wait.
Things changed when a sergeant arrived. He told officers to arrest the man, “get a
Taser ready,” and then sprayed the man in the face with pepper spray. As the man
recoiled, two other officers grabbed him and, at the sergeant’s direction, one fired Taser
darts in his leg. When the man fell to the ground, the sergeant took the Taser from the
officer and tased the man again. Rather than obtaining mental health treatment, officers
arrested him for assault, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. Prosecutors declined
to pursue charges.

e. PhxPD Fails to Exercise Control Over Police Dogs

A properly trained police dog should be able to bite, hold, and release on command,
without causing excessive injuries. PhxPD has a designated canine unit with three
squads and 13 dogs. By policy, PhxPD requires officers to announce the presence of a
canine before releasing the dog to search. The purpose is to “prevent innocent people
32
from inadvertently being injured by the canine and to allow the suspect(s) additional
opportunity to surrender.” Accordingly, PhxPD requires officers to “wait sufficient time to
ensure that anyone within the search area has ample opportunity to comply with
instructions.” As soon as the suspect is in custody or no longer poses a threat, the dog
must be recalled or otherwise restrained.

In practice, PhxPD canine handlers fail to maintain reasonable control over police dogs.
We reviewed cases in which handlers permitted the dogs to bite people for dangerously
prolonged periods, even after they had surrendered or were handcuffed.

For example, a PhxPD dog bit the arm of an unarmed and compliant homeless man for
47 seconds, including about 30 seconds after officers handcuffed him. PhxPD had
received a report of a man with a suitcase entering a partially constructed apartment
complex. Around midnight, a canine unit responded. Ten seconds after announcing
their presence and warning that the police dog “will bite you,” the canine handler
released the dog into the building. Immediately, the man called out, “Sir, I’m in the room
right here.” Rather than recall the dog, the handler commanded it to bite and said,
“Good boy! Get ‘em, buddy!” On body-worn camera video, the man can be heard
screaming when the dog reached him. The dog thrashed the man’s arm from side-to-
side and continued to bite while officers handcuffed him. The canine handler never
commanded the dog to release the man; the dog released its bite only after the handler
struggled to pulled it away.

At the hospital, the man told one officer that he had been sleeping, heard the warning,
and called out his location so “they wouldn’t release the dog, but he did anyway.” In an
incident report, the same officer wrote: “He said he never heard us giving out
commands because he was sleeping.” Officers sought to charge the man with burglary
of a residence; the county attorney declined prosecution.

In another example, PhxPD officers allowed a police dog to continue biting two burglary
suspects after they had been located and apprehended. A car tow lot owner reported
that his surveillance video showed two people jump the fence to his property and break
into vehicles. Officers arrived and saw two people in the lot, who then ran and hid.
Officers surrounded the lot and called for a canine unit. Once there, the canine officer
gave one warning: “Phoenix Police Department. Police dog to search. Anybody inside
the fence lot make yourself known or you may get bit by a police dog.” The officer
released the dog 10 seconds later. Within 40 seconds, officers heard cries of pain as
the dog dragged a man out by his arm from underneath a vehicle. The canine handler
allowed the dog to keep biting the man’s arm as other officers ordered the man onto his
stomach for handcuffing. Finally, 35 seconds after the man started complying with
commands, the handler pulled the dog off him. The canine handler repeated the

33
warning, and the dog pulled a second man out by the arm from under a different
vehicle. As the second man pleaded, “Please!”, the canine handler instructed another
officer to drag the man by his feet into an open area. The dog, still attached to the man’s
arm, was pulled with him. The dog continued to bite the man even as officers
handcuffed him. Both men had to be hospitalized for their injuries. Neither man was
armed.

f. PhxPD Uses Unreasonable Force Against Handcuffed People

PhxPD officers use “gratuitous” force after a person is already handcuffed or restrained,
and when there is no immediate threat.31 This often occurs after a person criticizes the
officer for using force. This is unlawful; force used only to punish an individual typically
violates the Fourth Amendment.

For example, PhxPD officers painfully restrained a man because he kicked an officer
during an arrest. When officers spotted the man, he was shirtless and crawling in gravel
beside the street. One officer grabbed the man from behind without identifying himself
and commanded: “Hands behind your back.” The man reacted by kicking the officer two
or three times. After officers handcuffed the man, they repeatedly contorted his arms
behind his back, pulled up on them, and thrust them into the air as he cried out, “You’re
hurting me. Stop it.” While continuing to pull his arms, the first officer retorted, “You
know what else hurts? Getting kicked.”

At times, officers repeatedly use force to punish a handcuffed person. In one incident,
two officers pressed on a man’s head, neck, and body because the man mocked the
weight of a female officer. The man had threatened to assault someone, and officers
tackled and handcuffed him after he refused their commands to stop walking away.
While handcuffed on his stomach, the man complained of the weight a female officer
put on his legs and called her a “fat bitch.” She laughed, said “Okay, I can do this,” and
pressed harder on his legs. Another officer then shoved his body weight onto the man’s
neck and shoulders and asked: “Want me to take you out of these handcuffs and we’ll
do it all over?” Later, while officers searched him, the man complained about the
officers’ actions, and spittle flew from his mouth onto an officer’s face. The man
immediately apologized, but the officer grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head
into the patrol vehicle. Officers then threw the man onto the ground and applied the

31
Ross v. City of Toppenish, 104 Fed. Appx. 26, 29 (9th Cir. 2004) (“No reasonable officer could have
thought ... that he was entitled to use such gratuitous force. That a police officer is not entitled to use such
force against a handcuffed, secured and compliant citizen was clearly established ...” (quoting Jones v.
Buchanan, 325 F.3d 520, 534 (4th Cir. 2003))).

34
hobble restraint, connecting his leg restraints to his handcuffs behind his back. All the
while, the man did not resist.

3. PhxPD’s Training and Weak Oversight Contribute to the Pattern of

Excessive Force

PhxPD training has mischaracterized the law and encouraged immediate and
indiscriminate force, which predictably results in excessive force. Many of the
problematic practices we saw originated with PhxPD training. Despite systems for
oversight and review, PhxPD’s chain of command approved nearly all use-of-force
incidents, including those described above.

a. PhxPD Training Encourages Officers to Use Unjustified Force

PhxPD’s training has explicitly encouraged officers to use force when there is no legal
justification to do so. We reviewed hundreds of lesson plans and PowerPoints,
interviewed members of PhxPD’s Training Bureau, and personally attended dozens of
hours of classroom and scenario-based training in Phoenix.

Under the Fourth Amendment, police may use reasonable force against immediate
threats, not “speculative” risks.32 PhxPD has trained officers to observe what trainers
call “safety priorities,” a hierarchy that begins with: (1) “Hostages,” (2) “Innocents,” (3)
“Law enforcement,” and (4) “Suspects.” PhxPD teaches officers to prioritize the safety of
hostages and innocents even when the risk of harm is only theoretically possible. In
several trainings we observed, instructors directed officers to use force against an
isolated person because bystanders might show up: “Innocents can pop up out of
nowhere.”

PhxPD also has trained officers to use serious force to respond to hypothetical, not
actual, danger. For example, in a training for all supervisors at a station, PhxPD showed
a video of an incident in which an officer shot a man carrying a knife with a 40mm
round. Although the man was on a deserted street in downtown Phoenix at 2:45 a.m.,
trainers said the force was reasonable because there “was an element of jeopardy.” The
jail was across the street and people “could be” released at any time. Trainers have also
taught officers to fire Tasers and 40mm projectiles against a person in a behavioral
health crisis if the person does not comply with commands, whether or not the person

32
Hultstedt v. City of Scottsdale, 884 F. Supp. 2d 972 (D. Ariz. 2012).

35
presents a threat. The mindset that a theoretically possible future threat, however
unlikely, justifies immediate force violates the Fourth Amendment.33

Phoenix has trained its officers that all force—even deadly force—is de-escalation. This
attitude runs contrary to the basic principles of de-escalation, which offers strategies,
such as time, distance, cover, and verbal persuasion, to help a person voluntarily
comply with officers without the need to use force or to lessen the force needed.34
PhxPD officers have been trained to “use escalation to de-escalate the situation” as
quickly as possible. One trainer suggested immediate force stops a situation “before
you really have to hurt someone,” and explained that “de-escalation, like talking nice,
will get someone killed.” In practice, this translates to quickly using unreasonable force,
often without considering whether any force is necessary at all.

Indeed, in some trainings we observed, trainers encouraged officers to use force

without warning or just seconds after arriving at a scene, regardless of whether the
person presented an apparent risk to officers or others. Trainers have stressed that
officers must avoid “paralysis by analysis”—they must not hesitate or overthink but act
quickly to use less-lethal weapons. To be sure, the use of a less-lethal weapon may be
necessary and appropriate to resolve a dangerous situation without the need for greater
force. But PhxPD must teach officers to use force only when reasonable under the
Constitution. Instead, PhxPD trainers have featured unreasonable force as good de-
escalation in training settings. In one PhxPD video used to train 40mm operators, a
PhxPD officer shot a 40mm impact round at a man standing directly in front of a toddler
in a crib. When someone in the training expressed concern that the toddler could have
been struck had the officer missed the target, the trainer responded that the deployment
was “one of the best executions of the safety priorities” and the only room for
improvement was to fire the projectile sooner. Our review of force incidents
demonstrates the prevalence of this mindset.

In a training we observed, PhxPD taught officers that when people do not immediately
comply with commands, officers can use force to make them. For instance, if a person
suspected of a low-level misdemeanor asks why they are being detained and does not
sit down when told, PhxPD has taught that using force to make them sit down is a
proper response. And if a person’s body naturally tenses in response to being grabbed,
that is “active resistance,” which justifies greater force, including using chemical spray,

33
Lowry v. City of San Diego, 858 F.3d 1248, 1257 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc).
34
Guiding Principles on Use of Force, Police Executive Research Forum, at 40, 54-60 (Mar. 2016),
https://www.policeforum.org/assets/guidingprinciples1.pdf [https://perma.cc/94RP-HYTR].

36
wrapping arms around a person’s head, tackling a person, or putting pressure on their
neck.

Similarly, PhxPD has taught officers that it is appropriate to fire projectiles at people
who are not following commands but pose no threat. Indeed, 40mm operators have
been trained they can fire when faced with “passive resistance,” such as when a person
is defiant in response to commands, but not aggressive. For example, in a role-playing
training we observed, officers stopped a driver on suspicion of assault. The actor got out
of his car with his hands up but did not follow the trainee’s directions and was moving
around and yelling. Eventually, the trainee shot the actor with a 40mm round. During the
debrief, instructors told the trainee that he should have taken more decisive action and
fired the moment the actor did not comply with a command.

Other trainings highlight incidents in which officers used excessive force as exemplary
behavior. For example:

• For a training on firing 40mm impact rounds, PhxPD provided several examples
of what the agency considered effective 40mm deployment. This included the
incident described on page 27 above, in which a group of officers deployed two
40mm impact rounds, a Taser, and over 20 Pepperball rounds at an unarmed
man within 20 seconds of announcing their presence.

• PhxPD released a department-wide video that featured video of the incident

described on page 97 below, in which PhxPD officers fired Pepperballs at a man
in a behavioral health crisis less than two minutes after arriving on scene. The
man had not hurt or touched anyone and was not armed, and officers had been
advised before their arrival that he was beginning to calm down.

b. PhxPD Officers Fail to Report Significant Force

PhxPD sets a high threshold for reporting uses of force. As described above, many leg
or neck restraints require no use-of-force report at all. To understand the scope of
under-reporting, we reviewed a random sample of incidents in which it was conceivable
that officers used force, but no force report was filed, such as incidents in which people
were arrested for “resisting arrest.” In a significant number of these incidents, officers
used force but never reported it, either because policy did not require it or because the
officers mischaracterized what occurred.

In one case, officers failed to report force that was so aggressive that bystanders
objected. Two officers responded to a call from a hotel that a former employee was
breaking items in the breakfast area. An employee pointed the man out, who was by

37
then talking on his cell phone while patrons ate their breakfast. When he saw the
officers walk toward him, he put his hands up and said he would leave, saying, “Please
don’t touch me.” One officer responded, “No, you’re gonna get touched.” They grabbed
the man around the neck and forced him to the ground. They held him on the ground
and handcuffed him as he screamed and as hotel staff and guests questioned the
officers’ actions. Consistent with PhxPD policy, the officers did not report the force.

Unreported Neck Restraint

The use of dangerous neck restraints or compression holds evades supervisory
review because PhxPD considers these practices to be “soft empty hand control
and restraining devices,” which are not subject to supervisory review. For
example, supervisors never reviewed an incident where an officer held a teenager
by the neck while handcuffing him. The teen’s mom had called the police
complaining that her son, who was having a manic episode, had stolen her phone.
As the teen swore at the officers and told them he was recording with his phone,
officers grabbed him, took away his phone, and said, “You are making stupid
decisions.” The teen remained seated but kept talking, so one officer grabbed him
by the neck and applied pressure for approximately 15 seconds (as shown in the
image below) as they handcuffed him. The officers did not report the force.

The officer held the teenager by the neck for approximately 15 seconds but completed no use-of-
force report.

38
 c. The Lack of Meaningful Supervisory Review Validates and
Reinforces Unlawful Practices

Supervisors provide little oversight of officers’ use-of-force practices. PhxPD requires

the chain of command to review certain types of force incidents—such as canine bites,
Taser and 40mm deployments, punches, and kicks. Beginning in 2020, PhxPD also
required supervisors to review incidents in which officers point their firearms at people.
We found that supervisors fail to scrutinize the force used or the officers’ tactics. At
times, PhxPD supervisors even validate unlawful practices. As a result, unconstitutional
behavior continues unabated.

Supervisors’ use-of-force reports are perfunctory and boilerplate. Supervisors are

required to evaluate whether force was reasonable and check a series of boxes to
confirm the force complied with policy. They do not interview people involved in use-of-
force incidents, whether witnesses or the subject of the use of force. We saw little
evidence that supervisors consider the totality of officer tactics, such as engaging in
risky foot pursuits of people suspected of low-level offenses. And we also saw incidents
in which supervisors involved in the use of force conducted the supervisory review—
thereby reviewing their own actions.

Many use-of-force incidents do not receive even cursory supervisory reviews. Most
reported force consists of “soft empty hand techniques,” which is tracked but not
reviewed. These “techniques” can include placing pressure to a person’s face and neck,
pushing someone’s nose with an officer’s hand, and wrapping arms around a person’s
shoulder or neck and then using a knee to force their legs to buckle. Officers often use
these techniques to inflict considerable pain, yet PhxPD requires no supervisory review.

PhxPD supervisors determined that 98.7% and 99.4% of force incidents complied with
policy in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Our review showed that PhxPD officers used
unreasonable force in a significant share of incidents. Indeed, PhxPD supervisors
approved nearly every force incident that we describe above. And every incident in
which an officer reported pointing a gun at a person—6,013 in 2021 and 2022
combined—was found to be reasonable and within policy. PhxPD’s failure to
meaningfully review force incidents validates and reinforces unconstitutional practices.

* * *

PhxPD’s unconstitutional practices inflict additional harm on family members already

distraught over a loved one’s injury or death at the hands of officers. One family
watched their son’s final moments on police video and saw officers pelt their child with
impact rounds, then send a police dog to drag his body. Other families learned that
officers were slow to render aid or delayed paramedics from reaching their loved ones.

39
Families also shared their frustration with how the City and PhxPD treated them
following a shooting. Some are still waiting, years later, to recover their family member’s
possessions. These families told us they organize in the hope they can prevent what
happened to them from happening to someone else. A family member told us: “We’re
trying to have faith, but I don’t have much faith anymore.”

40
B. PhxPD and the City Violate the Rights of People Experiencing
Homelessness

We have reasonable cause to believe that PhxPD violates the rights of people
experiencing homelessness in two ways. First, PhxPD stops, detains, and arrests
people who are homeless without reasonable suspicion that they are engaged in
criminal activity. Second, the City and PhxPD seize and destroy property belonging to
people who are homeless without providing adequate notice or opportunity to collect
their belongings. A person’s constitutional rights do not diminish when they lack shelter.
These practices violate the due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment
and the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable seizures.

To evaluate the City and PhxPD’s practices, we rode with and interviewed officers about
their views on homelessness and policing in Phoenix. We reviewed a random sample of
incidents from PhxPD units whose focus is policing homeless people. We reviewed
body-worn camera video. We also scoured city reports on the destruction of property
belonging to homeless people. We toured shelter and service facilities and observed
cleanups of homeless encampments. We talked to city prosecutors, defense attorneys,
and officials responsible for the City’s homelessness programs. Finally, we spoke with
dozens of unhoused people about their experiences in Phoenix and with homeless
advocates.

1. Homelessness in Phoenix

Homelessness places a heavy burden on Phoenix’s resources, including public and

emergency health systems. Over the last decade, the number of homeless people who
cannot find shelter anywhere has nearly tripled. Of the nearly 7,000 unhoused people in
Phoenix in 2023, almost half were unsheltered.35

Until late 2023, a large concentration of Phoenix’s unhoused population lived in a

downtown outdoor encampment known as the Zone. Because there were not enough
shelter beds in the city, hundreds of unhoused people camped in the Zone on the
streets surrounding Phoenix’s largest shelter. At its zenith in 2022, the Zone held over a
thousand people sheltering in tents and under tarps.

35
In 2023, 3,333 homeless residents of Phoenix were without shelter. Maricopa Association of
Governments, 2023 Point in Time (PIT) Report (2023), https://azmag.gov/Portals/0/Homelessness/PIT-
Count/2023/2023-PIT-Count-Report-Final.pdf?ver=3to_Hr4cxOTZboaVUI4H3Q%3d%3d

41
PhxPD contributed to funneling unhoused people into the Zone. PhxPD heavily policed
unhoused people throughout the City, and officers repeatedly told people they could not
sleep outside the Zone. At the same time, officers made clear to unhoused people that
they would receive a reprieve from such enforcement if they relocated to the Zone.

But the Zone was not a safe place to live. Paramedics would not respond to
emergencies in the Zone without a police escort. People in the Zone reported thirty
rapes during 2021-2022. A dead fetus, estimated to be between 20 and 24 weeks old,
was found in the street in 2022. In March 2023, a man was beaten, thrown into a
dumpster, and set on fire. One PhxPD commander told a reporter that the Zone was “an
environment that attracts people [who] want to prey on those individuals that are at the
lowest point in their lives.”

Meanwhile, lawsuits in state and federal court pressured the City and PhxPD to change
their approach to people experiencing homelessness. In October 2022, local property
owners sued in state court claiming the Zone had become a public nuisance and was
hurting business. One month later, a group of unhoused people and local advocates
sued in federal court claiming the City and PhxPD were violating the constitutional rights
of homeless people inside and outside the Zone. The federal court issued a preliminary
injunction prohibiting the City and PhxPD from seizing or disposing a homeless person’s
property without notice and from enforcing laws preventing camping or sleeping in
public “against persons with no practical recourse to housing.”36 In March 2023, the
state court declared the Zone a public nuisance and ordered the City to clear it of
tents.37

To its credit, the City accelerated efforts to relocate many of the Zone’s unhoused
residents to shelters and temporary housing. The City received an amendment to the
federal injunction allowing it to move people to a new, sanctioned outdoor shelter area
with restrooms. By November 2023, the City had closed the Zone to overnight camping
and provided shelter to 585 people who had been living there. Other residents
dispersed and moved to small encampments scattered throughout the City.

[https://perma.cc/C2QB-LC33]. In 2024, that number has decreased to 2,701. Maricopa Association of

Governments, 2024 Point in Time (PIT) Report (2024),
https://azmag.gov/Programs/Homelessness/Data/Point-In-Time-Homelessness-Count
[https://perma.cc/HST5-GFK3].
----------------- -
36
Fund for Empowerment v. City of Phoenix, 646 F. Supp. 3d 1117, 11245 (D. Ariz. 2022).
37
Freddy Brown, et al. v. City of Phoenix, Case No. 2022-010439 (Maricopa Cty. Sup. Ct., Mar. 27,
2023).

42
 Homeless residents The City has established a number of programs
make up more than 37% related to homelessness. In 2017, the City
of all arrests
established the Community Action Response
Engagement Services program, or “Phx CARES,” to
address citizen complaints and help people access
city services. Since 2021, the City has been allocated
nearly $100 million in federal grants to support
programs to address homelessness. In 2022 and
2023, the City added 1,072 shelter beds. This year,
the City has proposed a new shelter to open this
summer.38 Even with the additional proposed beds,
some people will be unable to find shelter.

2. Homelessness and PhxPD

Policing homeless people has been a central pillar of

PhxPD’s enforcement strategy. Between January
2016 and March 2022, patrol officers logged 376,600
hours on nearly half a million trespassing calls. The
But less than 1% of all
number of hours spent on trespassing is likely an
Phoenix residents are
homeless undercount, as officers do not consistently record all
trespassing activity.

PhxPD’s public policy is to “lead with services,” and

this stated policy has encouraged officers to make
referrals, not arrests. But between January 2016 and
March 2022, people who were homeless accounted for
over one-third—37%—of all PhxPD misdemeanor
arrests and citations. One unhoused man came into
contact with PhxPD 97 times between 2016 and 2022
and was arrested or cited at least 20 times between
2019 and 2022.

38
Last year, people experiencing homeless accounted for over half of the City’s record-breaking number
of heat-related deaths.
43
Officers frame many of these encounters as outreach to people experiencing
homelessness, but they check for warrants, search belongings, and make clear that
people are not free to leave. In fact, PhxPD has dedicated several squads to this
purpose. The squads start their shifts before dawn by conducting “rounds,” which
means waking sleeping people, running their names for warrants, and ejecting them
from sidewalks, parks, alleys, dirt areas, and canals.

Interim Chief Sullivan told us he believes police should have “limited involvement when
it comes to homelessness. It’s not a crime.” But the City has chosen PhxPD officers as
a primary response to address the homelessness crisis, leading to the pattern of
violations we describe above.

3. PhxPD Detains, Cites, and Arrests Homeless People in Violation of the

Fourth Amendment

PhxPD’s approach to policing homeless people violates the Constitution. Police officers
can engage in voluntary contacts with community members, but contacts become
seizures when people are no longer free to go.39 Under the Fourth Amendment, officers
may only detain people for investigative purposes if they possess reasonable suspicion
of criminal activity that is “individualized.”40 An officer must have “specific, articulable
facts which, together with objective and reasonable inferences, form the basis for
suspecting that the particular person detained is engaged in criminal activity.”41 Without
reasonable suspicion, a person “may not be detained even momentarily.”42

We found that PhxPD often stops unhoused people for investigative purposes without
reasonable suspicion. Officers initiate these stops based on indications the person is
homeless, even when they are lawfully present on city property. These stops are
particularly coercive when officers detain unhoused people early in the morning, while
they are merely resting or sleeping on public property. These stops sometimes lead to
unlawful citations, often for discretionary misdemeanor offenses like obstructing an
alley.

39
Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 437 (1991). A consensual encounter “may evolve into a situation
where the individual's ability to leave dissipates.” United States v. Ayarza, 874 F.2d 647, 650 (9th Cir.
1989).
40
City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32, 37 (2000); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 (1968).
41
Liberal v. Estrada, 632 F.3d 1064, 1077 (9th Cir. 2011) (quoting United States v. Lopez-Soto, 205 F.3d
1101, 1105 (9th Cir. 2000)).
42
Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 498 (1983).

44
 a. Officers Frequently Lack a Lawful Basis to Detain Homeless
People

Often, the unlawful stops seem to serve solely as a pretext for officers to demand a
person’s identification and check for outstanding warrants. But police violate the Fourth
Amendment when they detain “a pedestrian to check his license without any evidence
that the person is engaged in a crime.”43 In one incident, an officer stopped his squad
car when he saw a man who appeared to be homeless balancing his belongings while
riding a bicycle in an alley. Although the officer had no basis to suspect criminal activity,
he stopped the man to check for warrants anyway.

Sometimes, officers justify their detentions by falsely claiming people are obstructing
sidewalks or alleys. The Phoenix City Code broadly prohibits “obstruction or
interference” of public property, and obstruction of a sidewalk or alley means the
person’s presence impedes traffic.44 But we often saw officers stop unhoused people
who were not obstructing anyone’s access and were sometimes even taking care to
stay out of the way. In a 2023 incident, PhxPD illegally detained two people for sitting in
the shade, well off to the side of an alley. Neither person was impeding traffic; they were
sitting on large chunks of concrete too heavy to move. Still, the officers cited them for
“lying or sitting on a public right of way.” One officer explained: “Try not to be hanging
out in alleys. Otherwise, you’re gonna see PD quite a bit.”

Officers also routinely detain unhoused people in the predawn hours after waking them
to run warrant checks then and then ordering them to move. Like the stops described
above, these are not voluntary encounters. Our review demonstrates the purpose of
these encounters is not to assist homeless people, to offer them services or support, or
to intervene due to a medical emergency. Without suspicion of a crime, officers roust
people sleeping on public property, demand their identification, detain them to ask
questions unrelated to their welfare, and to tell them to move. Such encounters are
coercive, unnecessary, and routinely lead to constitutional violations.

In Phoenix, sleeping in public, by itself, cannot be illegal if a person has no means to

access shelter. Since 2019, sleeping on public property has been constitutionally
protected under Martin v. Boise, in which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that

43
Utah v. Strief, 579 U.S. 232, 242-43 (2016) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting); see also id. at 242-43
(explaining if there “were evidence of a dragnet search” for outstanding warrants after unlawful stops,
then the evidence exclusionary rule could be applied); Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 354-56
(2015) (inquiries during a lawful stop cannot measurably extend the stop’s duration); Delaware v. Prouse,
440 U.S. 648, 663 (1979).
44
See Phoenix City Code § 23-9.

45
criminal punishment for a person’s unavoidable lack of shelter violates the Eighth
Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.45

And in 2022, a federal district court in Arizona ordered the City to cease enforcement of
laws that penalized sitting, standing, or sleeping on public property.46 As the court
explained: “Practically speaking, this threat [of being stopped and cited by officers] is
also a hardship because it creates a sense of fear and instability among the City’s most
vulnerable residents through no fault of their own.”47 But we found that PhxPD officers
continue to detain unhoused people for no reason other than that they are sleeping in
public. Without suspicion of a crime, these early morning detentions are unlawful.

In a 2023 incident, after the injunction, officers woke a group of people and told them,
“You’re being detained because we don't know who you are and you’re camping.” One
woman said she thought they were okay to be in the area because their tent was not
blocking the alley. An officer told her, “The alley is made for city use. It’s not even
supposed to be walked through. As a person. You’re not supposed to walk through an
alley.” In another incident, from 2020, officers woke a 55-year-old man and 51-year-old
woman at 4:55 a.m. They were sleeping on the sidewalk under blankets, leaving plenty
of room for foot traffic, though there was no one else present other than the police. One
officer told the man: “Sir, you understand that you can’t be sleeping on the sidewalk in
the City of Phoenix?” PhxPD ran warrant checks, commanded them to leave the area,
and told the woman “I need you to get up and get moving though, dear.”

The U.S. Supreme Couty took up the issue in 2024, and will determine whether
punishing a person for sleeping outdoors, when they have nowhere to go, is cruel and
unusual under the Eighth Amendment.48 Regardless of any future Supreme Court
ruling, the law in Phoenix has been clear since 2019 that, without more, PhxPD officers
lack reasonable suspicion to stop people for merely sleeping on public property when
they have nowhere else to sleep. PhxPD was required to adhere to this law and it did
not.

45
Martin v. Boise, 920 F.3d 584 (9th Cir. 2019). The U.S. Supreme Court will consider this principle in its
review of Johnson v. City of Grants Pass, 50 F.4th 787, 813 (9th Cir. 2022) (cert. granted).
46
Fund for Empowerment, 646 F. Supp. 3d at 1132.
47
Id. at 1124. Like the laws at issue in Martin v. Boise, the Phoenix City Code bars sleeping and camping
on public property. See Phoenix City Code § 23-30(A) (banning public camping) and Phoenix City
Code § 23-48.01 (prohibiting sleeping on public streets or walkways).
48 See Johnson v. City of Grants Pass, 50 F.4th 787, 813 (9th Cir. 2022) (cert. granted).

46
 b. Officers Cite or Arrest Homeless People Without a Lawful Basis

PhxPD’s practice of illegally waking people up and detaining them for sitting or lying on
public property leads to unlawful citations and arrests. In the early mornings, officers
cite or arrest homeless people for conduct that is plainly not a crime, such as sitting or
lying down on public property or for “trespassing” on private property when they are on
a public sidewalk.

For example, one 69-year-old man has accumulated

multiple citations and arrests for sitting or sleeping on
public property. In 2017, officers arrested him for “loitering “Is there no end to
in a closed park.” He had been sleeping under a blanket, the harassment of
using his backpack for a pillow. In 2021, officers again the homeless?”
found the man wrapped up in a blanket, sleeping upright 69-year-old man,
in a canal. The officers instructed him to move through a detained for sleeping
rocky area in the dark, and he tripped and fell. While
officers ran his name through a warrant check, the man
asked, “Is there no end to the harassment of the homeless?” An officer responded, “Is
there no end to the trespassing or the obstructing?” The other officers laughed. The
man said, “I quietly leave in the morning.” PhxPD cited him for third-degree trespassing,
then told him to go back to get his blanket and backpack: “Just go in there and get your
belongings. Get your trash.”

The Charges Were “A Little Bit Iffy”

Sometimes, when people attempt to leave these unlawful stops, PhxPD officers
use force to detain them. PhxPD officers tried to detain a man for trespassing in
2020, and when he questioned their authority to stop him, they grabbed him, knelt
on his neck, and fired a Taser at him. The officers stopped the man outside a
convenience store where he was talking to two women. Though no one had called
the police, they demanded his identification and told him that he might be
trespassing. The man explained that no one had asked him to leave the store, and
when an officer threatened to arrest him, the man backed away, complained the
officers were “out of order,” and again said that he had not committed a crime.
Officers followed him, grabbed him, and forced him to the ground. One officer
placed his knee, and later his forearm, on the man’s neck. Another officer tased
him. The officers arrested the man for resisting arrest and trespassing, though one
acknowledged these charges were “a little bit iffy.” Prosecutors declined to
prosecute the charges.

47
Some officers seem to have gotten the message that citing homeless people is a
priority. One officer told a group of unhoused people, “You guys need to find
somewhere that’s sustainable. Like, not alleys, not parks, nothing like that because
we’re cracking down on that stuff.” We heard an officer on the bike squad—a squad
dedicated to waking and moving homeless people—say on body-worn camera that he
needed to write a trespassing citation because, “I gotta get my tickets up this month.” In
another incident, a different bike squad officer said he “need[ed]” to write a trespassing
citation because, “[t]his puts me at 30.” In 2022, the bike squad received a
commendation for their arrest record the year before. In another incident, an officer
warned a woman that she needed to leave the alley and not come back. “And then if I
find you in the alley again, I gotta arrest you. Which I hate to do that. That's stupid right?
Just for being in the alley? But I have to.”

c. Officers Abuse Trespassing Laws to Unlawfully Detain People

Experiencing Homelessness

PhxPD also cites people for misdemeanor trespassing, claiming that they are on private
property when they are not. In one early morning incident, officers issued unlawful
trespassing citations to a man and a woman sleeping in the dirt under a tarp. Officers
claimed in their report that the “property belongs to ADOT (Arizona Department of
Transportation),” which had an “authority to arrest” on file with PhxPD. But the officers
were unsure who owned the location where the people were sleeping, even after
several minutes of riding their bikes around the property and consulting their maps.
Having come to no consensus, one officer said, “who knows,” and wrote the citation.

In February 2018 and February 2019, PhxPD issued bulletins reminding officers that
they need to have reasonable suspicion to detain a person for trespassing or require
them to provide identification. PhxPD also reminded officers that they cannot detain
someone just to issue a trespass warning. But we found many instances where officers
stopped and held people without reasonable suspicion and only then tried to determine
whether they might be trespassing.

For example, officers check to see if a property has an “authority to arrest” on file with
PhxPD after they have already detained homeless people. PhxPD encourages officers
to help property owners obtain “authority to arrest” documentation, which permits
PhxPD to cite or arrest people for trespassing on private property without contacting the
owner. In one predawn example, officers roused a woman sleeping in the dirt on public
property between a fence and the street. The dirt was approximately three feet wide,
next to a business, with no paved sidewalk separating it from the street. Only after
holding the woman by the side of the road for about six minutes did officers determine
no “authority to arrest” existed. Instead, they cited her for “obstructing public areas”—
48
although she was not preventing anyone from using the area—and told her to pack up
her belongings and move.

Citations—often given in lieu of arrest—require a person to appear in court. If the

person does not do so, the court issues a warrant for failure to appear, which leads to
arrests and time in jail. City officials and people experiencing homelessness told us that
getting to court is challenging and bench warrants are commonplace for these citations.

PhxPD told us that they rely on prosecutors to tell them if there are issues related to
their trespassing enforcement. In practice, however, this information rarely reaches
prosecutors or any judicial adjudication at all. The courts and city prosecutors review
only a small fraction of PhxPD’s trespassing charges because most people in custody
plead guilty and are quickly released. When city prosecutors do look at trespassing
charges, they decline to prosecute nearly 96% of them.49 The high rate of declinations
may indicate that officers lacked the necessary probable cause to cite people for
trespassing, or that pursuing the matter in court was not worth the resources. But when
we asked the PhxPD commander in charge of the shelter and street squads whether
PhxPD had reconsidered the practice of waking people up, he told us, “We’re still going
to wake people to arrest them.”

4. The City and PhxPD Seize and Dispose of the Property of Homeless
People in Violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments

The City and PhxPD’s strategy for policing the homeless population extends to seizing
and destroying their personal property without due process. Sometimes, this practice
occurs following the illegal detentions described above. Other times, it results from a
joint effort between PhxPD and other city agencies to clean up encampments, usually
with help from PhxPD officers.

People experiencing homelessness do not lose Fourth Amendment property rights to

their belongings, even if they leave them temporarily unattended on the sidewalk. The
government cannot seize and destroy those belongings without affording the owner due
process.50 That means the government must take “reasonable steps to give notice that
the property has been taken so the owner can pursue available remedies for its
return.”51 Before destroying property, the government must provide adequate notice of

49
For example, of the approximately 1,727 citations and arrests third-degree trespassing in 2021,
prosecutors reviewed only 268. They declined 257, or 95.9%.
50
Lavan v. City of Los Angeles, 693 F. 3d 1022, 1031-32 (9th Cir. 2012); see also Garcia v. City of Los
Angeles, 11 F.4th 1113, 1124 (9th Cir.2021) (“[T]he government may not summarily destroy the
unabandoned personal property of homeless individuals that is kept in public areas.”).
51
Lavan, 693 F.3d at 1032 (internal quotations omitted).

49
its intent to clean up areas where property may be seized, inventory property present,
and store the property so that people may try to retrieve their belongings.

The City and PhxPD failed to follow these constitutional requirements. Until 2022, they
routinely destroyed property without adequate notice or process during clean-ups at the
Zone. And throughout the City, they continue to destroy property during clean-ups
organized through the Phoenix CARES program, or during officers’ day-to-day
encounters with homeless people. We watched these practices on body-worn camera
video, saw them first-hand, and found them in PhxPD officers’ and city employees’ own
reports.

In 2022 and 2023, the City and PhxPD updated policies to require more process before
throwing away a person’s belongings. But the new policies failed to achieve
constitutional requirements. Dozens of unhoused people have spoken to us about
losing property they needed for survival, such as clothing, tents, medication, and
identification. They also spoke of losing property of immense personal value, including
family photographs, correspondence, and, according to one man’s account, an urn
containing a family member’s ashes.

a. Seizure and Destruction of Property in the Zone

As described above, Phoenix closed the Zone in the fall of 2023. But from October 2020
to January 2022, the City’s “clean-up operations” in the Zone routinely resulted in
constitutional violations. These clean-ups, conducted three times a week, required
significant city resources, including an entire police squad, multiple outreach workers,
multiple city employees, and various city contractors.

Starting at 5:00 a.m., PhxPD officers would drive block by block, using patrol sirens and
loudspeakers to warn residents that they had to move and that “anything left behind will
be considered abandoned property. If you’re looking to downsize, now’s a good time to
do it.” PhxPD officers would then cordon off a block at a time so city employees could
dispose of all property and trash. While observing these clean-ups, Justice Department
investigators saw workers throw away a tent, tarp, duffle bag, purse, and sleeping bag,
among other things. When each block was clear, residents were free to push, carry, or
drag their property back to their assigned area, re-assemble their tents, and unpack
their belongings. During one clean-up we observed, an officer asked people moving
their property if they were familiar with the concept of “minimalism.”

Despite public criticism of these practices, the City failed to provide legally adequate
notice of the cleanups to people living in the Zone. Until January 2022, the City posted
no signs to explain the frequency or duration of the clean-ups. For some homeless

50
residents, the first notice they received was the sunrise announcement by PhxPD
officers, just before the clean-ups began. People who failed to move their property
sometimes lost everything. In one example, an officer told a man who had been slow to
move his things that unless he moved away and allowed city workers to destroy his
property, the officer would cite him for obstructing the clean-up. In another example, a
56-year-old man was late moving his property and told officers “he was trying to move
as fast as he could.” This man, too, failed to move his belongings quickly enough. The
officers cited him for failure to obey an order and shoplifting because among his
possessions, the man had two milkcrates bearing the name of a local dairy.

Around January 2022, the City and PhxPD changed their procedures for cleaning up the
Zone. Officers no longer forced residents to move their property; instead, city staff and
contractors cleaned around people’s tents and belongings, resulting in fewer
complaints. At the end of December 2022, the City created a protocol for impounding
and storing property during clean-ups. But these improvements were mostly limited to
highly visible areas inside the Zone. Elsewhere in the City, as described below, the
practice of seizing and destroying property without due process continues.

b. Seizure and Destruction of Property throughout the City

With PhxPD’s assistance, the City has facilitated hundreds of encampment clean-ups
outside the Zone, which has also resulted in unlawful destruction of unhoused people’s
property. The Phoenix CARES program was established to connect “the community
with services like encampment cleanups, shelters, and other resources for individuals
and families experiencing homelessness.” But it has largely evolved into a complaint-
based response program that enables the unlawful seizure and destruction of property
outside the Zone. Community members can make complaints online about homeless
activity and encampments in their neighborhoods, prompting law enforcement to
respond with other city agencies. PhxPD and city officials then force unhoused people
to leave the area and destroy property left behind.

Prior to 2023, Phoenix had no policy to ensure unhoused people received notice of a
clean-up or to determine whether they had abandoned their property. The City did not
store property after seizing it, and it did not notify residents that their property had been
taken nor tell them how to get it back. Instead, the City destroyed all property it found at
encampments around the City.

PhxPD officers play a critical role in the encampment clean-up program. PhxPD assigns
officers to respond to city-identified “hotspots” for routine clean-ups and outreach. For
example, before weekly clean-ups in the Sunnyslope neighborhood, PhxPD’s bike
squad makes its rounds with early morning wake-ups to expel homeless people from

51
the area. Then, city workers arrive to clean up the remains of any encampments and
dispose of property along with the trash. PhxPD also coordinates with the City’s Streets
Department. A Streets Department employee emails a list of places targeted for clean-
up to PhxPD officers. The next morning, PhxPD officers drive to the locations to warn
about the cleanup, if anyone is present. A few hours later, city staff arrive with a
bulldozer, scoop up everything without regard to what the items are, and dump it all into
a garbage truck.

These efforts have resulted in the illegal seizure and destruction of property. Many
people lost their only possessions. For example, during a ride-along in April 2022, a
Justice Department investigator saw city workers throw away a tent, ice cooler, bedding,
and shoes without providing notice. Someone had complained that an unhoused person
was living in a tent in a dirt alleyway. In coordination with PhxPD officers, the City’s
Streets Department staff scooped up everything with a bulldozer and destroyed all the
property. We were informed that this practice was routine. Indeed, we reviewed many
case files that included photographs of the possessions taken and destroyed without
notice.

In December 2022, a federal court ordered the City to stop seizing unhoused people’s
property without notice. The court also required the City to maintain any seized property
in a secure location for at least 30 days, absent “an immediate threat to public health or
safety.” In 2023, the City created policies to provide 24-hour notice before cleanups, to
distinguish between property and trash, and to store property. But even after the
injunction and new policies were in place, we reviewed many cases in which city
officials destroyed people’s belongings without notice or the opportunity to reclaim them.

c. Failure to Impound Property After Arrests

In some instances, when PhxPD arrested people experiencing homelessness for

trespassing or other minor violations, officers failed to collect and impound the people’s
personal property. Usually, when officers make an arrest, they collect all personal items
so the person may claim them upon release. But we saw officers forego this process
entirely, forcing people to abandon their belongings on the street. People experiencing
homelessness repeatedly told us they lost all their possessions after PhxPD arrested
them.

For example, officers abandoned the property of seven people whom they illegally
arrested for trespassing when they were sitting and sleeping along the edge of a wide
public sidewalk. An officer roused the group by yelling: “This right here is trespassing.
You cannot be here. Period.” The officers took all seven people into custody and tossed
their personal property onto the sidewalk rather than impounding it. One woman

52
pleaded, “Please. All my stuff is here. Everything. Please.” An officer looked at the
blankets and clothes and told the sergeant: “This is all junk. There’s nothing.” The
sergeant agreed, and the officers left the property on the sidewalk.

5. Unconstitutional Detentions and Property Destruction Harm People Who

Are Homeless

The City and PhxPD rightfully have an interest in maintaining public spaces in a clean
and safe condition. But the punitive practices we saw have harmed the physical
wellbeing and safety of unhoused people, making it more difficult for them to find stable
housing or employment.

A man told us that having his property thrown away “most definitely made it harder to
escape homelessness.” People told us about belongings the City had thrown away:
tents, blankets, clothes, phones, sleeping bags, identification, court documents, medical
paperwork, food stamp cards, social security cards, birth certificates, and insulin.
“Basically anything and everything you need to survive out there is taken,” said one
woman. Another woman missed her appointment for affordable housing vouchers
because she was trying to keep her things from being thrown away. Another told us she
lost her birth certificate when the City threw away her tent, which “made it impossible to
get housing.” Others said they needed to ask friends to move their belongings if they
could not be there for a sweep because they had work, a court appearance, a medical
appointment, or some other need. Indeed, service providers told us that fewer people
sought services on clean-up days.

People experiencing homelessness told us that they feel harassed by the City’s clean-
ups and detentions. One man we spoke to said officers threw out his belongings while
saying, “You guys are trash, and this is trash.” An unhoused woman told us that “police
[are] forgetting that we are part of the community.” Another woman said, “I feel like I am
a target. We are so afraid.” During our review of randomly selected incidents, we ran
across body-worn camera video of the bike squad waking this same woman for
trespassing on a City-owned dirt patch outside a homeless services center. “All we are
trying to do is survive,” said another woman, referring to the bike squad’s frequent early
morning patrols. She added, “I don’t know where they want us. They don’t want us
here.”

Officers told people as much. One officer said, “You cannot sit. You can’t lie. You can’t
sleep … Go somewhere else.” When asked where they should go, the officer said,
“There’s a lot of resources. So, I don’t buy that it’s cold, it’s rainy. You have a place to
go. It’s called a shelter.” But we also saw officers cite people when they were sleeping
outside shelters and soup kitchens, waiting for the facilities to open. One man woken

53
outside a soup kitchen in the early morning told officers he would leave. In response, an
officer said: “You’re not free to go. You’re under arrest, and if you try to leave, you’re
going to jail.”

* * *

Phoenix is not alone in confronting the crisis of homelessness in our country. Cities
understandably struggle to balance the needs of all of their residents in creating safe,
livable environments. For too long, however, Phoenix has given law enforcement the
responsibility of addressing this complex social problem. Banishing homeless people
from public spaces by unlawful means, destroying their property, and cycling them
through the criminal justice system does not solve the problem or address its root
causes. And in Phoenix, it has led to a pattern of constitutional violations.

54
C. PhxPD Discriminates Against Black, Hispanic, and Native American
People When Enforcing the Law

We have reasonable cause to believe that PhxPD engages in racial discrimination, in

violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Safe Streets Act.52 These
statutes prohibit police practices that have an unjustified disparate impact on the
grounds of race or national origin. Police practices that disproportionately affect Black,
Hispanic, or Native American people are unlawful unless there is a substantial,
legitimate, nondiscriminatory justification.53

As we described in Section B of this Report, PhxPD’s enforcement strategy has focused

on policing low-level violations, including quality-of-life offenses that often involve
people who are homeless. This enforcement strategy also results in stark disparities in
how officers treat Black, Hispanic, and Native American people. We conducted rigorous
statistical analyses that ruled out causes other than discrimination for these disparities.
We found that PhxPD discriminates in several ways:

• PhxPD uses race or national origin as a factor when enforcing traffic laws.
Officers cite a disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic drivers
when compared to violations recorded by neutral traffic cameras in the
same locations. PhxPD also enforces traffic laws more severely against
Black and Hispanic drivers than it does against white drivers engaged in
the same behaviors.
• PhxPD enforces alcohol use offenses and low-level drug offenses more
severely against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people than
against white people engaged in the same behaviors.
• PhxPD enforces quality-of-life laws, like loitering and trespassing, more
severely against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people than it does
against white people engaged in the same behaviors.

52
42 U.S.C. § 2000d (Title VI); 28 C.F.R. § 42.104(b)(2) (Title VI); 34 U.S.C. § 10228(c)(1) (Safe Streets
Act); 28 C.F.R. § 42.203(e) (Safe Streets Act).
53
Larry P. By Lucille P. v. Riles, 793 F.2d 969, 982 n.9 (9th Cir. 1984) (abrogated on other grounds by
Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. (2001)) (stating that, in the Title VI context, once a plaintiff has
demonstrated that a practice has a discriminatory effect, the burden shifts to the defendant to show that
the requirement “has a manifest relationship” to the program at issue); Georgia State Conf. of Branches
of NAACP v. Georgia, 775 F.2d 1403, 1417 (11th Cir. 1985); United States v. Maricopa County, 151
F.Supp.3d 998, 1031 (D. Ariz. 2015) (granting summary judgment to the United States on Title VI claim
regarding sheriff’s office’s discrimination against Hispanics); see also see also Texas Dep’t of Housing &
Cmty. Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 576 U.S. 519, 524 (2015); Watson v. Fort Worth
Bank and Trust, 487 U.S. 977, 986 (1988).

55
This disparate enforcement violates the law.

Although it is common for major city police departments to use enforcement data to
evaluate whether officers treat people differently due, in part, to race or national origin,
PhxPD does not do so. Indeed, before we opened this investigation, PhxPD did not
ensure that officers reported basic information about their enforcement activity, such as
when they stopped people but did not make an arrest or issue a citation.54 PhxPD still
does not require officers to collect data on searches that do not yield contraband. And
even where PhxPD is aware of specific claims of officer bias, the agency fails to
respond appropriately, mishandling or even ignoring complaints of overt discrimination.

1. PhxPD Engages in Racially Disparate Law Enforcement that Harms

Black, Hispanic, and Native American People

The Constitution and federal law prohibit selective enforcement of the law based on
race.55 Our review of PhxPD’s data revealed that PhxPD cites and arrests Black,
Hispanic, and Native American people for low-level traffic, drug, alcohol, and quality-of-
life offenses at rates disproportionate to their shares of the population.

PhxPD officers respond to calls for service but also engage in proactive policing, such
as choosing to stop, cite, or arrest people. Bias can affect these decisions. Officers
spend about 20% of their time on self-initiated enforcement.56 We focused on these
self-initiated encounters involving low-level offenses because officers have a high
degree of discretion in choosing whether or how to enforce the law in these areas. We
found unexplained disparities based on race and national origin in PhxPD officers’
enforcement of traffic laws, drug and alcohol laws, and quality-of-life offenses.

Racial disparities are a clear sign that a police department must evaluate if officers are
engaging in unconstitutional policing, or if, as here, department-wide practices have an
unjustified disparate impact.57 When we performed rigorous analyses of PhxPD’s

54
As a result, we could not evaluate disparities in PhxPD officers’ traffic and pedestrian stops that did not
result in citations or arrests.
55
Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996) (“We of course agree with petitioners that the
Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race.”); 42
U.S.C. § 2000d (Title VI); 28 C.F.R. § 42.203.
56
When we say officer “time,” in this context, we mean the time that officers spend dispatched to an
encounter, whether due to a 911 call or because the officer makes the decision to stop someone.
57
See Int’l Broth. of Teamsters v. U.S., 431 U.S. 324, 339-40 (1977) (noting that “‘(s)tatistical analyses
have served and will continue to serve an important role’ in cases in which the existence of discrimination
is a disputed issue,” but that “statistics are not irrefutable” and “their usefulness depends on all of the

56
enforcement to eliminate plausible race-neutral reasons for these disproportionate
rates, we still found overwhelming statistical evidence that the racial and ethnic
disparities in PhxPD’s citations and arrests are due to discrimination. The results of
these studies were clear: PhxPD unlawfully uses race as a factor when enforcing the
law.

a. PhxPD Engages in Discriminatory Enforcement of Traffic

Offenses

PhxPD has faced long-standing community criticism that officers use race and national
origin as a factor in their traffic enforcement. Community members echoed these
concerns to Justice Department investigators. Officers spend over one-quarter of their
time making traffic stops. In PhxPD, as in many police departments, officers have a
great deal of discretion in this area: They are allowed to decide for themselves which
drivers to stop and whether to warn, cite, or arrest drivers for violations they observe.
When officers use race or national origin as a factor in deciding how to apply their
discretion, they “engender[ ] feelings of fear, resentment, hostility, and mistrust,”
particularly in Black, Hispanic, and Native American people.58

Our analysis of PhxPD’s data validated the community’s concerns. For instance, though
Hispanic and white people make up roughly even shares of the Phoenix population,
PhxPD cites or arrests Hispanic people for traffic-equipment related offenses at three
times the rate of white people. This pattern holds when looking at specific low-level
offenses. PhxPD cites or arrests Hispanic people 12 times as often as white people for
improper tinting of windows, seven times as often for improper license plate lights, and
more than eight times as often for squealing tires. Black people, too, experience a
disproportionate share of traffic equipment-related enforcement in Phoenix. Black
people make up only 7.4% of Phoenix’s population, but on a per capita basis, Black
people are cited or arrested three times as often as white people for traffic-equipment
related offenses, including four times as often for improper license plate lights and three
times as often for improper tinting of windows, and for having rear lights or reflectors
that are not red.

surrounding facts and circumstances”); Chavez v. Illinois State Police, 251 F.3d 612, 637 (7th Cir. 2001)
(“The Supreme Court has long noted the importance of statistical analysis in cases in which the existence
of discrimination is a disputed issue.”) (internal citation omitted); see also Melendres v. Skinner, 989
F.Supp.2d 822, 903 (D. Ariz. 2013) (noting that agency’s failure to monitor its data for patterns of racial
bias constituted evidence of discriminatory intent).
58
United States v. Montero-Camargo, 208 F.3d 1122, 1135 n.23 (9th Cir. 2000) (quoting P. Verniero,
Attorney General of New Jersey, Interim Report of the State Police Review Team Regarding Allegations
of Racial Profiling 4, 7 (April 20, 1999) (insertion omitted)).

57
 Even when it comes to
Per capita rates of enforcement for low-level
using bicycles rather than
offenses
cars, PhxPD
• ••• ••• ••• ••
Improper window
tinting
tttttttttttt disproportionately cites
and arrests Black and
Hispanic people, compared
•••••••• to their shares of the
Squealing tires tttttttt Hispanic
population. Black people
are cited or arrested more
than twice as often as
••••••• White white people for having
Improper license
plate lights
ttttttt bicycles without adequate
brakes and nearly three
times as often for failing to
Citations and arrests of Hispanic people ride a bicycle on the right
compared to white people side of the road. Similarly,
PhxPD cites or arrests
Hispanic people almost twice as often as white people for these violations.

Speeding enforcement is highly discretionary. We found similar disparities when we

assessed PhxPD enforcement of speeding laws and other moving violations. PhxPD
cites or arrests Black and Hispanic people for speeding over 1.5 times more often than
it does white people. For other moving violations, Black people are cited or arrested at
1.6 times the rate and Hispanic people at almost twice the rate of white people. We also
found disparities in PhxPD’s enforcement of specific offenses. For example, Black
people are over 3.5 times more likely and Hispanic people almost four times more likely
than white people to be cited or arrested for failing to signal 100 feet before turning.

Disparities like these in police enforcement can be caused by multiple factors and are
not, by themselves, definitive proof of discrimination. We designed two rigorous
analyses to evaluate whether the disparities were due to factors other than race.

Violator Study. First, to determine whether PhxPD officers engage in selective

enforcement of the law in their traffic stops, we designed a “violator” study. In studying
disparities in policing, violator studies have long been used by researchers to identify
unwarranted racial disparities in traffic enforcement.59 We compared PhxPD data on

59
See State v. Soto, 324 N.J. Super. 66, 83-84 (Law Div. 1996) (“Statistics may be used to make out a
case of targeting minorities for prosecution of traffic offenses provided the comparison is between the
racial composition of the motorist population violating the traffic laws and the racial composition of those
arrested for traffic infractions on the relevant roadway patrolled by the police agency.”)

58
officers’ traffic stops to data from Phoenix traffic cameras. Traffic cameras offer a
unique opportunity for “benchmarking,” or establishing a baseline against which to
compare police enforcement. This is because these machines record traffic violations
without regard to the race of the driver. Therefore, violations recorded by traffic cameras
provide a benchmark to use when assessing the role of race in police officers’
enforcement.

We used data collected by city red light and speeding cameras from 2016 through early
2020.60 We compared the rates at which speeding cameras detected violations to the
rates at which PhxPD officers issued speeding tickets. To ensure we evaluated the
same population of drivers, we compared only speeding citations officers had issued in
locations close to each camera, at a similar time of day, during the same period of the
week (weekday vs. weekend), and during the same month of the same year. We
excluded speeding citations when the police recorded that the driver had committed an
additional offense that could have been the primary reason for the stop, such as the
improper use of a left turn lane.

Next, we followed the same procedure when comparing violations found by individual
officers to violations detected by red light cameras, with one modification. Because the
City had far fewer red light cameras than speeding cameras, we did not have enough
data to reliably compare only police enforcement for running red lights. To rectify this,
we compared violations detected by red light cameras to PhxPD officers’ enforcement
of low-level, non-speed moving traffic violations.

If PhxPD officers did not take race into account when deciding which drivers to ticket or
arrest for speeding and low-level traffic violations, we would expect them to cite or
arrest drivers of all races at close to the same rate the cameras detect drivers in each
group committing these violations. That is not what we found. Instead, PhxPD officers
cite or arrest a significantly larger proportion of Black and Hispanic drivers than the
race-neutral rates at which the cameras detect violations:

• Among drivers who speed near school-zone speeding cameras, Hispanic

drivers are 51% more likely to be cited or arrested by PhxPD officers, compared
to white drivers.61

60
The city terminated its most recent traffic camera program in 2020.
61
Put differently, among speeding stops by PhxPD officers, Hispanic drivers were overrepresented by
more than 10 percentage points, compared to how often speeding cameras found this group to commit
violations in comparable places and times. (A percentage point difference expresses the difference
between two percentages.) Among speeding stops by PhxPD officers, Black drivers were

59
 • Among drivers who speed near school-zone speeding cameras, Black drivers are
90% more likely to be cited or arrested by PhxPD officers, compared to white
drivers.
• Among drivers who engage in low-level moving violations near red light cameras,
Hispanic drivers are 40% more likely to be cited or arrested by PhxPD officers,
compared to white drivers.
• Among drivers who engage in low-level moving violations near red light cameras,
Black drivers are 144% more likely to be cited or arrested by PhxPD officers,
compared to white drivers.

Low-level Low-level
moving moving School zone School zone
violations: violations: speeding: speeding:
Black drivers are Hispanic drivers are Black drivers are Hispanic drivers are

144% 40% 90% 51%

more likely to be more likely to be more likely to be more likely to be
cited or arrested cited or arrested cited or arrested cited or arrested

We designed this analysis to rule out race-neutral reasons for PhxPD officers patrolling
near the cameras at comparable times to detect a significantly higher proportion of
Black and Hispanic drivers violating the law than the cameras do. These are statistically
significant differences, and we ruled out all plausible race-neutral explanations for the
difference between police enforcement and neutral enforcement by cameras.62 The
explanation for the difference is that PhxPD discriminates against Black and Hispanic
drivers.

overrepresented by more than 4 percentage points, compared to how often speeding cameras found this
group to commit violations in comparable places and times. Among stops by PhxPD officers for low-level
traffic offenses, Hispanic drivers were overrepresented by more than 8 percentage points, compared to
how often red light cameras found this group to commit violations in comparable places and times. And
among stops by PhxPD officers for low-level traffic offenses, Black drivers were overrepresented by more
than 6 percentage points, compared to how often red light cameras found this group to commit violations
in comparable places and times.
62
In the field of statistics, results are generally considered statistically significant if they would occur by
chance no more than 5 times out of 100.

60
Study of Similarly Situated People. We also analyzed PhxPD data from January 2016
through August 2022 to identify incidents in which PhxPD officers cited or arrested
people of different races or national origin for the same conduct, based on officers’ own
words. Like the violator study, we designed this analysis to rule out explanations other
than race for officers’ disparate treatment. To make this comparison, we took all
assertions PhxPD officers made in their reports at face value. In other words, we did not
question officers’ decisions about where to patrol, who to stop, who to search, which
offenses to accuse people of, or how many charges to arrest or cite people for. To be
“similarly situated” for our analysis, people had to be accused of committing exactly the
same violations. We then examined whether there are differences by race or national
origin in how PhxPD officers treat similarly situated people.

This second analysis confirmed our findings about PhxPD’s disparate treatment in traffic
enforcement. We compared officers’ decisions to cite or arrest across thousands of
stops with similarly situated drivers, evaluating whether PhxPD officers treat white
people differently than similarly situated Black, Hispanic, and Native American people
with regard to the amount of time they detain suspects, whether they cite or arrest
suspects, and whether they book suspects rather than citing or simply releasing them.63
We found overwhelming disparities across every non-white group for a range of low-
level violations. These statistically significant disparities cannot be explained by reasons
other than the race or national origin of the driver. The analysis showed that PhxPD
officers treat Black and Hispanic drivers more harshly than white drivers they accuse of
the exact same violations.64 For example:

• PhxPD officers were 10% more likely to simply release white drivers they
stopped for low-level traffic offenses, while they cited or arrested Hispanic
drivers for the same violations.
• After stopping drivers for speeding, PhxPD officers were over 60% more likely
to release white drivers in 30 minutes or less, compared with the lengthy
detentions that they subjected Black drivers to for the same offenses.

Taken together, the violator study and the study of similarly situated people
demonstrate that when PhxPD officers exercise their discretion to enforce traffic laws,
they consider race as a factor.

63
We performed conservative multiple-testing corrections to avoid false positives when examining
multiple groups and types of PhxPD decisions.
64
As we discuss in more detail below, our study of similarly situated people also determined that
disparities in PhxPD’s enforcement of drug and alcohol offenses and quality-of-life offenses could not be
explained by reasons other than race or national origin of the suspect. The affected groups in those areas
of enforcement were Black, Hispanic, and Native American people.

61
These studies confirm the perceptions of people stopped by PhxPD. One Black
rideshare driver told us that PhxPD officers unfairly targeted him for speeding multiple
times. “They just need to stop profiling,” he said. “There’s a lot more stuff for people in
Phoenix to do than target Black and brown people.” And a Black woman who
complained to PhxPD that an officer racially profiled her when he stopped her for
speeding and arrested her for allegedly refusing to provide her ID, shared the view that
the police have misallocated their resources. “There’s people out there committing
crimes and you’re pulling me and harassing me and detaining me in the jail,” she
explained. According to PhxPD records of the encounter, the woman tried multiple times
to complain about profiling, including to a PhxPD supervisor she spoke to while being
booked. As the supervisor explained in his report, the woman told him that the officer
“looked at her and in her opinion he saw a [B]lack face, a [B]lack woman and he used,
exerted his badge… that is what she felt like.” The supervisor did not open a formal
investigation, explaining: “I am not seeing any violation of policy.”

b. PhxPD Engages in Discriminatory Enforcement of Drug and

Alcohol Offenses

We also found striking disparities when evaluating officers’ decisions to enforce laws
criminalizing alcohol and controlled substances, including marijuana.65 Studies show
that Black and Hispanic people use marijuana at roughly the same rate as white
people.66 If PhxPD enforced laws prohibiting marijuana possession without regard to
race, Black and Hispanic people would be cited or arrested at a similar rate to white
people. But that is not what we found. Our review of PhxPD’s data showed massive
disparities: PhxPD officers cited or arrested Black people in Phoenix for marijuana
possession at almost seven times the rate they cited or arrested white people for the
same offense. PhxPD officers were over three times more likely to cite or arrest

65
In 2020, Arizona voters approved a change in state law that, among other things, allowed adults (age
21 and older) to possess up to one ounce of marijuana. A.R.S. § 36-2852. The law also provided for the
licensing of dispensaries that can legally sell marijuana. A.R.S. § 36-2858.
66
U.S. Dept. of Health & Hum. Servs., Substance Abuse and & Mental Health Servs. Admin., 2021 Nat’
Survey on Drug Use & Health (NSDUH), at tbl.
1.27B, https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt39441/NSDUHDetailedTabs2021/NSDU
HDetailedTabs2021/NSDUHDetTabs1-26to1-28pe2021.pdf [https://perma.cc/CE2E-2X4G]; see also
2021 NSDUH Annual Report (Dec. 2022), at 17, https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2022-
12/2021NSDUHFFRHighlightsRE123022.pdf [https://perma.cc/73WD-VZRV].

62
 Per capita rates of Hispanic people for this offense, compared with
enforcement for marijuana the rate at which they cited or arrested white
possession people.

We observed stark disparities in how PhxPD

Black
enforced alcohol laws against Native American
••• people, as well. On a per capita basis, Native
Hispanic
ttt American people in Phoenix were 44 times more
• likely than white people to be cited or arrested for
White
t possessing or consuming alcohol. Disparities also
exist for Black people: They were over five times
Citations and arrests of Black and
more likely than white people to be cited or
Hispanic people compared to white
arrested for this offense.
people
Our study of similarly situated people, described
above, confirmed that PhxPD uses race as a factor when enforcing these drug- or
alcohol-related offenses. PhxPD officers were 11% more likely to take no action against
white people for low-level drug offenses, while officers cited or arrested Black people
stopped for the very same crimes. PhxPD officers also discriminate against Hispanic
and Native American people in their enforcement of drug laws. When investigating drug-
related offenses, PhxPD officers were 27% more likely to release white people in 30
minutes or less, while they detained
Per capita rates of enforcement for
Native American people accused of
public consumption
the same conduct for longer than 30
minutes. And PhxPD officers were •••••••••
ttttttttt
18% more likely to release white
people in 30 minutes or less for
possession of marijuana, compared to
tttttttttt
tttttttttt White
*t
Native American

Hispanic people they accused of the

•••••••• • •
same crime.
tttttttttt
•••••
When enforcing offenses related to
public consumption of alcohol, PhxPD
ttttt
Citations and arrests of white people compared
officers are harsher toward Native to Native American people
American and Hispanic people than
they are to white people they accuse
of the same conduct. PhxPD officers were 14% more likely to release white people in 30
minutes or less, while they subjected Hispanic people to extended detentions. And
PhxPD officers were more than twice as likely to cite or arrest Native American people
for these offenses, while letting white people whom officers stopped for the same
conduct go.

63
 c. PhxPD Engages in Discriminatory Enforcement of Quality-of-Life
Offenses

PhxPD also enforces what are known as quality-of-life offenses—minor violations of the
public peace, including pedestrian traffic offenses, vagrancy, loitering, bans on camping
and panhandling, and trespassing. We found that PhxPD officers enforce these quality-
of-life offenses against Hispanic, Black, and Native American people disproportionately,
compared with their shares of the population. For instance, on a per capita basis, Black
and Native American people in Phoenix were over three times as likely as white people
to be cited or arrested for failing to yield to traffic as a pedestrian. We found similar
disparities in how PhxPD officers enforced the law prohibiting walking in the street when
a sidewalk is provided: Black and Native American pedestrians were around five times
more likely and Hispanic pedestrians two times more likely than white pedestrians to be
cited or arrested for this offense. And PhxPD cited or arrested Black people more than
3.5 times as often and Native American people almost six times more often than white
people for crossing a street against a “Don’t Walk” signal.

As discussed in Section B of this Report, PhxPD devotes substantial resources to

policing the City’s unhoused population. We found disparities in how PhxPD enforces
laws often used against this group, too. For instance, on a per capita basis, Native
American people in Phoenix were 26 times more likely than white people to be cited or
arrested for remaining at a bus stop
for over one hour in an eight-hour Per capita rates of enforcement for
period, though Native American remaining at a bus stop for more
people make up only approximately than 1 hour
7% of the local homeless population
•••••••••
while white people make up 68%.
Black people, too, were cited or
t•• ttttttttt
•• •••••••
Native American

arrested disproportionately for this

offense, at about four times the rate of
tttttttttt
•••••••
White

white people, though the local ttttttt

homeless population is about 20% Citations and arrests of white people
Black. And PhxPD cited or arrested compared to Native American people
Black and Native American people
more than three times as often as
white people for lying or sitting on a public right of way. PhxPD also enforced
trespassing statutes in a racially disproportionate manner. On a per capita basis, PhxPD
cited or arrested Black people three times as often, and Native American people over
3.5 times as often as white people for trespassing offenses.

64
Our analysis of how PhxPD treats similarly situated people confirmed that these
trespass-related disparities are not explained by factors other than race. We found
numerous statistically significant disparities. For example, when choosing whether to
cite, arrest, or release suspects for trespassing, PhxPD officers were 54% more likely to
release white people without taking enforcement action, while officers chose to arrest or
cite Native American people for the same offense. Sometimes these differences in
treatment meant jail time: PhxPD officers were 14.5% more likely to book Native
American people for trespass-related offenses, while they cited or released white
people stopped for the same violation. When investigating trespass-related offenses,
PhxPD officers were also 7.6% more likely to release white people in 30 minutes or
less, while they detained Native American people for more than 30 minutes. PhxPD
officers’ detentions of Hispanic and Black people for trespass-related offenses reflected
similar patterns. PhxPD officers were 6.7% more likely to release white people in 30
minutes or less when investigating these offenses, while they subjected Hispanic people
to lengthy detentions. And PhxPD officers were 23% more likely to release white people
in 30 minutes or less for criminal third-degree trespass, while they subjected Black
people suspected of the same crime to lengthy detentions.

d. PhxPD Engages in Discriminatory Enforcement Based on the

Racial Composition of Neighborhoods and Precincts

Location matters when it comes to how often PhxPD enforces certain laws. On a per
capita basis, PhxPD officers enforce low-level traffic, drug, alcohol, and quality-of-life
laws more in neighborhoods with fewer white people.67 In predominantly non-white
neighborhoods, PhxPD officers arrest or cite people, regardless of race, for low-level
drug and alcohol-related offenses at almost four times the rate that they enforce these
laws in majority white neighborhoods. Enforcement of traffic equipment-related laws
follows a similar pattern: Officers enforce these laws over 2.5 times more often in
predominantly non-white neighborhoods, compared to majority white neighborhoods.
The differences are even more stark with respect to certain violations:

• Officers cite or arrest cyclists for biking on the wrong side of the road almost
eight times more in predominantly non-white neighborhoods, compared with
white neighborhoods.

67
For this analysis, we defined “predominantly non-white neighborhoods” as the collection of Census
block groups with 0-25% white residents and “white neighborhoods” as the collection of Census block
groups with 50-100% white residents. Both definitions are based on the Census Bureau’s 2017-2021
American Community Survey data.

65
 • Officers enforce window tinting laws in predominantly non-white neighborhoods
at more than 14 times the rate they enforce those laws in white neighborhoods.
Our analysis of similarly situated suspects also found discriminatory policing of Black,
Hispanic, and Native American people based on the racial composition of the precinct
where they encounter the police. In the three precincts with the greatest proportion of
white residents—Black Mountain, Desert Horizon, and Cactus Park—non-white people
are subjected to more severe enforcement than white people accused of precisely the
same conduct. For example, in these three precincts, PhxPD officers are more likely to
cite or arrest non-white people, while letting white people stopped for the exact same
offenses go.
Instead of setting priorities at the command level, PhxPD has afforded officers
discretion to make their own calls about how to enforce low-level offenses. That
discretion has resulted in unlawful disparities in how PhxPD enforces the law against
Black, Hispanic, and Native American people. The agency’s lack of a centralized
enforcement strategy is a contributing cause of PhxPD’s racially disparate enforcement.

2. PhxPD Claims It Is Unaware of Any

Police Precincts in Phoenix
Evidence of Discriminatory Policing
Despite Longstanding Community
Concern

Earlier this year, PhxPD claimed that the

department was “unaware of any credible
Mountain
P...inct evidence of discriminatory policing.” This
r:::,
statement is troubling in light of the stark
Cactu. Park
P'9dnct cJO O O

disparities described above. But it is also

unsurprising—we saw no evidence PhxPD
Predominately engages in self-assessment to identify
White Precincts

D potentially discriminatory policing patterns.

However, community groups have raised

concerns about PhxPD’s relationship with
communities of color. For years, Black and
brown communities in Phoenix have had a
strained relationship with PhxPD. In 2018, a
local non-profit surveyed almost 10,000
Sout h Mountain
Precinct

people, mostly in the non-white

neighborhoods of south and west Phoenix,
about their experiences with PhxPD. The group released a public report with the survey

66
results.68 Almost half of both Black and Hispanic respondents reported feeling scared,
anxious, nervous, or intimidated when they saw a police officer or police car
approaching them. In addition, results from the survey indicated that Phoenix residents’
experiences with the police often varied along lines of race and national origin.

Longstanding community criticism regarding high-profile PhxPD incidents has also put
the agency on notice of possible discrimination in its policing. In May 2019, after an
alleged shoplifting incident, PhxPD officers made a traffic stop of a young Black family
and quickly escalated the encounter. Officers held the family at gunpoint, shouted
profanities at them, and tried to pull the couple’s one-year-old from the pregnant
mother’s arms before arresting her and the father in front of their two children. It was
ultimately revealed that the couple’s four-year-old child had taken a doll from a store;
the store manager declined to press charges. The incident made national news and
brought intense scrutiny on PhxPD. After video of the incident went viral, then-Police
Chief Jeri Williams and Mayor Kate Gallego issued public apologies to the couple and
held a town hall for the community to respond to the incident. Over 2,000 people
attended the town hall and spoke for more than two hours, criticizing the officers’
actions and sharing broader concerns about systemic racism within PhxPD. PhxPD
fired one of the officers involved in the incident, and the City settled a civil rights lawsuit
brought by the family for $475,000.

Shortly after that incident, in June 2019, the news organization Injustice Watch released
the “Plain View Project,” a database of Facebook posts attributed to officers from eight
police departments across the country, including PhxPD. Researchers used publicly
available police department rosters to identify profiles of law enforcement officers and
flagged posts that researchers determined had the potential to “erode civilian trust and
confidence in police.” The researchers attributed 281 posts to PhxPD employees.
Investigators in PhxPD’s Professional Standards Bureau (PSB) reviewed the posts and
determined they were made by 96 employees, including some PhxPD supervisors. At
the time, investigators deemed some of the posts not “inappropriate,” even when
PhxPD officers made racist statements based on innuendo and racial stereotypes,
including posts calling Kwanzaa a “fake holiday” and celebrating armed self-defense
against “thugs” in “saggy pants.”

Despite this high-profile public criticism from researchers and community members,
Phoenix has failed to meaningfully attempt to understand the nature or extent of

68
See Poder in Action, “Phoenix Futuro, A People’s Report on Policing and Safety,” available at
Phoenix+Futuro-A+People's+Report+on+Policing+and+Safety.pdf (squarespace.com)
[https://perma.cc/PF7W-GRVP].

67
potential discrimination within its ranks and has ignored even specific allegations of
officer bias.

a. PhxPD Does Not Collect and Analyze the Data Needed to Identify
Patterns of Discriminatory Policing or Provide Officers with
Guidance

PhxPD has inadequate internal controls—through data review or misconduct

investigations—to detect discriminatory policing. PhxPD’s data collection practices have
been deficient; the agency did not require all officers to document police stops that did
not result in citations or arrests until after we opened our investigation. PhxPD still does
not require officers to collect data on searches that do not yield contraband. The agency
has never evaluated the data it does collect to determine whether it enforces the law
differently for people of different racial and ethnic groups, as an agency or by individual
officers and units.69 PhxPD officials we spoke to told us they trusted the department’s
“Compliance and Oversight Bureau” or its “Center for Continuous Improvement” to look
for disproportionate impact but were “not briefed on the numbers in the aggregate.”
Neither entity saw this as its role—personnel from the Compliance and Oversight
Bureau told us they provided “high level review; just quality assurance.”

The agency’s software for storing electronic police records is “antiquated at best,” as
Interim Chief Sullivan put it to us. PhxPD has been in the process of obtaining a new
system since before this investigation opened, and these efforts remain underway.
Some of the software limitations create significant barriers to the agency’s ability to
evaluate its officers’ work. For example, PhxPD has no method for linking dispatch
records with citations when officers do not make an arrest. As a result, when a police
officer stops a pedestrian or a car and does not arrest anyone, PhxPD cannot assess
whether that stop resulted in a citation and if so, what the citation was for. This
disconnect between data systems prevents the agency from conducting important
analyses on its stop data, such as assessing whether certain officers cite people more
frequently for low-level traffic offenses—an area where we found that PhxPD officers
engaged in discriminatory enforcement against Black and Hispanic drivers.

A primary factor that may contribute to systemic disparities we found is the lack of
guidance officers have on how to use their discretion—which offenses officers should
investigate and how punitive to be when they encounter violations. Former Police Chief
Jeri Williams told us that she did not have information on how officers enforce low-level

69
ee Melendres, 989 F.Supp.2d at 904 (explaining that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s “failure to
monitor its deputies’ actions for patterns of racial profiling was exacerbated by its inadequate
recordkeeping, which made it more difficult to conduct such monitoring”).

68
offenses and that she would “guess” officers cite instead of arresting people on these
charges.

For most of the period of our review, officers similarly lacked guidance on how to use
time they have for “on view” work, or enforcement they initiate themselves. A patrol
officer explained to a Justice Department investigator on a ride-along that PhxPD did
not require him to tie his proactive traffic enforcement to public safety concerns. More
recently, in June 2023, Interim Chief Sullivan released a Crime Reduction Plan for the
City. PhxPD now expects officers to use their time meeting the goals of the Crime
Reduction Plan, though it is not clear how officers are held accountable to this directive.
We saw no evidence of any similar plan prior to Interim Chief Sullivan’s arrival at
PhxPD, and he told us he was unaware of PhxPD evaluating how officers spend their
time or how their enforcement decisions impact different racial groups. Thus, until
recently, the agency has not even tried to assess whether bias might shape officers’
decisions.

b. PhxPD Is Indifferent to Claims of Individual Officer Bias

Even when a community member alleges that a PhxPD officer acted with overt bias,
PhxPD’s internal accountability system does not adequately investigate the complaint.
Often, the agency misclassifies allegations of discriminatory policing as something less
serious. We found many instances in which people complained that PhxPD officers had
unlawfully discriminated against them, but investigators classified the complaints as
officer “rudeness.” For example:

• A Black driver in 2018 called PSB to complain that an officer conducted a traffic
stop without a lawful basis and chose to investigate him for minor offenses, such
as the tint on his windows, because of his race. “I feel like if I was white and I
was driving a Prius, I wouldn’t have even got pulled over,” the man told the
investigator. The man unambiguously alleged that the officer had engaged in
racial profiling: “They assumed that I’m a Black man and I have a nice car, that it
wasn’t mine and it was stolen, and that is not right,” he said.
• In 2019, a woman alleged that a PhxPD officer working at the airport made
“racist” remarks to her about “Africans,” when the officer saw another traveler cut
in front of the woman in line. According to the woman, the officer admonished the
woman not “to acquiesce to people like that,” and warned her that “Africans”
would cut in front of her in line if she let them.

When it does classify complaints as alleging discriminatory policing, PhxPD seldom

takes them seriously. Between January 1, 2016, and April 1, 2022, PhxPD completed
only two misconduct investigations into allegations of bias or racial profiling. Instead,

69
PhxPD usually handles complaints of biased policing by classifying them as informal
administrative inquiries, a classification for cases in which supervisors initially determine
that the allegation is “clearly unfounded,” making a full investigation unnecessary.
Indeed, in all 90 administrative inquiries into allegations of “bias or racial profiling”
during the same time period, investigators found that the allegations were “unfounded”
or that the officers were “exonerated.”

PhxPD did not open a misconduct investigation into a November 2022 complaint of
discriminatory policing against a Black Wall Street Journal reporter until the incident
became a national news story in early 2023. A PhxPD officer responded to an
emergency call from a bank, and the manager told the officer that a man outside had
been bothering customers. The officer told the manager that he would talk to the man
and see whether he would leave. The man, who was a reporter working on a story, was
standing outside the bank on what appeared to be a public sidewalk. After the officer
explained that the sidewalk was private property, the reporter twice offered to leave. But
the officer refused to let him go, instead handcuffing him, illegally seizing his wallet, and
forcing him to sit in a patrol car.

A bystander called PhxPD later that day to file a complaint and said, “It felt like the
handcuffing was completely unnecessary, and dehumanizing and criminalizing, and … it
felt like there was racial bias at play.” The reporter also filed a complaint, alleging that
the officer had bruised and cut him and threatened him with bodily harm. A sergeant
called both the bystander and reporter and told them he had found no misconduct and
the matter would be closed. A month later, after the Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief
sent a letter to PhxPD and the incident became public, PhxPD opened a misconduct
investigation. The agency ultimately found that, except for his unlawful seizure of the
reporter’s wallet, the officer’s actions did not violate any policy. Months later, Phoenix’s
Office of Accountability and Transparency, charged with monitoring PhxPD internal
investigations, found that the investigation into the allegation of racial bias “was not
thorough and complete.”70 Indeed, the PSB investigator never asked the involved officer
any questions regarding the allegation of racial bias.

In the vast majority of cases, PhxPD simply dismisses complaints of discriminatory

policing absent evidence that an officer made an overtly racist statement or admitted to
engaging in racist profiling. Since people are unlikely to admit to such things, PhxPD’s
practice of requiring this evidence means that these complaints will necessarily be given
short shrift. For instance, a PSB sergeant told us that he deemed one driver’s claim of

70
Phoenix Office of Accountability and Transparency, Monitoring Report, Incident OAT22-007 at 6 (Feb.
22, 2024), available at https://www.phoenix.gov/accountabilitysite/Documents/Incident-OAT-22-007.pdf
[https://perma.cc/5W8G-W9ZW].

70
being racially profiled unfounded because he reviewed the body-worn camera video and
observed that the officer “never said, ‘I am stopping you because you are Black.’”
Similarly, a PhxPD sergeant found a Black light rail rider’s discrimination complaint
unwarranted because the PhxPD employee did not comment on the man’s race or
admit to racial profiling. And when a Black man called PhxPD to complain that a police
officer arrested him for obstruction of a thoroughfare, rather than giving him a warning,
the PhxPD investigator dismissed the possibility that the officer could have been
motivated by racial animus: “But sir, if you break the law, then there’s no racial profiling,”
the investigator told the man. The investigator’s erroneous reasoning ignores that the
Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on race.71

Agency leaders have ignored even overt discrimination at PhxPD. In 2021, a former
assistant chief who oversaw PSB referred to a recently promoted Black commander as
“Blackie.” The executive assistant chief at the time—the number two position in the
agency and the assistant chief’s supervisor—heard the comment but did not report it.72
Eventually, after an investigation by the City’s Equal Opportunity Department and a
settlement, the executive assistant chief was permitted to retire honorably. The former
assistant chief remains a commander at the agency.

* * *

Community members reported to Justice Department investigators that they had felt the
effects of PhxPD’s disparate enforcement. In and of itself, being stopped by the police
can be degrading and humiliating. Citations and arrests have legal, financial, and social
consequences, some of which are lifechanging.73 Being stopped by police can also
cause psychological harm, especially when it happens repeatedly. And when an
encounter results in a use of force, the physical and emotional scars can be permanent.
As the man whose family was held at gunpoint for alleged shoplifting said to us, “I know
from living in Phoenix pretty much all my life. It’s been a thing of them treating people of
color a little bit different ... PhxPD has a way of treating people of color pretty bad.”

71
Whren, 517 U.S. at 813 (“[T]he Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on
considerations such as race.”)
72
The former assistant chief denied making this comment, and the former executive assistant chief
denied hearing it. Investigators in the City’s Equal Opportunity Department made detailed credibility
determinations and found the witnesses who reported the incident to be credible.
73
See Utah v. Strieff, 579 U.S. 232, 254–55 (2016) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (referring to the “65
million Americans with an arrest record [who] experience the ‘civil death’ of discrimination by employers,
landlords, and whoever else conducts a background check.” (citing Gabriel “Jack” Chin, The New Civil
Death: Rethinking Punishment in the Era of Mass Conviction, 160 U. PA. L. REV. 1789, 1805 (2012)).
71
D. PhxPD Unlawfully Restricts Protected Speech and Expression

The First Amendment protects the rights of people to peaceably assemble, express
grievances, and voice their thoughts and views without being punished by the
government. These protections are fundamental to a free society. To evaluate whether
PhxPD observes these protections, we reviewed PhxPD’s response to protests in
Phoenix between 2017 and 2022, as well as officers’ day-to-day encounters with people
in Phoenix.

We reviewed PhxPD’s policies and trainings, police reports, complaints related to

protests, contemporaneous emails, and court documents in relevant litigation, including
county grand jury testimony, deposition testimony, and news reports. We also reviewed
hundreds of hours of body-worn camera and surveillance video footage. We interviewed
PhxPD supervisors and line officers who agreed to speak to us. We interviewed
protestors, community organizers, plaintiffs’ counsel, reporters, defense attorneys, and
prosecutors.74 Subject matter experts assisted our review.

We have reasonable cause to believe PhxPD engages in a pattern or practice that

violates the First Amendment by retaliating against people for protected speech and
expression. First, PhxPD retaliates against people engaged in core political speech by
using unjustified punitive tactics against peaceful protestors and by targeting lawful
protestors for arrest. Second, PhxPD retaliates against people in everyday encounters,
reacting with unjustified force or arrest when people talk back or attempt to record
officers’ activities.

We make narrow findings about PhxPD’s response to protests. In many of the protests
where we observed conduct by PhxPD that violated the First Amendment, protestors
were engaging in protected speech about policing. Such events are uniquely
challenging for police departments; protestors may confront responding officers with
intense criticism of themselves, their profession, and their response to the protest.
Protestors may also find a police presence to be especially provocative. Yet protests
with anti-police messages are entitled to the same First Amendment protection as any
other demonstration. This protection persists even if some participants engage in

74
The City’s cooperation was less than fulsome, however. The City allowed employees to decline our
interview requests, and more than 40 officers and supervisors involved in PhxPD’s protest response
declined to speak to us. We believe these employees had relevant information about PhxPD’s protest
response and that interviewing them would have enabled us to complete our investigation more
efficiently. The City also refused to produce external reports containing recommendations about PhxPD’s
protest practices in 2020, or to allow us to interview the consultants who conducted those reviews.
72
disruptive conduct. Police departments must ensure, even in the face of provocation,
that their response is proportionate and protects the rights of peaceful protestors.

1. PhxPD Retaliates Against Protestors by Using Indiscriminate Force

Police may use force at protests to target specific and imminent threats of violence. But
police may not ban the activity of peaceful protestors because of the violent acts of
others.75 The indiscriminate use of chemical gas, pepper spray, or projectiles against
protestors can cause serious injuries and deter political speech.76

PhxPD officers have used force to deter speech. As described above, officers often
resort to firing less-lethal weapons such as stunbags, 40mm impact rounds, and
Pepperballs without legal justification. PhxPD has used these dangerous weapons
indiscriminately during protests and demonstrations.

During the summer 2020 protests, PhxPD officers failed to warn protestors before
shooting projectiles like stunbags77 and Pepperballs, and they made little attempt to
distinguish between peaceful protestors and those engaged in unlawful acts. At one
summer 2020 protest we reviewed, an officer shot Pepperballs at a man’s back even as
he bicycled away in the direction officers had ordered him to go. Another officer shot
Pepperballs towards cars as they drove away from a gas station, one of many instances
we observed of officers shooting less-lethal projectiles in the direction of cars and
people without warning. One protestor told us that he was on his way home when police
fired at his car, shattering the windows. He described the shooting as coming out of
nowhere, without advance warning. “I really, truly believe that there was no order out
there,” he said. “They were allowed to do whatever they wanted to do.”

In another encounter in 2020, a small group of protestors trying to leave a protest

approached a group of PhxPD officers blocking a street. A sergeant yelled at them to
“Find another way,” and the protestors asked which way to go. The sergeant responded
by firing a “bore thunder” muzzle bang, a weapon that produces a deafening blast with a

75
Index Newspapers LLC v. United States Marshals Serv., 977 F.3d 817, 834 (9th Cir. 2020) (“The many
peaceful protestors, journalists, and members of the general public cannot be punished for the violent
acts of others.”).
76
These weapons are “sufficiently lethal” to deter protestors from protesting again. Black Lives Matter
Seattle-King Cnty. v. City of Seattle, 466 F.Supp.3d 1206, 1214 (W.D. Wash. 2020) (allegation that police
“indiscriminately threw an excessive amount of chemical agents at peaceful protests over police brutality”
was evidence of officers’ intent to chill the protestors’ speech).
77
A stunbag is a sock-shaped projectile filled with lead pellets. As we describe in Section A, PhxPD also
equips officers with less-lethal projectiles outside of protests.
73
blinding flash. The explosive sound caused the protestors to scream, “What way do we
go?” None of the approximately 20 officers with the sergeant answered the question.

Officers also unloaded projectiles on protestors after deliberately trapping them in a

confined space. “Kettling” peaceful protestors by surrounding them on all sides and then
using force against them can constitute retaliation.78 One night in 2020, officers
surrounded a group of protestors by rushing at them from the side to “box them in” and
“cut off their avenue of escape,” as a sergeant put it in his report. The officers then fired
into the group of trapped protestors. “We just lit ’em up,” the sergeant bragged. “It was
the perfect pitch ’cause they can’t go anywhere,” he laughed. Similarly, in 2017, PhxPD
intentionally drove protestors toward a group of officers who were waiting to fire less-
lethal projectiles at them. PhxPD radio recorded the supervisor’s commands: “We’re
pushing a group of about 40 people at ya.” He followed up with a direction to use force:
“We’re driving ’em to ya. Address the threat.” Not only can less-lethal projectiles be
intimidating in the moment, they can also cause intense pain and bruising, with
documented injuries including ruptured eyeballs, skull fractures, and internal bleeding.

On another night of the 2020 protests, officers shot less-lethal projectiles at one fleeing
protestor, splitting his forearm open and breaking it. A PhxPD helicopter alerted officers
on the ground that a group of protestors was running through an alley in their direction.
Two officers moved into position to confront the protestors as they came out. One
officer pointed his Pepperball launcher at the protestors and ordered them to stop. Four
seconds later, the officer fired Pepperballs at the protestors’ feet and lower legs. A
second officer then shot an OC impact round79 at one of the protestors, splitting open
his forearm. The protestor sustained a broken bone that required corrective surgery.
Hours later, PhxPD officers dropped him off at a hospital, where they released him
without any charges. “It was like we were being corralled and trapped,” the protestor
told Justice Department investigators. He said he “felt like a rat in a trap.”

Officers also used excessive force when approaching protestors who were not a threat.
These tactics included approaching protestors with their weapons drawn and
immediately ordering them to lie face down on the ground. One example illustrates the
pattern. One night in 2020, a sergeant urged, “Let’s jack ’em up dude, fuck it,” as
officers drove up to a group of protestors. He then gave a celebratory yell, exclaiming,
“Yeah!” before he approached the protestors with his weapon drawn. Several people
were standing in the intersection. They appeared unarmed and did not threaten the

78
Goodwin v. District of Columbia, 579 F. Supp. 3d 159, 164, 169 (D.D.C. 2022); Anti Police-Terror
Project v. City. of Oakland, 477 F. Supp. 3d 1066, 1071, 1088 (N.D. Cal. 2020).
79
An OC impact round is a projectile that contains a breakable cone filled with a chemical powder similar
to pepper spray.

74
officers. The officers nonetheless pushed each of them onto the ground before
handcuffing and arresting them.

PhxPD has long been on notice of concerns about excessive force against protestors
and the chilling effect on speech that results. In 2017, officers gassed a large crowd of
protestors because of the disruptive conduct of a small number of people. Outside the
convention center in downtown Phoenix, approximately 6,000 protestors were
demonstrating peacefully when a group of no more than 20 people began to shake a
temporary police barricade. PhxPD officers shot Pepperballs at the ground in front of
the disruptive group, which then dispersed into the surrounding crowd. Three minutes
later, as some members of the group continued to be disruptive, officers threw tear gas
canisters toward the crowd. While the disruptive conduct had been confined to a small
area, the tear gas was not. Within minutes, the gas engulfed a “vast area” of downtown,
as a television reporter described it during a live broadcast. PhxPD issued no warnings
to the crowd until 16 minutes after releasing the gas. Protestors more than a block away
soon experienced trouble breathing and burning in their eyes and sinuses. Fire
department responders treated journalists for exposure. The tear gas even permeated
the grounds of a nearby basilica, affecting the Franciscan friars who lived there.
Predictably, scores of peaceful demonstrators were forced to end their protest and
leave the area.

2. PhxPD Retaliates Against Protestors with Unlawful Arrests Based on

Unsupported Allegations

When police arrest protestors, it must be for a legitimate law enforcement purpose. It is
unlawful to use the power of arrest to deter lawful protestors from organizing or
returning to protest again.80

In 2019 and 2020, PhxPD used arrests to discourage peaceful protestors. PhxPD’s
policy for handling civil unrest requires officers to “incarcerate as many individuals as
possible,” once a commander gives the order. As a result, PhxPD officers have used
the power of arrest as a tool to clear peaceful protestors from streets. On a night after a
state-wide curfew went into effect, a commander ordered officers to achieve “maximum
arrest.” He directed sergeants, “[J]ust systematically start sweeping this entire
neighborhood. See if we can pick up anybody who’s walking around.” That night, the
police arrested more than 200 people, according to an agency tally. Though some

80
Velazquez v. City of Long Beach, 793 F.3d 1010, 1020 (9th Cir. 2015) (Police “may not exercise the
awesome power at their disposal to punish individuals for conduct that is not merely lawful, but protected
by the First Amendment.”).

75
protestors entered guilty pleas when they appeared in court the next day, city
prosecutors eventually dismissed almost 150 remaining cases.

PhxPD has also sought charges against protestors that were far more serious than the
evidence supported. For example, PhxPD arrested more than 120 people for the crime
of felony rioting during a protest in May 2020, using the same verbatim probable cause
statement to justify each arrest.81 People arrested included a community activist who
said she had come downtown to hand out water and Gatorade to protestors, a family
who told Justice Department investigators that they drove downtown to show support for
the police, and a man whom police arrested while he was filming them—all of them had
to spend the night in jail. PhxPD’s overreach quickly became apparent. At court
hearings a day later, a judge determined that the identical statements were insufficient
to support felony rioting charges and ordered those protestors to be released.
Prosecutors later found the evidence did not support even minor charges and
immediately abandoned more than 100 of the cases. One protestor told us that she lost
her job as a security guard because the felony arrest appeared on her background
check, even though prosecutors dismissed the charge. She said she would “second
guess” herself before protesting again.

PhxPD officers have also sought to justify serious charges with false evidence.82 In
October 2020, a small group of protestors faced years in prison after PhxPD and county
prosecutors falsely claimed they were members of a criminal street gang and had
conspired to commit aggravated assault against PhxPD officers. On the evening of
October 17, a group of 17 people, all wearing black clothing, marched to protest
prosecutors’ decision not to charge a state trooper for the fatal shooting of a Black man
in Phoenix earlier that year. As they walked down several streets, members of the group
pulled construction barriers behind them, temporarily blocking the police cars trailing
them. One or two of the protestors threw two smoke grenades on the ground in front of
the police. After about half an hour, officers arrested the entire group, including a man
whom officers incorrectly identified as a legal observer. In fact, he was an amateur

81
Felony rioting is a serious crime that carries a presumptive sentence of 1.5 years of imprisonment.
ARS § 13-2903 (rioting is a class 5 felony); ARS § 13-702(D) (class 5 felony presumptive sentence is 1.5
years).
82
Deviation from standard procedures can be evidence of retaliation when supported by other evidence
supporting the claim. See Garrett v. Hewlett-Packard Co., 305 F.3d 1210, 1220 (10th Cir. 2002); see also
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 459 (1966) (quoting (Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 635 (1886)
(ellipsis omitted) (“Those who framed our Constitution and the Bill of Rights were ever aware of subtle
encroachments on individual liberty. They knew that ‘illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their
first footing by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure.’”).
76
photographer who happened to come across the protestors and began taking pictures
of them.

PhxPD supported these serious charges with false statements. A sergeant testified to a
county grand jury that the protestors, including the photographer, belonged to a criminal
street gang known as “ACAB,” after a phrase the group chanted: “All Cops Are
Bastards.” The sergeant analogized “ACAB” to violent street gangs, such as the Bloods
and the Crips, and testified that the protestors identified themselves as members of
“ACAB” by wearing black clothing and chanting “All Cops Are Bastards.”

The judge handling the case called the claim that the protestors were members of a
criminal street gang “false, misleading, and inflammatory.” In June 2021, the court
dismissed two charges against the protestors—assisting a criminal street gang and
conspiracy to commit aggravated assault—with prejudice, meaning that prosecutors
could not refile these charges. The court found that this highly unusual remedy was
warranted due to the “egregious misconduct” of the prosecutor and the sergeant.

The Genesis of the Gang Charges

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) and PhxPD have blamed each
other for the failures that led to the gang charges. MCAO’s degree of involvement
in the constitutional violations we have identified is beyond the scope of our
review. However, the Arizona bar ruled in December 2023, after a multi-day
evidentiary hearing, that the MCAO prosecutor responsible for the gang charge
prosecution should be suspended from the practice of law for two years for,
among other things, her role in bringing these charges. This prosecutor worked
closely with PhxPD during the 2020 protests and gave trainings to PhxPD officers
on topics including bringing charges against protestors.

Email communications show that the idea for charging protestors as members of a
street gang likely originated with PhxPD’s anti-terrorism task force. By June 2020,
PhxPD had formed a protest “strike team” and in July, the squad’s sergeant sent a
reminder to officers assigned to protests to notify him of any “protest related
arrests” of “anyone believed to be affiliated with Antifa.” In August 2020, a
sergeant who served as a supervisor during protests explained in an email that a
detective in the protest strike team was going “to start identifying the hierarchy in
these BLM [Black Lives Matter] type organizations.” And in September 2020, the
sergeant for the protest strike team contacted the county attorney’s office, saying
he wanted to talk about “building conspiracy and syndicate type cases as it relates
protest/demonstration activities,” according to an MCAO report.

77
PhxPD officers also made false statements to support serious charges against
protestors:

• To support felony charges, an officer falsely claimed that a protest leader

stabbed a sergeant with the sharpened tip of an umbrella. According to the
officer, the umbrella had “a 3-inch sharpened metal tip” that the protestor used
“to stab him in the hand.” These claims were not true. Body-worn camera videos
show that the protestor held the umbrella pointed toward the ground the entire
time she was running. And a photograph of the umbrella tip shows that it had not
been sharpened.
• Multiple officers falsely claimed that protestors “bull-rushed” a police line, when in
fact it was the police officers who pushed into the protestors. As protestors faced
a line of officers outside police headquarters in August 2020, one of the protest
leaders called for calm, repeatedly telling the protestors to “relax.” The protestors
stood still, but the officers stepped forward, pushing into them. In their incident
reports, three officers falsely claimed that the leader and another protestor had
“locked arms and aggressively charged” the officers, in a “lineman type rush,”
“charging or bull rushing” the officers.

PhxPD has also singled out specific protestors for arrest because of expressive
activities.83 At a protest in July 2019, a PhxPD lieutenant directed officers to arrest a 62-
year-old protestor while he was in the middle of giving an interview to a reporter. PhxPD
had last ordered protestors to disperse 15 minutes earlier, and most of the crowd had
moved out of the street. But the 62-year-old protestor, who carried a Soviet flag and a
sign that called police “child killers,” stayed behind to speak to a reporter. Video from
the interview captured the encounter. As the man began to answer the reporter’s
question about the flag’s symbolism, officers ran up behind the man and, without
warning, grabbed him by the neck and tackled him to the ground.

Other people remained in the same area at that time, also allegedly in violation of earlier
dispersal orders. Yet officers arrested just the man and one other protestor, a
community leader and vocal critic of PhxPD who was well known to the lieutenant in
charge. PhxPD’s decision to target these two protestors, while allowing others to walk
away, suggests that it was the protestors’ expressive activities that prompted PhxPD to
select them for arrest. All charges against both protestors were dismissed the following
day.

83
Targeting a person engaged in protected activity for arrest, while declining to arrest similarly situated
people who are not engaged in protected activity is evidence that police arrested the person to retaliate
against them. See Nieves v. Bartlett, 139 S.Ct. 1715, 1727 (2019).

78
PhxPD also targeted perceived leaders of the 2020 protests by singling them out for the
crime of “obstruction of a thoroughfare,” which requires evidence of interfering with
traffic. PhxPD made at least 26 arrests of protestors between June and October of 2020
in which the only violation was obstruction of a thoroughfare. PhxPD supervisors
decided in advance which protestors to target. Before protests, the lieutenant in charge
would distribute flyers to officers with protestors’ names and pictures. With careful
instructions such as “Keep your eye on the leadership in the roadway,” the lieutenant
would direct officers to record certain protestors on video to document their alleged
violations.

In some cases, there were no violations—PhxPD arrested protestors for obstruction of a

thoroughfare when their conduct plainly did not meet the elements of the offense. After
at least one protest, PhxPD arrested protestors who marched on streets that were clear
of traffic because police cars with flashing lights drove in front and behind the
protestors. At another protest, police arrested protestors for obstruction of a
thoroughfare even though, again, there was none—the few protestors who stepped in
the street stayed close to the sidewalk and did not interfere with any traffic. Video we
reviewed shows that cars were able to pass the group in multiple lanes that remained
open. The obstruction of a thoroughfare charges were eventually dismissed.

PhxPD arrested protestors for obstruction of a thoroughfare when they did not interfere with traffic

Late in the summer, PhxPD seemed to recognize the legal flaw in arresting protestors
for violations when they had no culpability. At one protest, the lieutenant in charge
reminded officers not to block any traffic for the protestors: “Just a reminder, we are not

79
going to pre-block anything and hopefully they make the right decision to stay on the
sidewalk.” He explained over the radio that this change was “so they can’t say we
blocked a lane for them.”

The PhxPD lieutenant in charge ordered officers to arrest protest leaders for marching
in the street without a permit, even though in other demonstrations we reviewed—
demonstrations that were not about policing—PhxPD allowed protestors without permits
to march without interference. Cities can impose reasonable restrictions—like permits—
but officials cannot use “unbridled discretion” to deny permits and shut down protected
speech.84 Phoenix has no process for groups to obtain a permit if they wish to protest or
demonstrate on city streets. Therefore, any protestors who march in the street risk
arrest if the police department chooses to enforce the obstruction of a thoroughfare
statute against them. PhxPD’s lack of standards and “completely uncontrolled
discretion” 85 violated the First Amendment because the risk of random, arbitrary arrest
is enough to dissuade reasonable people from engaging in protected political speech.

Retaliatory Intent, In Officers’ Own Words

PhxPD officers’ own statements reflect a culture in which sworn officers flaunted
their hostility toward protestors without recourse. While on duty and responding to
protests, officers made malicious and demeaning statements about protestors,
cheered the use of force, and celebrated their success in suppressing speech.
For example:

• An officer implied to a protestor in 2020 that further protest activity

would jeopardize her employment. The officer said: “You’re still
participating? Should we be calling your work? You work in the
medical field, don’t you?”

84
The First Amendment protects expressive activity in traditional “public forums,” such as streets,
sidewalks, and parks. Cities may impose reasonable restrictions, such as requiring permits, on protestors,
but governments cannot use the permitting process to censor speech. When a city denies a permit to
protest, that decision must be based on “objective” factors, not a city official’s “unfettered discretion.
Minn. Voters Alliance v. Mansky, 138 S. Ct. 1876, 1885 (2018) (quotation marks omitted); City of
Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publ’g Co., 486 U.S. 750, 772 (1988).
85
Cox v. State of La., 379 U.S. 536, 556–57 (1965) (“The statute itself provides no standards for the
determination of local officials as to which assemblies to permit or which to prohibit. Nor are there any
administrative regulations on this subject which have been called to our attention. From all the evidence
before us it appears that the authorities in Baton Rouge permit or prohibit parades or street meetings in
their completely uncontrolled discretion.”)
80
 • One officer walked down a street shooting Pepperballs almost
constantly over the course of seven minutes, finally stopping when
he ran out of ammunition. He urged another officer to join him,
saying “Hit ’em, hit ’em, fuck ’em, hit ’em.” That same night, the
officer fired 1,000 Pepperballs all on his own.
• A sergeant celebrated in 2020 that PhxPD had 200 protestors in
custody: “Holy crap, we’ve got peeps. Nice job, boys,” he said.
“This is what we need to do. This is how we cut the head off the
snake.”
• When deciding whether to take a teenager to jail or cite and release
him for violating curfew, one officer said to another: “But I guess
you’re trying to prove a point, trying to make these kids not do
it again and come down here tomorrow.” (Immediately after
making this comment, the officer muted his body-worn camera
video.)

People in Phoenix are still at risk of having their First Amendment protest rights violated
by PhxPD. As described below, PhxPD’s pattern of using immediate force is particularly
pronounced when people talk back, criticize, or film the police. We also observed
officers treat protestors unlawfully between 2017 and 2021. The City claims that it now
safeguards the rights of protestors through recent reforms. But as of early 2024, any
changes were only in their initial stages.86 These belated and incomplete efforts do not
establish that PhxPD officers will respond appropriately—and be held accountable if
they do not—particularly when addressing future protestors or others exercising their
First Amendment rights whom officers deem critical of law enforcement.

3. PhxPD Retaliates for Speech Protected by the First Amendment During

Daily Encounters

PhxPD officers unlawfully arrest or use force in response to criticism, insults, or

perceived disrespect during daily encounters. Often, within seconds, officers react with
force to verbal slights. For instance, while this investigation was ongoing, in 2022,
PhxPD officers slammed a man into a police cruiser and began to arrest him seconds

86
For example, as of early 2024, the revisions to PhxPD’s civil disturbance response plan and its new
“First Amendment Facilitation & Management Policy” were still in draft form; the agency had
“reconstituted” the unit formerly responsible for crowd control under a new name; and according
to PhxPD, it had planned but not yet delivered revised training to the new unit.

81
after he insulted an officer. The man confronted the officer to point out that police were
not helping unhoused people across the street. As the man complained, the officer told
him that, by arguing, he was “obstructing police operations.” The man laughed and
called the officer a “dumbass.” Immediately, the officer grabbed the man’s arm and
slammed him into the police cruiser in order to arrest him. When we spoke to the man,
he told us that he had multiple cuts and bruises from the encounter and continues to
experience nerve damage from his injuries over a year later. He explained that he
sometimes changes his route to avoid passing a police station. “I’m moving around the
city much differently,” he said.

In another incident, a police officer fired a Taser probe at a handcuffed man from six
inches away, seconds after the man called him a “bitch.” The officer activated the
Taser’s electrical cycles seven more times after the man was cuffed and lying face
down on the asphalt. When the man asked him to stop, the officer responded, “I’ve got
a long battery life in this, man.” This time, he attempted to justify the force by stating that
the man was aggressive but he admitted in an internal affairs investigation that the “act
of aggression” was merely the man yelling at the officer while the man was cuffed,
seated on the pavement, and surrounded by three officers.

People have the right to verbally criticize law enforcement officers so long as they do
not actively interfere with the officers’ lawful duties.87 We reviewed multiple incidents in
which police officers arrested or threatened to arrest bystanders merely because they
challenged the lawfulness of the officers’ actions or because they appeared to annoy
the officers. For example, PhxPD officers ordered a woman to leave a bus stop in
March 2022 because she criticized them for their treatment of a man whom they
suspected of using drugs. The woman watched officers pull the man from a bus stop
bench by his hair and then kneel on his neck. As the man complained he could not
breathe, the woman repeatedly asked why the officers were being so rough. In
response, an officer told her to leave the area and issued an ultimatum: “I could
trespass you from the bus stop if you’d like, and then you can’t use public transport.”

Officers also demonstrate in their incident reports that they do not consider insults and
verbal challenges to be protected speech. We reviewed reports in which officers
admitted that insults prompted them to act. In one report, an officer explained that a
man “made obscene gestures and cursed at me,” prompting him to arrest the man for

87
The Ninth Circuit has affirmed that “[e]ven though the police may dislike being the object of abusive
language,” they are not permitted “to use the awesome power which they possess to punish individuals
for conduct that is not only lawful, but which is protected by the First Amendment.” Johnson v. Bay Area
Rapid Transit Dist., 724 F.3d 1159, 1174 (9th Cir. 2013) (quoting In re Muhammed C., 95 Cal.App.4th
1325, 1330–31, 116 Cal.Rptr.2d 21 (2002)).

82
jaywalking. In another report, an officer admitted that he handcuffed a teenager for
refusing to provide his name or hang up his phone. Though the teenager had committed
no crime, the officer explained in his report: “I informed him that he was under
investigative detention, he replied with ‘Fuck you,’ so I placed him in hand cuffs. [He]
was very angry, anti-PD, and uncooperative.” Even though opposing the police is a
constitutionally protected viewpoint, officers label people, houses, apartment
complexes, and even neighborhoods as “anti-PD,” as if this opinion presents an
inherent threat.

4. PhxPD Retaliates Against People for Attempting to Record Police

Activity

The First Amendment protects the right to peacefully film police officers performing their
duties in public.88 We found numerous instances where people filmed PhxPD activity
from a distance without interfering with police operations, but officers arrested them,
used force, or ordered them to leave the scene entirely.

In 2017, officers shot Pepperballs at a man who was filming the police at a protest from
several yards away, even though he stood behind a police barricade in an area
reserved for protestors and posed no threat to officers. After most of the crowd had left,
a few people remained and faced the police line. The man began filming the police with
his cell phone. The man presented no visible threat: He was shirtless and held the
camera aloft with his right hand, while his left hand was visible at his side, distanced
from his body. A PhxPD officer targeted him with multiple rounds of Pepperballs, and
continued to hit him even after he backed up and fell to the ground. The man stopped
filming and left the area.

In another incident, a man filmed officers while he leaned out of his car window. Officers
surrounded the car, pointed a gun at the man’s head from less than a foot away, and
then booked him for felony rioting. The arresting officer cited the man’s filming as
justifying the arrest. When officers asked the man if he knew why he was arrested, the
man responded, “No, I was just recording and I know I have the right to record.” County
prosecutors rejected the charges.

In another encounter, officers impeded a man from recording an arrest though he was
standing at least 20 feet away. Officers approached the man, blocked his view of the

88
Bernal v. Sacramento Cty. Sheriff's Dep't, 73 F.4th 678, 694 (9th Cir. 2023) (finding no probable cause
for an arrest after a man refused to put down his phone and stop filming and yelling at officers); Fordyce
v. City of Seattle, 55 F.3d 436, 439 (9th Cir. 1995) (affirming the “First Amendment right to film matters of
public interest”)

83
arrest, and told him to “get off the sidewalk because you’re not allowed to obstruct the
sidewalk.” When the man asked for the officers’ sergeant, one of the officers replied,
“Don’t worry about it,” and walked away.

PhxPD officers also interfered with individuals’ right to record police during everyday
encounters. Police handcuffed and cited a man for “obstructing a sidewalk” because he
filmed police as they arrested a homeless man in the Zone. A sergeant ordered the man
to step out of the street while he filmed the arrest. The man followed directions, and
continued filming from a nearby sidewalk. The officer then told him to “get off the
sidewalk” and “get going.” The man reminded the officer that he had the right to stand
on a public sidewalk. “If you want to play games, we’ll play games,” the officer
responded. The officer then handcuffed the man and cited him, though two other people
were near the man on the same sidewalk, standing just as he was, and were not
arrested. The man told us that the incident has stayed with him. “I don’t film openly
anymore because I know they’re going to come after me,” he said.

5. Policies, Training, and Supervision Fail to Protect First Amendment

Rights

PhxPD’s policies, training, and failure to hold officers accountable have created
conditions that made violations of the First Amendment more likely. PhxPD has no
policy on responding to lawful demonstrations, and its “civil disturbance response plan”
conflates civil unrest and spontaneous demonstrations. PhxPD cautions that police
should prevent “innocent citizens” from joining a spontaneous demonstration, implying
that spontaneous demonstrations are inherently unlawful. In fact, spontaneous
demonstrations are an important component of political speech.89 As described above,
the plan directs officers to “incarcerate as many individuals as possible” after the
decision to arrest has been made. The plan also requires officers to “arrest as many of
the crowd ‘leaders’ as possible” without explaining that arrests are lawful only where
there is evidence a person committed a crime, regardless of their position of authority
within the crowd.

PhxPD’s trainings have reinforced hostility toward constitutionally protected rights of

assembly and speech. A training on crowd-control tactics we observed emphasized
inflammatory video footage and offered no meaningful guidance to officers. The
instructor referred to First Amendment rights as “very touchy,” and defined a “civil

89
Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 394 U.S. 147, 163 (1969) (Harlan, J., concurring) (“[T]iming is of
the essence in politics ..... [W]hen an event occurs, it is often necessary to have one's voice heard
promptly, if it is to be considered at all.”); NAACP v. City of Richmond, 743 F.2d 1346, 1356 (9th Cir.
1984) (“Where spontaneity is part of the message, dissemination delayed is dissemination denied.”)

84
disturbance” as “actively or passively oppos[ing] the police or government.” Opposition
to the police or government is the core of protected First Amendment expression.90

Of particular concern was the evidence of malice directed toward constitutionally

protected speech. The instructor on crowd control techniques used an image of
protestors in pain as a laugh line during the presentation and described an incident in
which a PhxPD officer shot a protestor in the groin with a projectile as “a textbook shot
into the lower abdomen.” The instructor boasted that PhxPD executed search warrants
on the protestor’s home and workplace, causing him to become “jobless and homeless
at the same damn time.” In a prior version of the class we reviewed, the instructor
showed news footage of the same incident, set to Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Will
Always Love You.” The clip was timed to emphasize the moment of the groin shot with
the loud drum hit just before the song’s chorus.91 In another class on protest response,
a trainer taught that “anarchists” are the people responsible for inciting riots at protests.
Police can tell who the anarchists are by firing a sound cannon to see who runs away—
those who do not disperse are purportedly the anarchists. The trainer also suggested
that those protestors who care about the First Amendment will talk to and cooperate
with the police. Such statements have no basis in fact; they instead appear to reflect a
deep-rooted bias against individuals critical of PhxPD or the government.

PhxPD supervisors pay little attention to the use of force at protests. Officers who use
crowd-control weapons do not consistently report information that would be needed to
assess the reasonableness of any force, such as target and impact locations, the
approximate distance to targets, or injuries. Supervisors evaluate the use of chemical
weapons only when a protestor complains of an injury. Until after we opened our
investigation, PhxPD’s policy on reporting force did not address reporting requirements
when officers used certain less-lethal projectiles, including Pepperballs. As described
above, during 2020, officers deployed tear gas, OC spray, and fired thousands of
projectiles. Despite this extensive use of crowd-control weapons, we saw no evidence
of a formal process for reviewing their use. Instead, the officer who shot 1,000
Pepperballs on a single night of protests in 2020 remained in his position as a training
officer and Pepperball instructor; the officer coordinated the 2021 course to certify
officers in crowd-control methods.

90
City of Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451, 462–63 (1987) (“The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or
challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we
distinguish a free nation from a police state.”).
91
In 2022, after the local news reported on the use of the video clip in a 2018 training, PhxPD
investigated and issued a written reprimand to the instructor.

85
PhxPD officers charged with accepting complaints repeatedly argued with protestors
who called in to complain about excessive force or seizure of their property, accused
the protestors of illegal action, and even referred a complainant for criminal
investigation. During the summer 2020 protests, one caller explained that police
severely damaged his car by firing less-lethal projectiles at it, even as he followed other
officers’ instructions about where to drive. A sergeant accused the caller of knowing
about the protest and intentionally driving into it. Another protestor complained that
police had injured her in May 2020 by firing multiple less-lethal projectiles at her when
she was attempting to leave a protest, consistent with a dispersal order. Before PhxPD
had conducted any investigation, a lieutenant concluded: “I feel like this woman was
clearly in the wrong.” A sergeant told a PSB investigator that the protestor should be
considered a suspect: “If someone comes forward who has marks they are at least
guilty of being in an unlawful assembly at worst they could be one of our outstanding
[aggravated assault] on an officer” suspects, he wrote. The investigator followed the
sergeant’s instructions and gave the protestor’s information to criminal investigators.

Finally, there is inadequate external oversight to ensure that PhxPD protects protestors’
First Amendment rights. Prosecutors play a critical role in ensuring that officers do not
abuse their power. We saw no evidence that city prosecutors communicated any
concerns to PhxPD about the agency’s approach to policing the 2020 protests, including
targeting protest leaders for arrest for obstruction of a thoroughfare.

* * *

Political speech is “central to the meaning and purpose of the First Amendment.”92
Protecting this speech, which is “indispensable to [decision-making] in a democracy,”
secures “confidence and stability in civic discourse.”93 Likewise, “[t]he freedom of
individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is
one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police
state.”94 But PhxPD has engaged in a pattern or practice of using its authority —through
force and its power to detain and arrest—"to punish individuals for conduct that is not
merely lawful, but protected by the First Amendment.”95

92
Citizens United v. Federal Election Com’n, 558 U.S. 310, 329 (2010).
93
Id. at 349 (2010) (internal quotations omitted).
94
Houston, 482 U.S. at 462-63 (1987); see also Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234, 253
(2002) (“The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the
government because speech is the beginning of thought.”).
95
Santopietro v. Howell, 73 F.4th 1016, 1023 (9th Cir. 2023).
86
E. The City and PhxPD Discriminate in Their Response to People with
Behavioral Health Disabilities

The City and PhxPD violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by discriminating
against people with behavioral health disabilities when providing emergency response
services.96 The ADA prohibits the City from excluding people with disabilities from
participation in or denying them the benefits of city services, programs, or activities, or
subjecting them to discrimination.97 To avoid discrimination, Phoenix must provide
people with disabilities an equal opportunity to participate in or benefit from city
services.98 When providing a service to people with disabilities, the City must also
ensure that it is as “effective in affording equal opportunity to obtain the same result …
as that provided to others.”99 Phoenix’s public services and programs include its
emergency response and law enforcement systems.100 This means that PhxPD’s 911
call center, as well as officer encounters, are subject to the ADA.101

The City and PhxPD must make “reasonable modifications” to their normal policies,
practices, or procedures when necessary to avoid discriminating on the basis of
disability, unless they can show that making such modifications would “fundamentally
alter the nature of the service, program, or activity” offered.102 Just as a person in
Phoenix experiencing a heart attack or other medical emergency receives a response
from trained EMTs, in many circumstances a person experiencing the effects of a
behavioral health disability should receive a health-centered response. But the City and
PhxPD have failed to make important modifications necessary to avoid discriminating
against people with behavioral health disabilities.

96
People with behavioral health disabilities are individuals who have a diagnosable mental illness and/or
substance use disorder. This population includes individuals with co-occurring intellectual or
developmental disabilities.
97
The ADA applies to “public entities,” which includes a local government like the City of Phoenix. See
28 C.F.R. § 35.104 (“Public entity means…Any…local government.”); 28 C.F.R. § 35.130.
98
42 U.S.C. § 12132; 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(b)(1)(ii); see also Updike v. Multnomah Cnty., 870 F.3d 939,
949 (9th Cir. 2017) (a public entity has an affirmative obligation to make accessible benefits, services,
and programs to people with disabilities).
99
42 U.S.C. § 12132; 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(b)(1)(iii).
100
See Sheehan v. City & Cnty. of San Francisco, 743 F.3d 1211, 1232 (9th Cir. 2014), reversed in part
and remanded on other grounds, City and Cnty. of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 575 U.S. 600 (2015)
(holding that the ADA applies to arrests); Barden v. City of Sacramento, 292 F.3d 1073, 1076 (9th Cir.
2002) (holding that the ADA encompasses “anything a public entity does” (citation omitted)).
101
For ease of reference, this Report will refer to the telecommunications centers within the PhxPD
Communications Bureau as the “PhxPD 911 call center.”
102
28 C.F.R. § 35.130(b)(7).
87
To evaluate the City and PhxPD’s compliance with the ADA, we focused on the
practices of first responders, including call-takers and dispatchers who must assess and
triage 911 calls as they come in. We also reviewed how PhxPD officers respond to
behavioral health emergencies, including incidents where a person’s disability may not
become apparent until an officer arrives on the scene. We worked with experts in
dispatch, behavioral health services, and crisis response to analyze hundreds of
incidents where behavioral health issues were a factor. We reviewed audio recordings
of emergency and non-emergency calls for assistance, body-worn camera footage of
officer encounters, and PhxPD reports and data, including Computer-Aided Dispatch
(CAD)103 records. We also reviewed PhxPD’s communications policies and training
practices, accompanied Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) officers104 and the City’s new
Behavioral Health Units on ride-alongs, and spoke to call-takers, dispatchers, officers,
and people with behavioral health disabilities who have had encounters with PhxPD.

We found two patterns based on this inquiry. First, the PhxPD 911 call center routinely
fails to identify when callers need help with behavioral health issues. As a consequence,
call-takers default to sending regular patrol officers, even though they have options to
transfer the caller to clinical specialists or to send a specially trained team. Second,
when PhxPD officers respond to behavioral health calls, they seldom make reasonable
modifications to their approach when appropriate. When possible, officers should call for
assistance from behavioral health responders and wait for them to arrive. In Phoenix,
officers have access to this resource but rarely use it. Instead, officers escalate
incidents and often use force that could be avoided.

To the City and PhxPD’s credit, they have invested in programs that can divert
behavioral health-related calls away from police and to more appropriate responders.
These programs can provide people with behavioral health disabilities with equal
access to the City’s emergency response system. Despite these programs, 911 call
center operators do not accurately identify behavioral health-related calls and route the
calls to an appropriate responder. As a result, it remains the norm that police are called
to respond.

103
CAD, or Computer-Aided Dispatch, is an electronic system that allows automation of some public
safety operations and communications. A CAD system also generally stores information on each call for
service received by an emergency response agency, such as police or fire. CAD should provide an
accurate date and time stamp for every activity.
104
The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model is a form of specialized police response to individuals with
behavioral health disabilities. CIT relies on specially trained patrol officers to identify and de-escalate
behavioral health crisis situations. The goals of CIT include improving officer knowledge about behavioral
health, increasing connections to services for individuals in crisis, enhancing de-escalation, reducing
reliance on the criminal justice system, and achieving cost savings through resolving crisis situations and
diverting individuals from arrest.
88
 1. Phoenix’s Emergency Response System Defaults to Sending Police to
Behavioral Health Calls, Though Alternative Responses Are Available

The PhxPD Communications Bureau is comprised of two 24/7 telecommunications

centers that answer all 911 emergency calls for service in Phoenix, as well as non-
emergency calls, called Crime Stop. Call-takers transfer most calls to police dispatchers
or to the Phoenix Fire Regional Dispatch Center for fire or emergency medical
response. Call-takers may also refer callers to other agencies or organizations for non-
emergency matters, such as animal control. For each call, a call-taker makes a unique
entry in PhxPD’s CAD and assigns a radio code to the call that describes the reported
behavior, such as “900—Check Welfare” or “418T—Trespassing.” The call-taker also
designates the call as priority one, two, or three (with priority one being the most urgent)
and documents pertinent information from the caller in CAD. The PhxPD call center
receives around two million calls per year, and dispatches police officers to
approximately one-third of them.

Many of these calls involve behavioral health issues, and most of those are dispatched
to the police. The City and PhxPD are well aware that people with behavioral health
disabilities frequently come into contact with PhxPD. A 2016 community needs
assessment on crisis response in Phoenix found that over half of the people with mental
health issues surveyed had at least one encounter with the police and 24% had three or
more interactions with the police. A 2021 study by Arizona State University (ASU)
commissioned by the City of Phoenix found that about 10% of PhxPD’s dispatched calls
for service relate to behavioral health, which amounts to over 5,000 calls per month.
The same study found that many of these calls are categorized as “check welfare.”
According to PhxPD’s own records, when responding to calls for service, officers
collectively spent nearly 11% of their time on check welfare calls, totaling 404,360 hours
between January 1, 2016, and March 28, 2022.

PhxPD has worked to reduce its reliance on police to respond to behavioral health
incidents, with uneven results. PhxPD has developed a partnership with Solari, a non-
profit that operates the local crisis line.105 In early 2020, PhxPD embedded a clinician
from Solari to work part-time in the 911 call center. The goal was to increase calls
diverted to Solari’s crisis line, where Solari clinicians can stabilize callers on the line or

105
Solari has its own call and dispatching center and now operates the 988 crisis hotline throughout
Arizona. Solari changed its name from the Crisis Response Network in 2021.

89
send mobile crisis teams when necessary.106 Prior to the pilot, call-takers could transfer
callers to Solari, though they rarely did. The pilot is now a permanent program with a
clinician on site 20 hours per week. Still, call-takers remain hesitant to transfer calls to
Solari, and PhxPD has struggled to reliably measure the volume of calls diverted.
PhxPD data generally show an increase in diversions since the pilot began, with call-
takers transferring around 500 to 600 calls per month to Solari.107

PhxPD dispatchers can also call Solari to request a mobile crisis team to respond
alongside officers, but the agency’s use of mobile crisis teams has remained stagnant
for years. In March 2020, PhxPD began another pilot program focused on encouraging
officers and dispatchers to request a mobile crisis team from Solari even after officers
were dispatched. PhxPD provided no specific training for 911 operators related to the
effort, just an email encouraging dispatchers to request mobile crisis teams in certain
situations. The 911 call center did not collect data related to the pilot, and we saw no
evidence that the pilot led to increased requests for response by a mobile crisis team.

The City has recognized there is still significant need for a behavioral health response.
In 2021, Phoenix dedicated $15 million to expand the Fire Department’s Community
Assistance Program. As part of this expansion, the City created Behavioral Health Units
(BHUs), civilian teams that can respond to behavioral health calls for service. The first
BHUs launched in the summer of 2022, and there are now four BHUs operating
citywide, seven days per week, 20 hours per day. The City plans to have nine BHUs
available 24/7 by the end of 2024. Phoenix data show that call-takers have begun
sending calls to BHUs, rising from 17 calls in August 2022 173 calls in April 2024.
These calls sent to BHUs supplement the calls already transferred to Solari each
month. As BHU capacity expands, PhxPD will continue to have access to Solari and its
associated mobile crisis teams, as well.108

The City and PhxPD’s efforts to meet the needs of Phoenix residents with behavioral
health disabilities are commendable. These programs, and especially the City’s

106
A mobile crisis team includes trained behavioral health staff who respond to individuals in need of
urgent behavioral health assistance wherever the person is located. The team can resolve the immediate
need and connect the person with ongoing behavioral health services as appropriate. The mobile crisis
teams that Solari dispatches operate throughout Maricopa County.
107
Combined with requests from officers in the field for mobile crisis teams, there are about 700-800 total
diversions from PhxPD to Solari per month.
108
There are some differences in the types of calls that can be transferred to Solari versus BHUs. Solari
will only engage with a caller and/or send a mobile crisis team if the person needing assistance is in a
safe, fixed location and gives consent. BHUs will respond to third-party calls and do not require that a
person confirm their willingness to receive services before responding. Additionally, Solari stabilizes
about 80% of callers over the phone, sending mobile crisis teams to 10-20% of calls. Stabilizing callers
over the phone is not currently part of a BHU dispatcher’s job.
90
investment in BHUs, hold promise for changing the landscape of how people with
behavioral health disabilities in Phoenix receive emergency services. However, the
PhxPD 911 call center consistently fails to identify behavioral health-related calls that
require a modified response, so the City does not know the true scope of the need. As
one PhxPD official stated, “Nobody tracks the unmet need, and I think it’s bigger than
we imagine.” Thus, people with behavioral health disabilities receive a police-only
response when they need behavioral health assistance. The failures within the call
center result in discrimination under the ADA.

a. The PhxPD 911 Call Center Does Not Accurately Identify

Behavioral Health-Related Calls for Service

PhxPD call-takers do not adequately identify, consider, or communicate behavioral

health issues when answering 911 calls, which can result in unnecessarily sending the
police. Call-takers seldom use the applicable mental health call code (918). They told us
they do not feel they can “diagnose” a person’s behavioral health issue. Instead, call-
takers use a host of inaccurate call codes for behavioral health. Call-takers may type
“poss[ible] 918” or “poss[ible] CIT” into the dispatch notes to alert officers of behavioral
health issues, but PhxPD policy does not require them to do so, nor does it require them
to elaborate on the specific behavioral health needs or symptoms a caller may have.
These practices can leave officers with little to no information regarding the behavioral
health aspects of a call.

One consequence of these inconsistent practices is that call-takers can elevate the
apparent seriousness and dangerousness of calls.109 For instance, in the sample of
calls we reviewed, we found a pattern of call-takers designating certain calls, including
behavioral health-related calls, as “fights” when the caller did not indicate the situation
involved any fighting. Police at the scene changed one-third of these “fight” calls in our
sample to codes such as check welfare, trespassing, mentally ill subject, or drunk or
disturbing—codes for which a non-police response would generally be considered

109
Studies have shown that when call-takers inaccurately elevate the seriousness and dangerousness of
calls, it can prime police for a more aggressive response and contribute to negative interactions between
police and the public. See Gillooly, J. (2020). How 911 callers and call-takers impact police encounters
with the public: The case of the Henry Louis Gates Jr. Arrest. Criminology and Public Policy, 19, 787–
804; Taylor, P. L. (2019). Dispatch priming and the police decision to use deadly force. Police Quarterly,
23, 1–22; C. Ritter et al., “Crisis Intervention Team Officer Dispatch, Assessment, and Disposition:
Interactions With Individuals With Severe Mental Illness,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 34,
no. 1 (2011): 30-38, available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160252710001184
-[https://perma.cc/SRL9-7HL6].
---------------- -
91
appropriate.110 Our analysis of PhxPD data further revealed that some call-takers are
much more likely than their peers to elevate calls with no danger to a priority one, the
most serious type of call. When any call-taker elevates the seriousness of a call in this
way, it eliminates the possibility of sending a non-police response.

If call-takers do not identify and communicate the behavioral health aspects of calls,
opportunities to send an alternative response are lost. For instance, a call from a mother
about her 15-year-old daughter, who was upset and would not get into the mother’s car,
could have been handled by Solari and would have been appropriate to send to a
mobile crisis team. The girl’s mother told call-takers that her daughter had “behavioral
issues” and it “takes her awhile to calm down.” Nevertheless, the call-taker immediately
routed the call to patrol officers, who escalated the situation and had the girl on the
ground in handcuffs in less than three minutes. Officers ultimately arrested the girl for
aggravated assault on an officer and criminal damage and booked her into the juvenile
correction center. Her mother protested, “That’s not going to help her mental health.”
Civilian responders could have supported the mother and worked with the girl to
address her concerns rather than demanding immediate compliance, as officers did.

Even when callers specifically ask for crisis assistance, call-takers have sent officers
without communicating the caller’s concern. For instance, a motel desk clerk called 911
about a man with “some mental issues” who was “not a threat or anything,” but “roaming
around the property,” “crawling on the ground,” and saying, “I’m looking for my mom.”
The caller even said, “I’m sorry, I meant to call the non-emergency line,” and “I don’t
know if I need the crisis unit or something.” However, the call-taker coded the call as
“Trespassing” and sent officers to respond. In the call notes, the call-taker wrote “subj
said he was looking for his mom” and “subj poss having cit situation,” but gave officers
no further information about the man’s behavior or the caller’s concern. The first officer
to arrive said, “Let’s go, man, you don’t belong here.” The man said, “Go where?” and
another officer responded, “Not here.” Police walked behind the man until he left the
motel property. This police response did not provide the help this man needed. If the
call-taker had treated this as a behavioral health call, it would have been appropriate for
a behavioral health response.

Sometimes, behavioral health calls do require police presence due to safety concerns.
But in those situations, PhxPD call-takers rarely request that a mobile crisis team

110
Research suggests that in some jurisdictions, officers at the scene downgrade between 20% and 40%
of all crime calls entered by 911 call-takers. Our audio analysis indicates that some of this disparity results
from call-taker decision-making.

92
respond as well.111 Mobile crisis teams can help police modify their response and can
even take over if officers are no longer needed. For instance, a call-taker sent only
officers when a mother called 911 about her adult son who was homeless and throwing
things from the median of a major roadway. The woman also stated that her son had an
outstanding petition for involuntary mental health treatment. Still, the call-taker sent
officers to respond alone.

When officers arrived, the woman told them that her son had a serious mental illness
and was living on the streets, becoming aggressive, and “emaciated” and “basically
starving to death.” The woman also told officers about the petition for involuntary mental
health treatment. When officers found the man, they walked up, asked his name, and
immediately grabbed and handcuffed him. The man began to try to pull away as they
walked him to the police vehicle. In response, they pushed the man to the ground on his
stomach, pulled his arms up behind him, and asked, “Are you going to walk then?” as
the man cried out and apologized. Officers then took the man to a crisis center.
Behavioral health professionals could have worked with the man in a trauma-informed
manner, increasing the likelihood that he would have agreed to go voluntarily, and
potentially avoiding the use of force.

When we did see PhxPD request a mobile crisis team, the incidents were resolved
without arrest or use of force. In one incident, a call-taker immediately recognized the
need for specialized behavioral health assistance.112 A woman called 911 to report that
her husband, who had advanced stage dementia, had thrown knives the night before
and torn up their house earlier in the day. The call-taker sent officers but also connected
the woman with Solari and requested a mobile crisis team. A responding officer advised
the woman that she could either wait for the mobile crisis team or petition her husband
for an involuntary evaluation at a crisis center and have the police transport him. She
chose to wait for the mobile crisis team, which assisted the woman with transporting her
husband to the emergency room.

111
Many of these calls would have also been appropriate for co-response by a behavioral health
professional paired with a police officer, but after a short-lived pilot of embedding a clinician with the King
squads in 2019-20, PhxPD abandoned the co-response model.
112
In our random sample of possible behavioral health-related calls, this was the only call in which the
call-taker contacted Solari.
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PhxPD has no effective system for identifying frequent
callers with behavioral health needs. PhxPD has made “I’m going to hang up.
some attempts to identify frequent callers and connect You won’t cooperate
them to services. But we saw no evidence that they at all. I don’t
included personnel who oversee the 911 call center in understand why you
doing so. Separately, in early 2023, the 911 call center keep calling.”
began trying to identify frequent callers and make ad hoc
referrals for behavioral health assistance. But call center Call-taker to a man in crisis

officials told us they had no data on the success of these who repeatedly called 911

efforts. PhxPD should adopt a coordinated approach

focused on defining the scope of the problem of repeat callers and meeting their specific
needs.

Frequent Caller

In 2021, a homeless man in Phoenix called 911 at least 75 times in one day and
more than 300 times over several days. Call recordings and call-taker notes
demonstrate the man was experiencing a behavioral health crisis. But the man did
not get the help he needed. Instead, call-takers answered his calls with increasing
levels of frustration, and when they traced the man’s location to an abandoned
commercial building, they sent only officers to respond. The officers eventually
found the man lying on the floor in an empty office. They booked him for criminal
trespass and “using electronic communication to harass,” because he called 911
too many times.

This man is not alone. We identified other people whose repeated calls to 911
demonstrated their need for behavioral health services, not police.

b. PhxPD Has Failed to Make Sufficient Reasonable Modifications

within the Call Center

PhxPD has added behavioral health training for 911 operators over the last few years,
but the training has not equipped call-takers with the skills needed to identify behavioral
health-related calls and route them to the appropriate response. Current PhxPD policy
does not give call-takers clear guidance on how to identify a behavioral health call, how
to code such calls, and when and where to transfer those calls. Call-takers have told us
that they often send police to non-violent behavioral health calls out of fear that
something bad might happen. But the presence of officers can lead to more harm for
people with behavioral health disabilities. Phoenix itself has recognized that “the lack of
an appropriate response can lead to an arrest or a negative interaction with sworn
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personnel, which otherwise could be avoided and ultimately does not benefit the
individual or the community.”113 PhxPD created a new policy to address call-takers’
fears, but some remain hesitant to divert calls from the police. PhxPD must improve and
increase its training and develop a clear policy for call-takers to ensure the resources
available for behavioral health calls are accessed consistently.

Supervisors in the PhxPD 911 call center do some monthly quality assurance to ensure
call-takers follow policies and protocols, but it is not focused on behavioral health.
PhxPD should modify its practices to evaluate how call-takers code and direct
behavioral health calls to ensure that calls eligible for an alternative response receive
one. In addition, PhxPD should have access to specialized behavioral health support in
the call center at all times to help call-takers route calls to the most appropriate
response.

2. PhxPD Violates the ADA by Failing to Make Reasonable Modifications

when Officers Interact with People with Behavioral Health Disabilities

Because PhxPD does not ensure that behavioral health-related calls receive an
alternative response when appropriate, PhxPD officers remain the default responders
for most behavioral health calls in Phoenix. As described above, people with behavioral
health disabilities have unequal access to Phoenix’s emergency response system. This
discrimination is often compounded by PhxPD officers’ actions. In a significant number
of use-of-force incidents we reviewed, including police shootings, officers knew or
should have known the person had a disability and could have safely made reasonable
modifications, such as calling in the assistance of a mobile crisis team, waiting for a
CIT-trained officer skilled in crisis response, or using effective de-escalation
techniques.114 The duty to avoid “confrontational tactics” and accommodate a person in
crisis is not diminished when that person fails to immediately follow commands, reacts
poorly to an officer’s arrival, or behaves unexpectedly. But we often saw PhxPD officers
respond with very confrontational tactics to people with behavioral health disabilities
acting this way. When officers fail to modify their approach when it would be reasonable
to do so, PhxPD harms people with behavioral health disabilities and violates the ADA.

113
City of Phoenix Research Report, Budget and Research Department, “Public Safety Behavioral
Health and Crisis Response Calls for Service” (April 20, 2021).
114
PhxPD would not have to modify its approach if the person requiring the modification poses a direct
threat to the safety of an officer or others. See 28 C.F.R. § 35.139. A direct threat is “a significant risk to
the health or safety of others that cannot be eliminated by a modification of policies, practices, or
procedures, or by the provision of auxiliary aids or services.” 28 C.F.R. § 35.104. In many of the incidents
we reviewed involving individuals with mental health disabilities or in crisis, however, the person against
whom force was used did not meet the definition of “direct threat” as that term is used in the ADA.

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 a. PhxPD Officers Default to Using Unnecessary Force and Fail to
Call for Specialized Assistance when Appropriate

PhxPD officers often approach individuals with behavioral health disabilities with a
“force first” mentality. For example, an officer fired Pepperballs less than two minutes
after responding to a call regarding a man at a behavioral health center, rather than
requesting help from a mobile crisis team or a clinician at the center. An employee of
the center called 911 to report that one of their clients with a history of mental illness
had become upset, started yelling, and punched a vending machine. Before officers
arrived, dispatch relayed that the employee called back to say the man was “starting to
calm some” and they thought he “should remain calm with the staff with him for now.”
Nevertheless, the first officer to arrive confronted the man with a Pepperball launcher in
hand. The man tried to move away as other officers, including a CIT officer, began to
surround him. The first officer fired three Pepperball rounds against the wall next to him.
The officers handcuffed the man to transport him for involuntary mental health treatment
as he apologized and cried, “I didn’t do nothing wrong! Please don’t take me, please!”
None of the officers attempted traditional crisis response techniques to help resolve the
situation, including the CIT-trained officer. This encounter likely could have been
resolved without force if officers had called a behavioral health specialist rather than
needlessly confronting the man with force. PhxPD approvingly used this video to inform
patrol about the appropriate use of Pepperballs, though the officer’s actions violated
both the ADA and the Fourth Amendment.

PhxPD officers also escalate interactions with youth with behavioral health disabilities.
In one incident, a teenage girl left home after threatening to kill herself, but both the 911
call-taker and officers failed to request a behavioral health response. Instead, within five
minutes of finding the girl, who was calmly answering their questions, PhxPD officers
grabbed and handcuffed her, saying she “ha[d] to behave” and go home to her mother.
The girl told the officers they scared her and came off as aggressive, to which one
officer responded, “quite frankly we could have been a lot more aggressive already.”
Officers ultimately arrested the girl for breaking a picture frame at home earlier in the
day. PhxPD failed to accommodate this young woman’s disability in any way and
defaulted to criminal charges rather than treatment.

Even when transporting a person for behavioral health treatment, we saw examples of
PhxPD officers defaulting to aggressive, escalating tactics. In one example, officers
used excessive force and arrested a man with a serious mental illness while responding
to transport him for an involuntary mental health assessment. The transport order said
the man had schizophrenia, was hearing voices, and that his mother was frightened.
After finding the man in the bathroom, neither officer explained why they were there or
made a serious attempt to talk to the man. Instead, they grabbed him less than ten

96
seconds after opening the bathroom door. Officers should have been trained to expect
that grabbing at a person in crisis would escalate the encounter and all but guarantee a
defensive reaction. But when the man pulled back, the officers tackled him, put a knee
on his neck for over a minute, and placed him in leg restraints. Officers arrested the
man and charged him with aggravated assault on an officer, claiming he kicked them,
scratched them, and grabbed at an officer’s Taser. Body-worn camera video shows the
man appeared scared and confused by the officers’ actions. The County Attorney
dismissed the charges due to “no reasonable likelihood of conviction.” Rather than
transport the man to behavioral health treatment as his family requested, officers
criminalized the effects of his disability and took him to jail.

When PhxPD officers fail to modify their tactics, people in crisis can predictably become
confused or defensive. For instance, when a woman called 911 because her boyfriend
had attempted suicide, PhxPD officers responded, escalated the situation, and used
force. The caller described the suicide attempt, which did not involve the use of
weapons. Neither the call-taker nor the officers requested that a mobile crisis team
respond, though the man was not at home when officers arrived, and they had 30
minutes to do so. When the man returned, an officer immediately grabbed at his arms.
The man pulled away and backed into his apartment. The officer followed. Inside, the
officer advanced and cornered the man, who then shut and locked the front door to
prevent another officer from entering.
The officer inside tackled the man and “I want you all to leave. This is my
tried to open the door. Here, too, the home. This is where I live. This is
presence of a CIT officer failed to de- where I sleep. This is where I eat. This
escalate the encounter. Instead, the is where I enjoy myself, and you guys
CIT officer entered through another are making it horrible. You’re making
door and helped tackle the man and everything worse. You’re not helping
forcefully restrain him. Then, multiple me. You’re not.”
officers surrounded the man and
spoke to him while the CIT officer A suicidal man, after PhxPD officers tackled and
berated him. After paramedics took
115
arrested him in his home
the man to the hospital, officers

115
The ADA requires that a public entity must “take appropriate steps to ensure that communications
with applicants, participants, members of the public, and companions with disabilities are as effective as
communications with others.” 28 C.F.R. § 35.160(a)(1). When an individual is experiencing a behavioral
health issue and officers do not use well-known methods for properly communicating with that individual,
such as designating one officer as the primary communicator, the law enforcement agency may not have
taken appropriate steps to ensure that communications with individuals with disabilities “are as effective
as communications with others.”

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booked him into jail for assaulting an officer and criminal damage for throwing his own
phone and breaking it.

Because the suicidal man refused to open the door and grabbed at an officer who
followed him inside, PhxPD was justified in using some force to ensure their safety. But
the officers’ actions leading up to that moment—squandering 30 minutes at the scene
waiting for the man, approaching the man without waiting for a CIT-trained officer,
grabbing at the man, cornering him, failing to de-escalate, and not clearing bystanders
from the apartment—led to the avoidable use of force. These kinds of failures to provide
a modified response violate the ADA and can lead to unnecessary uses of force.

Incidents we reviewed, like some of those above, suggest that PhxPD’s CIT program is
not a sufficient modification because CIT officers may act inappropriately and
exacerbate a behavioral health situation. Approximately 20-30% of PhxPD officers have
received CIT training. PhxPD has not given call-takers or dispatchers the ability to
assign a CIT officer to a specific call, though it is a standard expectation that
dispatchers can match call type to officer specialty, including CIT. Instead, a patrol
officer must specifically request CIT assistance. The dispatcher will then put out a call
for CIT. PhxPD relies on CIT officers to voluntarily respond in this situation. We saw no
evidence that PhxPD tracks requests for CIT officers or their response rate.116
Additionally, PhxPD has two squads comprised solely of CIT officers whose main
mandate is to transport people for court-ordered mental health evaluations and
treatment. Due to the number of such transports needed in Phoenix each year and the
limited size and availability of these squads, our analysis showed that they perform
fewer than 2% of mental health transports. They also rarely respond to non-transport
calls. Patrol officers, many of whom have received no CIT training, still do most mental
health transports.117

PhxPD policies and training also contribute to the violations we observed. As described
above in Section A, PhxPD training primes officers to use “force first.” PhxPD training
also disregards the ADA’s rule that agencies may not base safety requirements on
“mere speculation, stereotypes, or generalizations about individuals with disabilities.”118
We reviewed and observed training that reinforced the stigma and stereotype that

116
Our statistical experts estimate that officers trained in crisis intervention responded to about 30% of
calls that call-takers identified as being behavioral health-related during our review period. This is likely an
overcount, as PhxPD does not consistently identify behavioral health calls. In a sample of calls with
indicia of behavioral health issues that we reviewed, less than 15% of the calls to which PhxPD
responded received an officer with CIT training.
117
Our analysis indicates that PhxPD officers with no CIT training perform approximately 60% of mental
health transports.
118
See 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(h).

98
people with behavioral health disabilities or those in crisis are inherently dangerous. For
instance, a mandatory eight-hour Mental Illness Awareness training given to all new
officers erroneously teaches that people with bipolar disorder are “Dangerous to
responding officers. Prone to unprovoked violence.” Separately, in a training for
supervisors on Patrol Tactics and Leadership, we heard a trainer describe a behavioral
health disability as a “pre-attack indicator,” a signal that an officer should be ready for
an attack. And the PhxPD policy on individuals with disabilities explicitly warns officers
that “mentally ill subjects … may be a danger to themselves and/or others.” Data show
that people with mental illness are no more likely to be violent than anyone else. PhxPD
teaches and perpetuates false and harmful stereotypes that prime officers to escalate
encounters with people with behavioral health disabilities.

We did see PhxPD officers treat people with behavioral health disabilities with empathy,
respect, and compassion in our review. But we also saw scores of incidents where
PhxPD officers tried to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, often by using force,
without accommodating people’s disabilities. These tactics can make force inevitable,
place officers in jeopardy, and result in unnecessary arrest or institutionalization. The
failure to reasonably modify stems from PhxPD policy and training, which presents the
stereotype that people with disabilities are dangerous and require a quick and forceful
response. When officers follow their training, PhxPD violates the ADA.

b. PhxPD Has Failed to Ensure that Officers Make Reasonable

Modifications When Responding to People with Behavioral Health
Disabilities

In theory, PhxPD provides officers with multiple ways to reasonably modify their
approach when responding to people with behavioral health disabilities. In practice,
officers rarely employ these modifications, and we saw no evidence that the agency
holds them accountable for that failure.

PhxPD is fortunate to have access to Solari and a network of mobile crisis team
providers within Maricopa County. Yet in only one call for service in the hundreds of
hours of ride-alongs we did, and the hundreds of incidents we reviewed, did officers call
for mobile crisis team assistance. PhxPD’s 2020 pilot to encourage officers and
dispatchers to call for mobile crisis teams had no notable effect on officer behavior. In
all, mobile crisis teams have responded to about 150 PhxPD requests per month for the
past decade, with no significant changes. We saw no evidence that PhxPD holds
officers accountable for not requesting mobile crisis teams on behavioral health-related
calls. PhxPD could modify its policies and practices to require that officers request and
wait for a mobile crisis team in appropriate situations, but it has not done so.

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To be sure, even with improvements at the 911 call center, there will be some
behavioral health calls that will need a police response. PhxPD should modify its CIT
program to ensure that the officers sent to such calls are well-trained to accommodate
people's disabilities. After the typical 40-hour CIT training class, PhxPD requires no
ongoing or refresher training for officers to maintain CIT certification. However,
continuing education is integral to a successful CIT program. PhxPD has a general
policy on individuals with disabilities, but no CIT-specific policies to guide CIT responses
and interactions with other officers. PhxPD recently assembled a committee to evaluate
the quality of CIT responses. But the committee does not generally review calls
involving force and is limited by PhxPD’s failure to accurately identify pertinent calls.
PhxPD must do more to ensure its CIT program is effective.

Finally, to accommodate people with behavioral health disabilities, PhxPD must train its
officers in true de-escalation. Some behavioral health-related incidents will certainly
need an immediate patrol response, but many more do not. As long as PhxPD trains
officers to misinterpret a person’s behaviors and use force quickly, people with
behavioral health disabilities in Phoenix will continue to experience trauma, physical
harm, and unnecessary arrest rather than behavioral health treatment.

* * *

Researchers have found that “the success or failure of alternative response depends
largely on the decisions made inside dispatch about which type of responder to
send.”119 Phoenix has made a number of attempts over the years to respond to people
with behavioral health disabilities in the way that best meets their needs. But PhxPD
call-takers and officers alike still treat behavioral health issues as dangerous even when
they are not or fail to identify them altogether. To ensure the success of its alternative
response programs and to avoid continued violations of the ADA, PhxPD must commit
to giving 911 operators the training, tools, and support necessary to do their difficult but
critical jobs. And when there is a need to send police, PhxPD must prepare officers to
modify their response to properly accommodate behavioral health disabilities.

119
Gillooly, J., Leech, T., and Bond-Fortier, B., Transforming Denver’s First Response Model: Lessons in
Multi-level Systems Change, at 4. Policing Project, NYU School of Law (Sept. 2023), available at
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a33e881b631bc60d4f8b31/t/6532bfbf8268bd785cc14f3b/16978
25559611/Transforming+Denver%27s+First+Response+Model [https://perma.cc/XGY6-DXVW].
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F. PhxPD Fails to Modify Practices During Encounters with Children

PhxPD does not take into account the vulnerability of children and their stage of
development. As one sergeant explained, “We don’t really treat youth any differently
than adults.” Consequently, PhxPD’s problematic tactics and unlawful conduct can have
particularly harmful consequences for children’s physical and mental wellbeing,
including higher post-traumatic stress, increased levels of depression, and diminished
academic performance and sleep.

To assess PhxPD’s policing of youth, we reviewed policies and analyzed body-worn

camera footage. We interviewed Phoenix personnel, including those involved with the
school resource officer program; local and statewide community organizations; juvenile
public defenders; group home and school administrators; social workers; and
academics. We also spoke directly with children and their parents.

During encounters with children over minor issues—sometimes where no crime has
been committed—PhxPD officers escalate situations with combative language and
needless force. In one such incident, two officers threw a 15-year-old Latino boy against
a bus stop pole, held the back of his neck, and handcuffed him after he asked to call his
mother. While on patrol, the officers saw the boy briefly look inside a truck in a car
dealership’s parking lot during business hours, then leave to catch the bus. The officers
followed the boy onto the bus and ordered him off. The boy listened to the officers and
followed all of their orders. But when one officer demanded that the boy take off his
backpack, the boy looked up at him and asked, “Why?” The officer’s response was
aggressive and demeaning: “Because I fucking told you to.” The officer then ordered the
boy to stand up, turn around, and place his hands on his head. The boy started to do as
he was told, but then looked down at the phone in his hand and asked whether he could
call his mother. The officer immediately grabbed him, held his neck, and slammed him
into the pole of a bus stop. The boy’s hands remained above his head until officers
roughly cuffed him. The officers also questioned the boy while he was handcuffed,
without informing him of his Miranda rights, and performed a warrantless—and
unlawful—search on his backpack. They later released the boy but lectured him that the
entire encounter was his own fault.

In another example, an officer handcuffed a teenager after confronting him at his

workplace about a traffic citation. Three months earlier, the officer cited the teenager for
speeding. According to the teen, the officer told him to “shut the fuck up” after he asked
to call his mother during the stop. When the officer learned that PhxPD did not process
the citation due to a technical error, he re-issued the ticket and went to the grocery store
where the boy worked to get him to sign it again. The teenager was confused. He had
been to court for the ticket and did not understand why he was being asked to sign

101
something. According to the teen, the officer “snapped,” threatened to take him to jail,
handcuffed him in the middle of the store, and would not release him until after a PhxPD
lieutenant came to the scene. The next day, the boy’s mom helped him file a complaint
about the way the officer had treated him. When asked by a supervisor, the officer
admitted that he may have told the teenager to “shut the fuck up,” but it was because
the teenager was “argumentative and verbally combative.” A sergeant found no policy
violations and did not discipline the officer.

PhxPD officers also use excessive force during encounters with kids. Nearly every child
we interviewed complained officers closed handcuffs on their wrists so tightly that they
reached the point of pain and injury. The abusive application of handcuffs is
unconstitutional. For some children, officers put on handcuffs so tightly that their hands
went numb and left marks on their wrists for months. Others said they sustained deep
cuts on their wrists and, when they asked officers to loosen the cuffs, PhxPD instead
tightened them further.

In 2022, officers handcuffed and used neck restraints on a 13-year-old boy with autism
who had walked out of school without permission. An officer spotted the boy walking
alongside a road near the school and told him to stop. The boy kept walking, and the
officer ran after him, grabbing his arms from behind, tackling him, and holding him
down. With the officer’s knee in his back and hand on his neck, the boy pleaded to be
let go: “My mom’s right there. I can’t breathe. I’m just trying to get home.” Over the boy’s
phone, his mother could be heard screaming, “I’m coming!” When she arrived, she told
the officer her son had lung problems; despite this information, the officer held the boy
by his sweatshirt hood as he forced the boy to his feet. The officer then uncuffed the
boy and shoved him toward his mother, saying, “He’s your problem now.” “What’s your
issue?” the boy asked. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up,” the officer replied.

The tackle and neck restraint left abrasions on the boy’s arms and neck, but we saw no
evidence that PhxPD recorded the incident as a use of force. When the mother
complained to PhxPD about the way officers had treated her son, a supervisor
defended the officers’ conduct, saying they used “reasonable and necessary force” to
detain the boy for leaving school without permission.

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 A PhxPD officer grabbed the 13-year-old boy by the neck of his sweatshirt to force him to his feet,
while the boy's mother (left) arrived on the scene

PhxPD officers often question people without informing them of their right to remain
silent or to call an attorney in violation of Miranda v. Arizona.120 Questioning children in
custody is particularly coercive, as children are more likely to believe they have no
choice but to answer an officer’s questions, even when that questioning is unlawful.
PhxPD has a Miranda warnings card that translates the Miranda warnings into child-
appropriate language and gives children the option of asking for a parent before
questioning. But we reviewed multiple incidents in which PhxPD officers did not use the
card and ignored the requirements of Miranda altogether, questioning children in
custody about the specifics of alleged offenses without first advising of them of their
right not to answer.

The demeaning way that some Phoenix officers speak to children also increases the
harm they experience. During interviews, youth told us that PhxPD officers’ comments
left them feeling traumatized and degraded. One teenager reported that an officer
performing a pat down said: “If I was your dad, I would have beat the fuck out of you.”
Another youth shared that he felt fearful and angry after officers called him and his
siblings “gangbangers.” Officers “talk to you like they hate you,” he said. Disparaging
and disrespectful language from adults in positions of power can have a lasting effect

120
Under Miranda v. Arizona, before police may lawfully question people in custody, they must inform
people of their right to remain silent, to consult an attorney, to have an attorney present during
questioning, and to have an attorney appointed if they cannot afford one. 384 U.S. 436, 459 (1966).
103
on kids. It can also contribute to fear and distrust of law enforcement from the next
generation of Phoenix residents.

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CONTRIBUTING CAUSES TO VIOLATIONS
The pattern of constitutional violations we describe above is due, in part, to poor
accountability, policies, training, and supervision at PhxPD. Over the years, PhxPD has
taken steps to increase accountability, but these efforts have not led to meaningful
change in behaviors or outcomes. Between 2016 and 2023, the City paid over $40
million to settle claims of police misconduct in no fewer than 75 claims or lawsuits. In
2023 alone, the City settled cases for more than $12 million; there are outstanding
claims asking for millions more. Several payouts came from encounters in which PhxPD
internal investigators found no violations of department policy. The City is presently
litigating cases involving PhxPD’s response to protests, treatment of unhoused people,
and use of excessive force.

To understand PhxPD’s systems for supervising and holding officers accountable, we

interviewed investigators, supervisors, and other personnel responsible for setting
performance standards and assessing conduct. We reviewed a random sample of
hundreds of complaint investigations closed between 2016 and 2023, and other relevant
records and data. We spoke to city officials and community members involved in
oversight. Finally, we spoke with dozens of people who have tried to file misconduct
complaints, local advocates, community groups, police unions, neighborhood
associations, community organizers, and others pressing for greater police
accountability in Phoenix.

A. PhxPD Lacks Effective Systems to Hold Officers Accountable for

Misconduct

PhxPD’s Professional Standards Bureau (PSB) handles complex investigations of

serious misconduct that could result in significant discipline. An officer’s direct
supervisor typically handles minor misconduct investigations that could lead to discipline
not greater than a written reprimand. Both types of review are considered “formal
investigations” that entitle officers to certain procedural rights, such as written notice of
the investigation, union representation, and the opportunity to be heard.

In practice, PhxPD handles most complaints informally as “administrative inquiries” that

require no formal investigation. PhxPD opens an administrative inquiry under two
circumstances. The first type of informal inquiry is for allegations of minor policy
violations or “performance issues” that might result in non-disciplinary counseling or
training. The second type includes any allegation—even a serious misconduct
allegation—that an investigator or supervisor does not believe constitutes a policy
violation. PhxPD decides an allegation should be handled as an administrative inquiry
after a cursory assessment of the complainant’s credibility, reviewing body-worn camera

105
video, or looking at officer reports. The agency classifies most complaints (82.3% from
January 2017 to April 2022) as administrative inquiries. Investigators have wide
discretion for handling administrative inquiries, as no policy describes the appropriate
process. Despite layers of review, administrative inquiries routinely demonstrate
investigative failures, such as overt bias in favor of officers and the failure to collect or
preserve material evidence.

1. PhxPD Fails to Accept Complaints of Officer Misconduct

As a federal district court in Arizona observed, “a non-intimidating complaint intake

process is essential to having a constitutionally adequate internal investigation
process.”121 In Phoenix, it is difficult to complain about police misconduct, in part
because PhxPD both discourages people from making complaints and discourages
officers from accepting them.

When people file a complaint, PhxPD warns them they may face criminal liability for
“misrepresenting a fact” or “misleading a peace officer.”122 One person we spoke to
worried that he risked going to jail if there were any inconsistencies in his complaint. He
explained, “It felt like I needed to be very careful with my words … It felt like an
intimidation tactic … Felt like it was designed to make me not want to talk to them.” The
complainant also said that he had to call PhxPD at least three times to get through to
PSB only to be told, 11 days later, that no misconduct had occurred.

Some people do not make complaints out of fear of retaliation or because they think
they will not be taken seriously. In other instances, officers and supervisors outright
ignore complaints. We also spoke with complainants or listened to recordings of
conversations complainants had with investigators in which PSB debated whether their
experience with PhxPD was unprofessional, biased, or retaliatory. PhxPD has
threatened some citizens with arrest for trying to make a complaint.

PhxPD also effectively discourages officers from reporting misconduct directly to PSB.
While PhxPD policy requires officers to call supervisors to the scene of alleged
misconduct, it does not explicitly address direct reporting to PSB. PhxPD supervisors
confirmed their expectation that the chain of command would make the decision to refer
misconduct to PSB, not individual officers. It is important for supervisors and

121
Melendres v. Skinner, No. CV-07-2513-PHX-GMS, 2021 WL 4458241, at *1 (D. Ariz. Sept. 29, 2021).
122
Since 2021, Arizona law has required all police departments in the state to provide this warning. But
PhxPD mandated the warning for years, due to requirements in the union contracts. In 2021, the City
successfully bargained with the union to eliminate the requirement, only to have the State impose the
requirement on all Arizona police departments months later.

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commanders to identify and address misconduct, but PSB should also be accessible to
any officer who wants to make a complaint.

Even if PSB is alerted to misconduct, it may not open an investigation. According to

PSB personnel, the decision to move forward with an investigation is a moving target.
Some of these decisions are documented in a phone log database, where PSB records
all its calls, walk-ins, and emails. Among the phone logs are many records in which
complainants alleged serious misconduct, only for the investigator to close the
complaint shortly after intake with minimal review. In one case, a person called PSB to
complain about her treatment during a traffic stop. According to the phone log, the
woman alleged that officers pointed their guns at her and illegally held her in the back of
a patrol car for 45 minutes. “I think it was racial profiling,” she said. Investigators
documented the case closure in a phone log that same day, noting that “nothing she
said indicated there was a policy violation during this incident.”

Miranda Warnings

As described above, supervisors often engage in cursory reviews that find no fault
when officers used unreasonable force. Their incident reviews fail to recognize
other constitutional violations as well. During encounters, officers routinely violate
the rules imposed by Miranda v. Arizona, which requires police to inform people
before in-custody questioning of their right to remain silent, to consult an attorney,
to have an attorney present during questioning, and to have an attorney appointed
if they cannot afford one. We reviewed cases in which officers questioned people
in violation of Miranda even after they clearly invoked their rights.

Even when raised in a citizen complaint, PhxPD’s systems of accountability fail to

identify and correct Miranda violations. A person called PhxPD to complain that he
was questioned after invoking his right to counsel and then mocked for doing so.
The officers’ body-worn camera video confirmed what the complainant told
officers: “I’m going to call a lawyer. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” An
officer began questioning the man—who was still on the phone with his attorney.
The man repeated, “I don’t want to talk to you no more.” A second officer said,
“I think he’s talking to his lawyer because we’re abusing his rights.” Despite
the clear invocation of his constitutional rights, officers asked the man three more
rounds of questions.

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 Investigators did not include the complainant’s allegations regarding Miranda in
their report, which refers instead to officers “making jokes.” The report states that
“footage of 13 officers' body worn cameras (BWC) were inspected by 3 tiers of
supervision.” Despite this careful review, the report does not mention the Miranda
violations and concluded that the allegations were “baseless” and “without merit.”
County prosecutors declined to prosecute all the man’s charges.

When PSB closes a complaint in a phone log, including the example above, the record
is rarely linked to the accused officer or tagged for the specific allegations made. PhxPD
also summarizes multiple complaints from different people about unrelated incidents
into one narrative. Supervisors in the field may not document complaints at all if they
address them informally. The resulting incomplete record means that PhxPD cannot
track the true number of complaints made across the department, nor see how often
specific officers receive complaints. The process has effectively buried citizen
complaints, obscured patterns of misconduct, and shielded officers from supervisory
review.

2. PhxPD Fails to Conduct Thorough and Fair Investigations

When PhxPD does open a misconduct investigation, it is often deficient. Investigators

show bias toward officers and routinely fail to investigate all allegations.

PhxPD does not take steps to prevent conflicts of interest. For example, PhxPD referred
multiple complaints related to the summer 2020 protests to supervisors who oversaw
the protest response. In closing the complaints, these supervisors tended to conclude
allegations of misconduct by officers under their command were meritless. In another
case, a man complained to a sergeant that an officer had exceeded the speed limit and
behaved unprofessionally during a traffic stop, telling the man, “I am not afraid to scuffle
… I will follow the fucking law and you can back the fuck out of my face … You may
have just stepped into a world of shit.” When the sergeant spoke with the man at the
scene, he defended the officer’s conduct, saying “I don't blame him” for cursing at the
man. Later that day, the man contacted PSB to file a formal complaint about the
incident. PSB then sent it to the same sergeant for investigation. Unsurprisingly, the
sergeant found “nothing unprofessional during the contact.”

Investigators also consider their own views about an officer when assessing the
credibility of a complaint. One PSB investigator relied on his prior experience
supervising an officer, without any tie to the underlying incident, to dispense with a
complaint. In that case, a rideshare driver called PSB to complain that the officer was

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aggressive and rude, allegedly telling him, “Do you know I can ruin your whole day right
now by giving you a citation? ... I can ruin your whole entire career today by giving you
this ticket.” In closing the complaint, the investigator assured the complainant, “I have
not seen him act unprofessional during my time supervising him,” and, “if you say his
attitude was unprofessional or rude, that’s, like, very subjective … But as far as a full-
blown investigation, there is no investigation because there is no misconduct.”

Investigators also skip key investigative steps, such as speaking to all witnesses,
reviewing all evidence, or identifying all allegations. For example:

• A woman complained that five PhxPD officers retaliated against her for
refusing to sign a citation. The woman said officers arrested her and held her
in an overheated patrol car without air conditioning in the middle of the
summer. The investigator looked into the conduct of only one of the five
officers involved, did not speak to the complainant or civilian witnesses, relied
on another officer’s summary of the body-worn camera video, made no
finding about whether the complainant was held in an unreasonably hot patrol
vehicle, and otherwise found no violations.

• A person complained that an officer arrested him in retaliation for attempting

to record the officer while the officer was searching and arresting someone
else and then lied on the arrest report. The investigator sought to collect video
evidence from the complainant but failed to reconnect with him after a few
attempts. The investigator closed the file even though he had sufficient
information to proceed, including the accused officer’s name and badge
number and the date of the incident. Had the investigator pulled the incident
report, he would have identified at least two other witnesses to the incident.

Investigators also fail to appropriately consider whether officers have received similar
complaints in the past. In one case, store surveillance video showed an officer slapping
a handcuffed shoplifting suspect hard enough to knock him from his seat; the man
suffered an orbital bone fracture and swelling to his face, neck, and back. PhxPD had
previously suspended the officer for striking a suspect in handcuffs and had received
complaints from two different people complaining of similar misconduct in the four years
before this complaint.

The deficiencies in PhxPD investigations are due, in part, to ineffective training of

investigators. New PSB investigators do not attend a formal training program. Instead,
they “shadow” more experienced investigators and certify they have read the relevant
policies. Even though field supervisors handle most misconduct complaints, newly
promoted sergeants receive only a 90-minute overview of the investigative process
when they are first promoted. PhxPD does not require PSB investigators or supervisors
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to take specialized training on internal investigative techniques or legal issues, such as
the rights afforded by the state peace officer’s bill of rights, collective bargaining
agreements, or the duty to report exculpatory evidence.

3. PhxPD Fails to Adequately Discipline Officers Who Engage in

Misconduct

PhxPD administers discipline in accordance with a discipline matrix. The level of

discipline is set to the most serious of the sustained violations; additional sustained
violations can be considered aggravating circumstances. PhxPD also uses “progressive
discipline,” where the officer’s recent history of misconduct can escalate the
consequences that stem from new sustained policy violations. The Chief is the final
authority over discipline. Officers have the right to appeal disciplinary decisions to the
City’s Civil Service Board, a five-member board appointed by the City Council.

PhxPD affords officers multiple opportunities to challenge findings of misconduct or

negotiate discipline. When a formal investigation concludes, but before the final
determination, the officer who is the subject of the investigation has the right to an
Investigative Review Process (IRP), a hearing during which the officer receives a draft
of the investigative report and any underlying support, including interviews. The officer
(and their representative) may then meet with the investigator (and their unit
Commander) to challenge the allegations brought, findings made, and any discipline
that might result. Misconduct findings become final only after the IRP is completed or
waived.

For serious misconduct, including excessive force, officers also have the chance to
dispute what discipline should be imposed. The Disciplinary Review Board, which is a
group composed of an officers’ peers, PhxPD leadership, and members of the
community, reviews sustained investigations and makes recommendations to the Chief
for the appropriate level of discipline. Once again, the subject officer may review all
materials shared with the board and may appear in front of the board to argue why a
proposed outcome is unjustified. Complainants are not allowed to attend the
Disciplinary Review Board and may not present evidence or testimony. Officers may
appeal to the Chief, put forth new evidence, and negotiate resolutions.

PhxPD does not track how often findings are changed as a result of officers’ repeated
opportunities to influence investigations and their outcomes. But we found that these
opportunities, which exceed what the law requires, have led to overturning findings or
downgrading discipline, even where the underlying factual findings have not changed.
For example, PSB sustained an allegation that an officer lied to investigators about
receiving and refusing to sign a criminal traffic citation, a finding which likely would have

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resulted in his addition to the Brady list if not also increased his likelihood of
termination.123 After the IRP and a subsequent hearing with the Chief, PSB changed the
finding from sustained to “unresolved,” and the officer accepted a 240-hour suspension
without appeal in lieu of termination.

The failure to properly discipline has led to officers engaging in repeated misconduct.
One officer avoided termination by persuading PhxPD to convert his discipline to a
suspension. The officer was arrested for driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.154
(which qualifies as an “extreme DUI” in Arizona), while carrying a firearm for which he
was not certified—violations that the officer admitted to. At the time of the DUI, the
officer had been with PhxPD for two-and-a-half-years and had been found to have
violated minor policies in three prior investigations. The officer had a disciplinary hearing
scheduled with former Chief Williams and, for reasons not apparent in the file, PhxPD
cancelled that meeting. Instead, the officer struck an agreement to take a 120-hour
suspension and a written reprimand. Less than one year after serving this discipline,
PSB investigated the same officer for starting a sexual relationship with the victim of a
crime he was assigned to investigate. PSB sustained the allegation, and the Disciplinary
Review Board recommended termination. The former Chief, again, rejected termination
and imposed a 240-hour suspension with a “last chance agreement.” The officer
remains employed at PhxPD.

Even if the Chief issues discipline, it may be reversed. In 2021, PhxPD terminated an
officer who shot and killed a man only seconds after he answered his apartment door.
The Civil Service Board reinstated the officer five months later and he remains
employed by PhxPD. The City of Phoenix agreed to pay the man’s family $3 million to
settle their claim. In another example, PhxPD tried to terminate an officer three times
before it finally stuck. PhxPD tried to fire the officer in 2019 for making knowingly false
statements on a search warrant affidavit and then lying to PSB investigators in the
subsequent investigation. The Civil Service Board reinstated the officer, even though
this was the second time the agency tried to terminate his employment—the first time
being in 2009 for failing a drug test—and even though he had served multi-day
suspensions in 2018 for interfering in a felony criminal investigation on behalf of a friend
and in 2019 for failing to complete supplemental reports in 34 ongoing robbery
investigations. In 2021, in its third attempt, PhxPD successfully terminated the officer
when he was criminally charged with fraud.

123
The “Brady list” refers to a list kept by prosecutors of police officers with histories of dishonesty or
other integrity issues. Under Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must disclose evidence that is favorable to
the accused. 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963).

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 4. The City’s Implementation of the Office of Accountability and
Transparency Does Not Provide Effective Handling of Civilian
Complaints

In May 2021, the City established the Office of Accountability and Transparency (OAT),
after years of calls from community members for civilian oversight. The process was the
subject of months of debate about the structure, powers, and independence of the
agency. In creating OAT, the City’s goal was to ensure complaints against officers are
handled fairly and objectively, and it gave OAT jurisdiction to investigate and monitor
PhxPD’s use of force, in-custody deaths, and other community complaints.
Implementation stalled, however, when the state legislature passed a law to limit civilian
participation in the investigation of police misconduct.124 Still, the City hired a civilian
director and non-sworn investigators to monitor cases and issue reports. OAT began
monitoring investigations in September 2022.

OAT is still finding its footing as an agency, but it is not clear whether it will be able to
deliver consistent and effective civilian review of PhxPD. One community advocate we
spoke to expressed frustration that the model of independent oversight they
championed “has been shredded.” OAT published its first monitoring reports in early
2024. OAT has provided pointed feedback that echoes some of the same issues we
describe above, such as PhxPD’s failure to classify or investigate complaints of racial
bias and the problems with administrative inquiries. PhxPD has responded to the first
two reports with proposed actions. The OAT reports also complain that PhxPD has not
fully cooperated with OAT in sharing information, despite a formal agreement between
the two agencies. For example, PhxPD has failed to notify OAT of relevant incidents or
provide timely and complete documentation. OAT’s first director resigned in January
2024, alleging the City compromised OAT’s independence—an allegation the City and
the new interim director dispute. It is unclear whether OAT in its current form can keep
its promise to promote fair and objective misconduct investigations.

B. Poor Policies and Deficient Training Contribute to PhxPD’s

Systemic Legal Violations

Due to deficiencies in policy and training, in many of the incidents described above,
officers were doing what PhxPD trained them to do. Officers’ illegal use of neck and leg
restraints stem from PhxPD’s failure to guide officers on the appropriate use—and
limits—of these restraints. The numerous unlawful arrests of protestors during peak

124
Arizona law now requires that any entity that investigates police misconduct must be made up of at
least two-thirds officers from the agency. See Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 38-1117 (2024).

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protests in 2020 can be connected to PhxPD policy directing officers to “incarcerate as
many people as possible” after declaring an unlawful assembly. We also found systemic
problems with PhxPD’s methods for developing and implementing new policies. Until
2023, PhxPD’s policy unit was effectively one detective who had a mainly administrative
role. PhxPD entrusted policy development mostly to the individual units, with minimal
oversight. Public input was largely limited.

In the past, PhxPD has made public commitments to change policy in response to high-
profile incidents or public scrutiny. But in some cases, we found little follow through. For
example, PhxPD announced it would develop a foot pursuit policy after a 2015 ASU
study found that foot pursuits often preceded PhxPD police shootings, a practice that
we also saw in some of the shootings we reviewed. The policy apparently took over six
years to implement. We asked about the lengthy process when we interviewed officers
assigned to PhxPD’s Center for Continuous Improvement, a unit responsible for making
recommendations for policy and training changes. The lieutenant told us he thought the
written policy had been completed in 2015 or 2016 but had no idea what happened to it.

PhxPD training also contributes to the pattern of violations we describe above. This is
not because the Training Academy lacks resources; as Interim Chief Sullivan told us,
“Facility-wise, this is the best facility I’ve seen in any department.” Despite these
resources, PhxPD has not developed a comprehensive training plan to ensure officers
receive up-to-date training on legal standards and effective tactics. Officers need only
the minimum training required to maintain state certification, typically eight hours per
year, along with firearms qualifications. As a result, officers receive little training on
constitutional practices in critical topics like use of force; stops, searches and arrests;
de-escalation; and engaging people with behavioral health disabilities. And when
officers opt in to receive specialized training, it often primes them to engage in unlawful
and dangerous behavior, as described above.

We also found PhxPD’s training programs for new officers lacked consistency and
uniformity across the department. Before 2021, each precinct and unit administered its
own Field Training Officer (FTO) program, with minimal supervision from the Training
Academy. PhxPD revamped the on-the-job training program in 2021; earlier that year,
the City had hired law enforcement consultants at 21CP Solutions to review the
department's FTO program, in addition to its handling of the 2020 protests. The City
refused to allow us to review the 21CP report, so we cannot assess what deficiencies
the report identified, or whether the changes to the FTO program addressed those
concerns. In any event, PhxPD leadership told us that the department sought more
uniformity in the FTO program. PhxPD now operates the FTO program out of three
precincts and exercises more centralized control over each site. But the Field Training

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Officers we spoke to said that individual precincts sometimes reject directives on how to
run the program and make unapproved decisions to customize the approach.

PhxPD has taken steps to improve policy and training, including during our
investigation. For example, PhxPD completed the Arizona Law Enforcement
Accreditation Program certification, invited wide public comment on several key policy
revisions, and expanded its policy unit with sworn and non-sworn staff. PhxPD finalized
a new use-of-force policy in late 2023, after months of development. And PhxPD began
to require officers to attend trainings on Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement
(ABLE) and Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics (ICAT). ABLE aims
to empower officers to intervene to prevent harmful conduct. ICAT is a use-of-force
training designed to help officers safely and lawfully respond to volatile situations.

But PhxPD needs a comprehensive plan to address its current offerings of problematic
training, incorporate the new training, and ensure the Academy consistently promotes
constitutional policing. This plan must recognize that years of training have ingrained a
“force first” culture at the department that will take concentrated effort to change.

C. PhxPD Does Not Adequately Supervise Officers

Robust supervision is essential to safe and effective policing. Supervisors at all levels
have a role in enforcing policies and upholding standards among their subordinates.
Supervisors who fail to do so should be held accountable for misconduct and poor
performance. PhxPD regularly falls short of these expectations.

Part of the problem is structural. Precinct commanders are afforded significant

discretion in how they execute public safety strategies. Unlike most other large city
police departments, PhxPD does not have a “CompStat” or equivalent, in which
commanders report to department leadership about crime trends and policing
strategies.125 We saw little evidence that leadership coordinates geographic crime
strategies in any systematic way. Interim Chief Sullivan confirmed CompStat “is a
process we are still building.”

Even within precincts, individual officers have significant discretion in how they use their
time. For example, PhxPD’s 911 dispatchers do not assign specific patrol cars to

125
“CompStat” is a police management system developed in the early 1990s intended to provide daily
updated crime statistics to police leadership. The most widely recognized element of CompStat (short for
Compare Statistics) is regularly occurring meetings at which police leaders discuss and analyze crime
issues. Often, each CompStat meeting may focus on a specific geographic area. Police Executive
Research Forum, Compstat: Its Origins, Evolution, and Future in Law Enforcement Agencies (2013),
https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/Publications/PERF-Compstat.pdf [https://perma.cc/WW2U-
CYD6].
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respond to calls for service. And PhxPD does not evaluate whether the appropriate
number of officers respond to each call, nor provide guidance to officers. Instead,
officers on patrol may respond to the scene of any 911 call if they are available. We
observed these practices during our ride-alongs. Interim Chief Sullivan told us he was
unaware of PhxPD analyzing how officers spend their time or make decisions about
enforcement.

PhxPD supervisors lack essential tools for identifying concerning behavioral patterns
and making key personnel decisions. Former Chief Williams acknowledged the need to
know an employee’s full history to make the best decisions. But PhxPD limits
supervisors from documenting or acting on certain performance problems. Supervisors
are implicitly encouraged to omit negative comments or misconduct from supervisory
notes and performance evaluations. They are also limited in how much they may
consider an employee’s history of misconduct when making discipline, promotion, and
transfer decisions.

PhxPD’s longstanding practice of deleting misconduct records from the department’s

files adds to the challenge of appropriately addressing uses of force and officer
misconduct. State law requires law enforcement agencies to keep employee records,
including discipline, for five years beyond an officer’s employment. Before 2021,
however, PhxPD was required to send misconduct records to the City’s Human
Resources Department at an employee’s request and destroy the records that police
supervisors and internal investigators could access within PhxPD systems. PhxPD also
periodically purged thousands of misconduct records that did not result in formal
discipline. Since 2021, PhxPD no longer allows officers to request a purge. But
thousands of misconduct records remain inaccessible to PhxPD supervisors because of
these practices. Our analysis of PhxPD’s files shows that 53% of misconduct cases
opened in 2016 are now purged from PhxPD’s systems. These purged records prevent
supervisors from accessing information about their officers, shield officers from public
scrutiny and internal discipline, and allow problematic officers to remain employed and
win promotions, even when they have a pattern of misconduct.

PhxPD has also repeatedly rehauled the agency’s Early Identification and Intervention
Program. The goal of the system is to alert supervisors to officers who may be having
performance problems, based on patterns in their enforcement activities, complaints,
and other criteria. PhxPD has replaced its early intervention program three times in the
last seven years. The current system, which started in 2021, had resulted in only one
formal intervention one year later to address an officer’s attendance and punctuality.
Meanwhile, we found no intervention for an officer who, from April 2021 to April 2022,
reported using force eleven times, including an officer-involved shooting (his second in
eight months) and an incident that resulted in a death in custody. In the same time

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span, this officer also pointed his gun at someone on at least eight occasions; had an
out-of-policy, high-speed vehicle pursuit that resulted in significant property damage and
civilian injuries; an out-of-policy minor traffic accident; and at least two other allegations
of potential misconduct. This officer generated 13 alerts, none of which compelled a
supervisor to intervene.

Finally, PhxPD impedes effective supervision by allowing officers to use the “muting
function” on body-worn cameras. PhxPD policy requires officers to activate their body-
worn cameras during law enforcement contacts, such as stopping a car or interviewing
witnesses to a crime. The policy does not address muting, though the department has
configured its body cameras to enable this function. Officers frequently mute their body-
worn cameras following a use of force. Many times, we saw no clear reason for muting,
yet officers and sergeants routinely did so. In other incidents, the timing of officers’
decisions to mute raises concerns that they did so to intentionally obfuscate or to enable
more free conversations that they knew were inappropriate. In one example, after
deploying chemical munitions against summer 2020 protestors, one officer told another:
“I’m up there assaulting those guys. Next thing I know, I see your guys launch gas at
‘em. I’m like, oh yeah, thank God, this is great.” About 10 seconds later, the other officer
looked down at his colleague’s camera, noticed it was recording, and told him to mute it,
which he did.

D. PhxPD Tolerates Disrespect Toward the People It Serves

The failures described above have allowed for open disrespect within PhxPD of certain
Phoenix communities and for the celebration of retaliatory violence to proliferate among
officers. For example, following a 2017 protest at which officers unloaded cannisters of
tear gas on peaceful protestors, PhxPD officers circulated a “challenge coin”—a
memento normally used to commemorate moments of valor and pride during service.
This challenge coin instead depicted a protestor whom an officer shot in the groin with a
40mm impact round. The coin showed an image of the protestor with a star over his
groin and the words, “Good night, left nut” encircling him. On the back, the coin read,
“Making America Great Again – One Nut at a Time.”

When supervisors learned that a box full of the coins and related memorabilia had been
found at a PhxPD precinct, they decided to throw away all evidence of the coin and
created no record of what had happened. And although they prohibited officers from
having the coins at work, they did not refer the matter to PSB to investigate how this box
of inappropriate collectables mocking a protestor ended up in a PhxPD precinct.

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 PhxPD Challenge Coin depicting a protestor shot in the groin with a stunbag during a 2017 protest
(left depicts the front of the coin; right depicts the back of the coin)

More than three years later, local news reported on the coin, connecting the coin’s
“Good Night Left” slogan and imagery to hate speech. Immediately, PhxPD issued a
public statement denying that the department sanctioned the coin and claiming that a
“review at the time by a Commander with the Department was unable to substantiate
any claims of misconduct related to a challenge.” When asked to clarify the scope of
PhxPD’s claimed “review” of the challenge coin, two Phoenix commanders declined to
speak with Justice Department investigators about the topic.

As a result of this inaction and despite significant media attention and scrutiny, five
years after the challenge coin’s initial appearance, PhxPD has continued to celebrate
the incident in training. As we describe in Section D of this Report, with Justice
Department investigators observing, an instructor in a 2022 training described the
incident as “a textbook shot into the lower abdomen.” The instructor then boasted that
PhxPD executed search warrants on the protestor’s home and workplace, causing him
to become “jobless and homeless at the same damn time.”

PhxPD took a similarly casual approach when, in June 2019, the news organization
Injustice Watch found social media posts by PhxPD employees—including
supervisors—celebrating violence against protestors. In one posting, the message
“Mace in yo face” appeared with an image of a police officer spraying pepper spray into
a man’s face as another officer looked on. Other posts endorsed explicit violence.

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Former Chief Williams admitted that “[t]he posts and the comments … clearly promoted
and created hate,” and she directed PSB to investigate. But PSB chose to classify many
posts pertaining to protestors as administrative inquiries, requiring no formal
investigation. And beyond the PSB referral, PhxPD did not address why officers across
ranks displayed open contempt for people exercising their rights, or the impact this may
have on officers’ conduct on the field, the community’s trust, and people’s willingness to
exercise their First Amendment rights in the future.

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RECOMMENDED REMEDIAL MEASURES
In a 2024 report, the City outlined several new and ongoing initiatives designed to
ensure constitutional policing.126 Phoenix and PhxPD acknowledge in the report that
reforms are necessary but claim they can be achieved without the intervention of the
Justice Department or oversight by a federal court. Our experience shows that reforms
on paper are not enough to address entrenched unlawful practices of the degree we
describe in this Report. And past PhxPD efforts—including some of those outlined in the
City’s report—have failed to mitigate the violations we found. Although the City’s plans
are a positive step, they are not enough to achieve durable reform.

The initial remedial measures we recommend below provide a foundation for changes
that Phoenix and PhxPD must make to improve public safety. But only with true
accountability will the department be able to build the trust of the Phoenix community
and comply with the Constitution and federal law.

Use of Force

1. Improve Use-of-Force Policies, Reporting, and Review Procedures to

Minimize the Use of Force. Revise force policies to emphasize avoiding force
and increasing de-escalation and require officers to consider less-intrusive
alternatives before employing force. Provide clearer guidance for when certain
force options, including projectiles or Tasers, may be appropriate. Implement
force reporting and review systems to ensure that officers report all uses of force,
including neck and leg restraints, and that PhxPD conducts timely, thorough
force reviews. Ensure that supervisors’ performance reviews evaluate the quality
of their force reviews.

2. Improve Use-of-Force Training. Develop new training to ensure adherence to

legal requirements. Provide clear guidance to officers about when it is
appropriate to use different force options and de-escalation, the duty to render
aid, and the requirement to modify force as resistance changes. This should
include scenario-based training and testing that reinforces these concepts.
3. Enhance Force-Related Accountability Mechanisms. Require supervisors to
conduct use-of-force supervisory reviews and identify violations of policy or law.
Ensure that supervisors promptly refer evidence indicating misconduct or criminal

126
The Phoenix Police Department: The Road to Reform, available at
https://www.phoenix.gov/policesite/Documents/DOJ/PPD_RoadtoReform_January2024.pdf
[https://perma.cc/RN3V-HTSA].
119
 conduct to the appropriate investigative unit or agency. Take appropriate
corrective or disciplinary action when officers violate force policies.
4. Improve Data Collection and Assessment of Force. Assess data to identify
trends and develop policies, trainings, and recommendations to reduce the use
of force. Ensure that supervisors and command can effectively review force
data.

5. Develop Force Policies Appropriate for Vulnerable Populations, Such as

Youth and People with Behavioral Health Needs. Ensure policies recognize
and account for vulnerable populations, such as children, people with behavioral
health disabilities, and unhoused people.

Treatment of the Unhoused Population

1. Improve Policies and Review Procedures Regarding the Seizure and
Destruction of Property. Revise policies to ensure that adequate notice is
given before the seizure of property. Train and supervise staff to ensure that
policies are uniformly followed; staff can distinguish between personal property
and abandoned items; they give proper notice before and after the seizure of
property; and they create sufficient inventory records so that individuals may
reclaim their property. Implement systems of supervisory review to ensure that
staff are complying with policy.
2. Improve Policies and Review Procedures Regarding the Stops, Detentions,
and Arrests of Homeless People. Revise policies and review procedures on
reasonable articulable suspicion and probable cause to stop a person, unhoused
or otherwise. Clarify the limits on consensual encounters. Ensure training on
constitutional prohibitions is given promptly. Require reporting for all community
contacts, including consensual encounters, that captures the reason for the
contact, basis for stops, and results of each encounter. Implement systems of
supervisory review to ensure that staff are complying with policy.
3. Improve Documentation of Police Activity. Capture data on a person’s
housing status for all encounters and stops, not only arrests.

Identifying and Reducing Racial Disparities

1. Improve Documentation of Police Activity. Ensure public safety data

collection allows for analysis of racial disparities, including for stops,
searches, citations, arrests, force, and investigative activities. Ensure data
captures the basis for enforcement action, including reasonable articulable
suspicion or probable cause for stops and searches, the basis for consent
searches, and the results of each search. Differentiate between traffic and

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 pedestrian stops. Link enforcement data with dispatch records, to allow for
comprehensive analysis of PhxPD’s stop data.
2. Improve Policies for Discretionary Enforcement. Develop policies on stops,
searches, and arrests to guide officers’ discretion and ensure constitutional and
non-discriminatory treatment when enforcing traffic, drug, and quality-of-life laws.
3. Analyze Data from Enforcement Activity. Develop capacity to analyze data
about disparities based on race or national origin in enforcement activities overall
and to assess the impact of any specialized units, initiatives, or programs.

4. Reduce Unjustified Disparities. Where enforcement disparities based on race

or national origin exist, take steps to understand the cause of the disparities and
address them.

Protecting First Amendment Rights

1. Improve Policies and Training Related to Protests and
Demonstrations. Revise policies on responding to civil disturbances and
disorderly conduct to improve planning for protests, including designating
information that PhxPD gathers about protestors; emphasizing First Amendment
freedoms; protecting the right to gather and to record police activity; limiting the
use of less-lethal weapons; and providing daily after-action reports about force,
officer wellness, and effectiveness. Training should address the challenges of
protecting public safety and First Amendment rights during demonstrations
critical of law enforcement.
2. Improve Accountability for First Amendment Violations. Ensure that force
reviews and reviews of misconduct complaints assess whether an officer’s
conduct violated the First Amendment. Ensure that the agency consistently
follows an after-action review process following protests to evaluate the
performance of officers and commanders.
3. Improve Permitting Process for Protests and Demonstrations. Revise
permitting process to ensure that protestors can participate in spontaneous
demonstrations without violating laws prohibiting obstruction of a thoroughfare.
4. Improve External Oversight of Protest Response. Create mechanisms for city
prosecutors to help PhxPD identify officers’ actions that may have impinged on
First Amendment rights.

Responding to People with Behavioral Health Disabilities

1. Ensure the PhxPD 911 Call Center is Dispatching Appropriate

Responders. Update policies, procedures, and training for calls for service
involving behavioral health issues. In doing so, collaborate with Solari
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 and the Phoenix Fire Department to ensure that 911 operators understand when
to request the assistance of a mobile crisis team or a BHU. Prioritize 911 call
center staffing issues and quality assurance processes to assess call-taking,
dispatches, and responses to such calls. Implement after-action reviews of calls
involving behavioral health issues, including debriefings for system, call-taker,
and dispatcher improvement and to ensure modifications are consistently
appropriate.
2. Improve Call Coding, Data Collection, and Analysis in the PhxPD 911 Call
Center. Refine call coding practices to better capture the behavioral health
aspects of calls. Create consistent, systematized processes to collect and
analyze call data to identify the full universe of behavioral health-related calls
received by the agency and the responders deployed to those calls.
3. Develop and Implement Appropriate Policies and Training Relating to
Behavioral Health and Assess Their Impact. Train PhxPD officers
in proper de-escalation and appropriate modifications to activities to
accommodate people with behavioral health disabilities. Provide clinically
informed training for PhxPD officers and supervisors that delivers accurate
information regarding behavioral health disabilities. Ensure policy and training
addresses coordinating responses with other key actors, including Solari, mobile
crisis teams, and BHUs. Track and analyze CIT-certified officer responses to
behavioral health-related calls, including calls where force is used. Require
recertification training every two years for all CIT officers.
4. Develop and Implement Appropriate Quality Assurance Methods to Assess
Impact and Identify Resource Needs. Implement systems of supervisory
review to ensure that officers are complying with policy. Implement systems
of supervisory review of calls involving behavioral health issues, including
debriefings for system and officer improvement and to ensure modifications are
consistently appropriate.

Responding to Youth

1. Develop and Implement Policies and Training Appropriate for

Youth. Recognize the unique characteristics of youth and modify patrol practices
as necessary. Develop evidence-based policies and training that address youth-
specific characteristics and vulnerabilities.

Accountability

1. Identify, Address, and Document All Allegations Raised in Misconduct

Complaints. Ensure all allegations of misconduct are accepted,
comprehensively reviewed, and resolved with appropriate documentation

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 explaining decision-making. Hold supervisors accountable for failing to report or
address misconduct. Expressly prohibit all forms of discouragement, intimidation,
coercion, or retaliation against any person who makes a complaint.

2. Require Officers to Report Misconduct. Allow officers to report misconduct

directly to PSB. Where officers fail to report misconduct, ensure they are held
accountable. Ensure protections against retaliation for officers who report the
misconduct of other officers.

3. Ensure Consistent Processes for Investigating Misconduct. Eliminate

Administrative Inquiry investigations and require standardized processes for
investigating misconduct complaints. Ensure PSB reviews all findings, material
evidence, and outcomes for completed investigations assigned for unit-level or
criminal investigation for tracking, monitoring, and qualitative assessment.

4. Improve Misconduct Investigations. Ensure all allegations of misconduct are

fully investigated, and that the complainants are kept up to date on the complaint
status. Train PhxPD investigators and supervisors on investigative practices and
the particular challenges of police misconduct investigations. Prohibit conflicts of
interest.

5. Fully Staff PSB. Ensure that PSB is fully staffed with enough qualified, well-
trained investigators to complete all investigations in a timely and consistent
manner. Ensure that investigations are thorough, interviews are conducted
appropriately, all relevant evidence is accepted and appropriately weighed, and
sound determinations of witness credibility are made where there is conflicting
evidence.

6. Facilitate External Oversight. Ensure PhxPD provides any external oversight

body, including OAT, with the broadest and most prompt access to agency data,
systems, documents, and personnel permitted by law.

7. Improve the Review Process for PSB Investigations. Streamline the review
process for administrative investigations to facilitate their timely resolution.
Establish reasonable time limits for each stage of review and document all
decisions.

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Supervision

1. Require a Coordinated Approach to Public Safety. Ensure commanders

report to department leadership about crime trends and policing strategies. Hold
command staff accountable to employing public safety strategies consistent with
agency priorities and community policing principles.

2. Require Consistent Activation, De-Activation, and Review of Body-Worn

Cameras. Require officers to consistently activate body-worn cameras to
document interactions with the public. Require supervisors to review footage to
monitor officer performance and ensure compliance with PhxPD policies. Prevent
officers from muting cameras.

3. Require Review of Discretionary Activity. Require supervisory review of the

reasonable articulable suspicion for any stops and frisks, the probable cause of
any searches, and the basis for any consent searches. Require periodic analysis
of the efficacy of certain practices where officers have more discretion, such as
pretext stops or consent searches.

4. Enhance Early Identification and Intervention Program. Ensure supervisors

take appropriate action when they receive alerts about a subordinate. Document
decision-making over whether to undertake a preventative intervention. Employ
effective, tailored interventions.
Training
1. Develop a Comprehensive Training Plan. Ensure that all officers are regularly
trained on constitutional policing, de-escalation tactics, procedural justice,
intervening to prevent violations of law or policy, and how to respond to persons
in crisis.

2. Improve and Expand Training Department-Wide. Use qualified instructors,

employ best practices in adult learning, and include outside experts and
community-based instructors. Increase annual in-service requirements to ensure
officers receive adequate training on constitutional policing. Involve training
officials in after-action evaluations of force incidents.

3. Improve Training for Supervisors. Train supervisors to promote effective and

constitutional police practices by leading subordinates, monitoring and assessing
their performance, evaluating written reports, investigating uses of force, building
community partnerships, and de-escalating conflicts.

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 4. Improve the Field Training Officer Program. Improve standards for training
and selection of Field Training Officers so that they will consistently model and
support PhxPD values and standards. Standardize the Field Training Officer
program to ensure all officers and recruits are evaluated consistently and fairly.
Policies

1. Develop a Centralized Policy Development Process. Create centralized

process for developing policies and training consistent with legal requirements
and community engagement principles.

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CONCLUSION
The Department of Justice has reasonable cause to believe that Phoenix and PhxPD
engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the
Constitution and federal law. The pattern or practice includes (1) using excessive force;
(2) violating the rights of people experiencing homelessness; (3) using enforcement
strategies that result in unjustified disparities in how police treat Hispanic, Black, and
Native American people; (4) retaliating against people who are engaged in
constitutionally protected expression; and (5) violating the rights of people with
behavioral health disabilities. We also identified concerns regarding PhxPD’s failure to
use appropriate practices in encounters with children. Phoenix and PhxPD’s unlawful
practices have violated the public trust and impaired the effectiveness of policing in
Phoenix. These Findings are intended to help the City, PhxPD, and the community in
Phoenix better understand the full scope of the problem—and the corresponding scope
of the reforms that will be needed. The United States stands ready to work with the City
and PhxPD on a constructive path forward.

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