Justice Department Says Phoenix Police Violated Rights of Children, Minorities, Protesters, Homeless People
The Phoenix Police Department regularly violates the constitutional rights of its most vulnerable residents, including minors, homeless people, racial minorities, and those experiencing mental health crises, according to a report released Thursday by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
The investigators documented incidents where Phoenix police fabricated incident reports, needlessly used physical force and dangerous restraints, illegally detained homeless people and destroyed their property, delayed medical aid to wounded suspects, and assaulted people for criticizing or filming them.
The report concluded that “systemic problems” and “pervasive failings” in the department’s policies, training, and accountability mechanisms have led to widespread use of unconstitutional tactics, excessive force, and illegal retaliation against residents, violating their First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
“Phoenix residents deserve nothing less than fair, non-discriminatory, and constitutional policing,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division said in a press release announcing the findings.
“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,” the report also said.
The Justice Department launched the investigation, known as a “pattern or practice” probe, in 2021, following years of controversial police shootings and allegations of civil rights violations. Those calls for reform escalated after the department’s violent and farcical response to the 2020 George Floyd protests, where police and prosecutors tried to charge a dozen protesters for assisting a fictional criminal gang, “A.C.A.B.” (The acronym stands for All Cops Are Bastards and is a popular slogan among anti-police activists.)
Justice Department investigators found that during protests, officers fired pepper balls, stun bags, and other less-than-lethal munitions indiscriminately and without legal justification at protesters engaged in protected First Amendment activity. One officer fired more than 1,000 pepper balls in one night during the George Floyd protests. Officers also made false statements to support arrests of protesters.
In one training session reviewed by Justice Department investigators, an instructor used a picture of a protester being shot in the groin with a projectile as a laugh line. The instructor also bragged about how a search warrant of another protester’s home and workplace
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