Courage Will Prevail In Phoenix

The DOJ Attacked The Phoenix Police Department & Leaders Must Stand

I have written about the pending attack on the Phoenix Police Department before and none of it was opinion. The Department of Justice has been conducting “pattern and practice” investigations on local law enforcement agencies for 30 years and in every city, they leave mass destruction, that includes higher crime, lower staffing, and blown up budgets. It’s really difficult to explain because it seems so crazy but if you have several hours to research it, all the gory details can be found here.

Yesterday, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke read the executive summary of the Phoenix Investigation to a national audience which landed the report and the opinion of those that wrote it (which is a secret) across thousands of media outlets. Granted, there is some weird irony with Clarke at the helm, as she admitted last month that she lied to Congress in her 2021 confirmation hearing. Perjury is a crime the last we checked but let’s get back to the point.

Consent Decrees by the very nature are unconstitutional but when weak leaders agree to them, the DOJ gets to do it and thus, the destruction begins. Phoenix was different and that’s why Clarke was particularly brutal and misleading in her presentation. The DOJ wanted the Phoenix City Council to agree to a consent decree before seeing the investigation. Because no one in their right mind would sign off on a few hundred million dollar contract to destroy a city without actually reading the investigation, the Phoenix decision makers wisely asked to see the actual investigation.

The request made sense. After all, Phoenix had spent over 6 million dollars complying with the investigation so they certainly deserved the right to see it. The problem was that the DOJ has never had to do that. They have been able to convince cities like Pittsburgh, Louisville, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Cleveland, New Orleans, Albuquerque… and a host of other “consent decree” cities you will never vacation at to sign off, leaving them scratching their head at the report later. Louisville is just one city that made that fateful mistake. After agreeing to a DOJ takeover of their police department, they saw the report summary and could not validate it as factual with the county attorney saying the DOJ report was not based on facts or evidence and was simply a bunch of baseless and unsubstantiated allegations.

Rightfully so, Phoenix simply asked for the investigation and received a hard no from the DOJ. I could explain why the DOJ would not be transparent but you already know why and their announced summary findings revealed why.

Something to keep in mind with the summary report. That is not the investigation. It does not reveal methodologies, experts used and how or why they came up with their opinion. The DOJ will do whatever it takes to never release the full investigation because if they did, their shell game would be over.

I’m not going to cover every aspect of the summary report and I’ve read enough from other cities to know that much of it is copy and paste language that they throw at every agency but I will address some of the more silly and asinine accusations and you will get a sense at how the rest of the report reads.

“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.”

This is how the DOJ operates. To most, that don’t intimately understand Phoenix or policing, this sounds terrible and that is the point. Here is what the DOJ didn’t tell you. There is not one cop, anywhere, that wants to arrest homeless people. The reasons don’t matter here but trust me, no one wants to arrest them or even work a beat around them. It’s not that cops don’t care but frankly, it’s lower level crime that brings with it a mess. Law enforcement is thankful for the non-profit groups helping and cops understand that enforcing the law against the homeless doesn’t help the homeless and while the DOJ wants you to believe that Phoenix Officers go to work to target homeless people, there is another reason it would occur.

Prior to the lawsuit filed by the ACLU mentioned by the DOJ, the Phoenix Police Department was sued by business owners, property owners, and residents, that alleged that the City of Phoenix had "created, maintained, and/or failed to abate a public nuisance" in the area now known as The Zone.

The lawsuit occurred because Phoenix was not addressing the issue and businesses were having to close down. Like I said, no cop wants to deal with homeless people.

After that lawsuit, the Phoenix Police Department actually did what law enforcement is supposed to do. They responded to 911 calls for service, by many businesses and patrons, and enforced the law. It just so happens that out of the millions of calls the agency goes on each year, one of the top calls involves the homeless committing crimes. Thus, 37% of the arrests were those “experiencing homelessness.”

Of course, doing their job got them sued by the ACLU but is it not odd that the DOJ left all of that context out of their summary and is it strange that the court order mentioned by the DOJ was one that ordered Phoenix Police to “stop enforcing certain laws.”

The DOJ blasted the Phoenix Police Department for responding to calls by citizens and businesses and enforcing the law. The DOJ made it sound completely different didn't they?

You can read more of this nonsense here but for now, I want to focus on leadership amongst this chaos.

In times of chaos, leaders either rise or fall and make no mistake, Phoenix is facing a giant. I’m hopeful that the leadership within the Phoenix Police Department will communicate swiftly to their citizens because the men and women behind the badge have been attacked.

I was particularly impressed of the press conference by the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association. I’ve taught for their organization in the past and I was impressed by their professionalism then and even more now.

Joe Clure, Executive Director of the Arizona Police Association, said that they already “knew the results of the DOJ investigation when it was launched in 2021. Not because of any systemic wrongdoing by the Phoenix Police Department but the DOJ track record of imposing heavy handed consent decrees on other jurisdictions.”

Association President Darrell Kriplean said it best calling the DOJ “frauds” and that the “Department of Justice is not interested in making local police departments and the communities they serve better,. This action demonstrates that they are only interested in removing control of local police from the communities that they serve through consent decrees.”

To be clear, this issue is personal for me. I have dedicated my adult life to law enforcement and I spend my days now working with agencies across the country to make them and their communities better and safer.

The DOJ does the opposite.

Every agency and thus the community they touch brings mayhem and that is a fact. A quick study of every city they have been in will tell you that and I stand with Phoenix and their leaders like Darrell Kriplean when he said that they will “fight for the men and women who courageously serve the Phoenix Police Department.”

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Dr. Travis Yates retired as a commander with a large municipal police department after 30 years of service. He is the author of “The Courageous Police Leader: A Survival Guide for Combating Cowards, Chaos & Lies.” His risk management and leadership seminars have been taught to thousands of professionals across the world. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy with a Doctorate Degree in Strategic Leadership and the CEO of the Courageous Police Leadership Alliance.