The Arizona Police Association, an umbrella group representing police officers statewide, held a press conference with the Maricopa County Attorney's Office on Tuesday to urge Phoenix not to enter into a consent decree with the Department of Justice.
The Department of Justice released a report in June alleging that the Phoenix Police Department committed numerous legal and constitutional violations.
The association repeated assertions made about the report by the Phoenix police union, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, which called the report a “travesty.”
Association President Justin Harris began the news conference by rejecting a recent editorial in The Arizona Republic that supported the Phoenix consent decree, calling the agreement “too costly.”
“They're destroying cities, and they're doing it in the name of wanting to help,” Harris said.
He argued that the Justice Department investigation was an attempt to federalize police by people with no hands-on knowledge of police operations.
“A lot of the people at the Department of Justice are not police officers. They've never been in law enforcement. They're academics who study things at universities and believe these theories are good. And they have no idea what they're doing,” Harris said.
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell also voiced her opposition to the Justice Department report and consent decree. Ms. Mitchell has been endorsed by the association and the Phoenix police union in her race for county attorney. Her primary opponent, Gina Godbehere, has presented herself as more conservative than Mitchell.
“Everyone needs to realize that carpetbaggers at the Department of Justice are not the solution,” she said.
Mitchell compared the potential consent decree to existing court oversight of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, where an outside monitor was appointed to report to a federal judge in the wake of a racial profiling lawsuit. That oversight has come at a huge cost to taxpayers, Mitchell said.
Both Harris and Mitchell criticized the Justice Department for not releasing the data supporting each of the report's findings and called on the city to do everything in its power to hold the department accountable.
“I am calling on you to fight wherever we need to to get the Department of Justice back in Washington,” Harris said.
The Justice Department declined to comment Tuesday.
Contact the reporter miguel.torres@arizonarepublic.com.
Signs:Concerns about Phoenix police were growing long before the Justice Department found excessive force and bias.
