Phoenix, the fifth largest city in the United States, suffers from a pattern of “systemic” police violence, which regularly uses excessive force and discriminates against black people, Hispanic people, indigenous people and the homeless, said Thursday a report from the Department of Justice.
This 126-page document, the result of a federal investigation launched in 2021, reveals “systemic problems within the Phoenix Police Department that deprive people of their rights protected by the Constitution and federal law”.
In this metropolis of Arizona (southwest), the police use “excessive use of force, including lethal”, and operate according to racial bias, denounces the report.
This survey, published a few months before the presidential election, could cause controversy in this key state, where Joe Biden was ahead of Donald Trump by only 10,500 votes in 2020, and bring back the theme of police violence in the campaign.
In the wake of large protests against police violence in the United States, which occurred after the death of African-American George Floyd in 2020, the Biden administration launched several investigations into certain police forces in the country.
So far, the cities singled out by the Department of Justice, such as Minneapolis and Louisville, have agreed to undertake reforms supervised by the federal government.
But in Phoenix, officials said in a letter sent to the government in January that they had already implemented reforms and did not need federal oversight. Without an agreement, this could lead to a legal standoff between the government and the city.
“We take all allegations seriously and plan to review this lengthy report with an open mind,” Jeff Barton, one of Phoenix’s administrative officials, responded Thursday.
“This is a case where we cannot count on the police to police themselves,” Kristen Clarke, one of Justice Minister Merrick Garland’s deputies, told the press.
The reforms outlined “are simply not sufficient to address all of our conclusions,” she added.
Phoenix police officers have a history of abusively arresting and ticketing homeless people, illegally disposing of their belongings, the report said.
The document also denounces the treatment of certain demonstrators, as well as multiple racial discriminations: the probability of being arrested for a minor traffic offense is, for example, 144% higher for black drivers than for white people; a fact also 40% more likely for Hispanic people.
But it is the use of lethal force and the lack of de-escalation training that poses the greatest problem.
Prior to this investigation, Phoenix police had one of the highest firearm use rates in the country. The department’s policy was even to confiscate the weapon of police officers who did not use it enough, recalled M.me Clarke.