Phoenix's endgame with the DOJ is still 'let's make a deal'

Phoenix leaders may be largely silent for now on the Justice Department’s blistering report, but their approach to date suggests the city is focusing its fight on two fronts:

• Winning the PR campaign that a consent decree is a bad deal for the public and police alike; and
• Challenging the validity of a number of the Department of Justice’s findings of systemic discriminatory and unlawful policing.

The endgame is to strike a deal that’s not a consent decree.

Or at least a less burdensome one.

To get to that negotiated peace, though, Phoenix leaders might first have to force the Justice Department to sue and make its case.

Expect Phoenix to argue that it has changed

For months, before the report was released June 13, city leaders and law enforcement advocates pressed to win the PR fight against the Justice Department investigation.

They decried the heavy-handed mandates resulting from consent decrees that tie local police’s hands for years, cost tens of millions of dollars and produce worse outcomes, such as higher violent crime rates and demoralized officers.

They criticized DOJ for being secretive and unwilling to allow Phoenix an early look at the findings before they were disclosed publicly. And said they wouldn’t sign an agreement in principle right away that would lock the city into a consent decree — that is, court oversight, plus a monitor with the authority to influence the police department’s every move.

It’s difficult to envision city leaders, however open some of them may be to reforms, accepting DOJ’s findings and proposed remedies wholesale.

Phoenix’s response-to-come undoubtedly will include the argument that the police department that came under the microscope of the Justice Department three years ago is a very different place now.

It’s a department that, especially following the hiring of interim Chief Michael Sullivan, has initiated a number of reforms outlined by the feds, including:

• overhauling the policy and training on use of force;
• reducing abusive treatment of homeless people, including the seizure and destruction of their belongings; and
• adjusting how calls involving individuals with behavioral health issues are handled.

It may also contest report's anecdotal claims

The response might also include pushback against some of the sweeping DOJ conclusions using anecdotal cases and outright assertions rather than with measurable data or sufficient foundation.

For example, that police officers routinely use force, including deadly force, when there’s little or no justification. Or that the department indoctrinates officers to a “force first” approach that not only permits excessive force but encourages it.

Or that Phoenix Police delay and withhold medical care as a practice.

Or that officers systematically treat children unlawfully by applying to them standards used for adults.

Phoenix hasn't done enough:To respond to DOJ

The goal would be to narrow down the set of remedies. A settlement that focuses on provable discriminatory practices and corrective actions that both Phoenix and the Justice Department can live with.

And, more importantly, with realistic and achievable outcomes that would put an end to the federal intervention sooner than later.

Worst case: Phoenix fights, ends up like MCSO

How hard or long a fight the city of Phoenix is willing to wage is anyone’s guess.

Only six jurisdictions out of dozens in DOJ’s “pattern or practice” investigations since they came into being in the 1990s have balked at the findings, proposed remedies and tested their luck in the courts.

A majority of them, including most recently the Ferguson (Missouri) Police Department in 2016, entered into an agreement with the Justice Department on reforms.

A notable exception was the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which under Sheriff Joe Arpaio refused to cooperate and fought the Justice Department at just about every turn in its investigation of MCSO’s abusive immigration enforcement.

The Justice Department responded with a lawsuit and joined in a second — the seismic Melendres v. Arpaio case that resulted in a finding against the Sheriff’s Office and a consent decree.

A consent decree that continues to this day, a dozen years and more than $250 million later.

It’s a fate that everyone in Phoenix, regardless of their feelings on the case, should seek to avoid.

Reach Abe Kwok at akwok@azcentral.com. On X, formerly Twitter: @abekwok.