On August 5, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the launch of an official investigation into the City of Phoenix and Phoenix Police Department. The DOJ’s announcement came after years of well-documented violence, racism, misconduct, and corruption inside the Phoenix Police Department reaching a boiling point during the uprising for Black lives in 2020.

Mass Liberation AZ issued the following statement in response to the two year anniversary of the launch of the DOJ’s investigation in Phoenix:

The Department of Justice’s two year investigation into the nation’s deadliest police force has proven exactly what we predicted when their investigation was first announced: police can never objectively investigate themselves. The DOJ positioned itself as an outside, unbiased force that cares about the community, but since day one the DOJ has done nothing more than play footsies with the City of Phoenix and the Phoenix police department, willfully ignoring the evidence of police misconduct provided by the community. What’s worse, the DOJ has refused to cooperate with the people most directly impacted by the Phoenix Police Department’s violence. There is no excuse for the fact that, two years into its investigation, the DOJ has wasted countless hours and millions of dollars with no results; especially given Phoenix Police Department’s misconduct has never been complex or well-hidden. 

Thanks to the labor of Mass Liberation AZ, other community organizations, brave journalists and civil rights attorneys, the Department of Justice was spoon-fed mounds of evidence against city officials, Phoenix PD, and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for their collusion in the political prosecution of nearly 40 protesters who marched for Black lives in 2020. The conspiracy between these agencies is public knowledge and only gross incompetence can explain why the DOJ is still “investigating” a case that was already investigated for them. 

The DOJ does harm wherever it goes. The result of this investigation will be no different from Ferguson, Minneapolis, and Louisville. In the end, the DOJ will produce a watered-down report that does nothing more than slap the hands of the city and PPD; it will make unenforceable recommendations that only serve to increase the already inflated police budget, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office will skate on all of its extra-legal practices, and each of these agencies will go on committing the inextricable misconduct that is business as usual. 

In 2021 our organization worked with directly impacted community members to issue three demands to the DOJ in an effort to make its investigation less harmful:

• Center people most directly impacted
• Include the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) in the investigation; the MCAO is equally responsible for these civil rights violations
• The outcome of this investigation MUST reduce the size and scope of the Phoenix Police Department and the MCAO and MUST result in reparations to our community

The DOJ has the power to implement these demands, but instead they chose to ignore the community – the very same community that uncovered the police misconduct to begin with and the very same community that forced the resignations of Phoenix’s City Manager, the Chief of Police, and the Maricopa County Attorney; all while the DOJ sat on their hands. It’s never been more clear that this DOJ investigation is political theater; stop wasting our money.