The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced today that it would be closing investigations of six police agencies across the country, including the Phoenix Police Department. Under the new Trump administration, the DOJ will also retract the findings of the historic report issued in 2024 which the City of Phoenix has been litigating for the past year.  

Mass Liberation AZ issued the following statement in response:

Accountability will never come from a system that was not designed to deliver it.

The Department of Justice came to Phoenix because our communities were organizing, documenting, and exposing the violence of Phoenix PD in ways that could no longer be ignored. Now, the DOJ is suddenly walking away—not just from Phoenix, but from cities across the country. They are retracting findings of constitutional violations, closing investigations, and abandoning even the appearance of accountability. This is not a reversal. It’s a reveal.

To be clear: no one should have ever believed the DOJ was a safe or reliable avenue for justice. It doesn’t matter which political party is in power—both protect the legitimacy and funding of police, not the safety of the people. For those who thought Biden’s DOJ would be different, this is your reminder that political shifts don’t bring systemic change—they protect systemic violence.

Phoenix city officials, especially Mayor Gallego, ran out the clock, delaying action until the new federal government could step in and resume the Phoenix cop cover-up. This outcome isn’t a failure of process. It’s the result of a system functioning exactly as designed.

We don’t rely on police to police themselves and we don’t rely on the federal government to do it either. True safety is built by communities—not enforced by systems designed to cage and kill us. We will continue to organize, expose, and build what this system never could: actual accountability.