PLEA backs officer who terrorized black family

The Phoenix police union is not happy that Police Chief Jeri Williams fired an officer for terrorizing a young African American family at gunpoint.

Christopher Meyer was one of three police officers fired by Williams this week. Another was canned for bashing Muslims and African Americans on social media and a third officer who is under criminal investigation for undisclosed reasons.

As a result, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association is now pondering payback. Specifically, a vote of no confidence in Williams.

“The chief,” PLEA President Britt London says in a video posted Thursday to Facebook, “has lost the department.”

This is, of course, troubling.

Not because Chief Williams has lost the department but because the officers think she was harsh in firing Meyer.

We’ve all seen the cell phone video of this 24-year police veteran screaming obscenities at 22-year-old Dravon Ames, while holding him at gunpoint.

“Get your f--king hands up,” he screams over and over again. “You’re gonna f--king get shot.”

This, because Ames’ 4-year-old took a doll from a dollar store.

This week, Williams rejected the Disciplinary Review Board’s recommendation that Meyer be suspended for six weeks. Instead, she fired him, saying “a 240-hour suspension is just not sufficient to reverse the adverse effects of his actions on our department, and our community.”

Count Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio among the outraged. He rapped Williams for “giving into mob rule” from those who dislike the police.

If so, then Meyers then surely made it easy with his stunning approach to policing Ames, his then-pregnant girlfriend Iesha Harper, and their two young children.

The couple had just pulled into an apartment complex to drop the kids off with a babysitter when police arrived, having been alerted to the earlier shoplifting.

“A police officer, we don’t know who he is, a guy, random guy came up to the door banging on the window with a gun, says he’s going to shoot us in our face, telling us to get out of the car,” Ames would later tell reporters. “He hasn’t alerted us that we’re being pulled over (or) anything.”

When Ames didn’t immediately exit the SUV, cell phone video of the May incident shows Meyer screaming at him then later handcuffing him as he laid face down on the hot asphalt, Meyer then yanked him up against the patrol car and roughly kicked his legs apart.

“When I tell you to do something you (expletive) do it!” he screams.

“I am,” Ames calmly replies.

It is difficult to imagine how a dollarstore doll could result in a man on the ground, a pregnant woman in handcuffs and two young kids looking down the business end of a gun (the later two developments, courtesy of another officer, who was reprimanded).

Equally difficult to understand: how Phoenix’s finest don’t see a big problem here.

Don’t see the widespread mistrust in the African American community, which has repeatedly decried the use of excessive force and racial profiling by some in the department.

“In light of the Facebook thing and in light of this just happening, it’s obvious there is a systemic issue with a very small minority of the police officers in the Phoenix Police Department and we want to know how she (Williams) is going to weed that out,” the Rev. Warren Stewart Sr., a longtime community leader pastor of First Institutional Baptist Church, told me in June, after the video of the incident was released.

This week, Stewart applauded Williams’ decision.

“It sends a message that no one is above the law,” he told a reporter. “I believe justice-loving and justice-advocate people are encouraged that we now have a police chief that doesn’t have one set rules for police officers and one set rules for the community.”

Is Stewart part of the “mob” that is out to get the police, I wonder?

Is it now impermissible for a community to hold the police chief accountable for holding her officers accountable? Apparently so, because PLEA President London on Thursday said the union has received 200 to 300 calls and emails from officers asking for a vote of no confidence over Williams’ decision to fire Clinton Swick, who was terminated over his social media posts.

The angst over firing Clinton, I can understand. There is a First Amendment argument to be made that he had a right to post racist garbage, though I’m not sure where in the First Amendment it says there can’t be consequences for your speech.

But Meyer? The police officer who screamed “I’m gonna put a f--king cap in your f--king head” over a shoplifted doll?

Granted, the police have a tough job and danger often comes from unexpected places. But it’s tougher still — on both the department and the city — when an officer is unable to exercise sound judgment.

Or a union.

London, in his Facebook video, said he probably will call an emergency meeting of the PLEA board to discuss holding a vote of no confidence in Williams. He suspects Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego was the driving force behind the firings and he sounds a bit like a victim, noting that DiCiccio is the only council member who has “spoken up for us.”

“I don’t think they care about us as a group of employees,” London said. “I don’t think they care about this city’s safety. I’ve seen no one act in a direction that would say that they do.”

To the contrary, this city’s safety is exactly why a guy like Meyer had to go.