We’ve been reforming Phoenix police. We’ll continue to.
City has already enacted changes, including a ban on neck restraints and creation of a civilian-led office to probe incidents
These are unprecedented times. As a local school superintendent said on a Sunday morning talk show this week, we are dealing with two simultaneous pandemics in the United States: COVID-19 and systemic racism. The latter is displayed most starkly in the tragic murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but also in incidents around the country, including Phoenix.
One pandemic has revealed fault lines in the other. It is fact that in the U.S. health outcomes, life expectancy, incarceration rates, wealth accumulation — and yes, police interactions — have racial and ethnic differences. There are many complex factors behind this, but in its simplest form it is the true definition of systemic inequality. Phoenix is no different than cities across America.
Ours is not to lament the situation, but to make it better. And we have more work to do.
As lifelong local government professionals, we have each spent our careers striving to make Phoenix city government more efficient, equitable, responsive and effective. Over the last 60 days, Chief Williams has worked with a small group at the U.S. Conference of Mayors to create a report on Police Reform and Racial Justice, available in its entirety at
usmayors.org/issues/police-reform.
We have been successful in some areas and not so much in others. We have more work to do.
With the focused leadership of Mayor Kate Gallego and the Phoenix City Council, and the engagement of community leaders over the past decade, resources are being directed to important change and reform in our police department.
Let’s done:
The Office of Accountability and Transparency has been established
All line officers wear body cameras We track how often police officers draw their weapons
The city has a website for data on officer involved shootings
We train officers about procedural justice, implicit bias, crisis intervention and de-escalation
Critical incident
briefly review what has been
videos
are
released to the community
Crisis response teams work with the community after a critical incident
The police chief has ended the use of neck restraints, including carotid holds
What still needs to be done? Continue improvement of data collection and reporting. For example, improving our systems to gather and share more information, particularly on race and ethnicity in police use of force, will help us assess and address any disparities in treatment.
Continue to demand accountability for behavior. As recommended in the USCM report, Chief Williams is updating the policies on officers’ duty to report policy violations and their duty to intervene when a fellow officer uses excessive force or otherwise acts outside of the law or department policy.
Provide more training for officers in crisis response. We know that training our team in dealing with people experiencing stress or mental illness can help de-escalate some situations. We have begun using clinicians and referrals to social services, but we need to do more.
Where possible, provide mental health crisis response with civilian support. Sometimes, a call doesn’t need a police officer to respond. Best practices in other cities include dispatching social workers and medical personnel, not police officers, to address calls that can be handled with more therapeutic means than policing.
Provide more wellness support for police officers. We know our police officers need mental and emotional assistance after dealing with homicides, child abuse and other disturbing crimes.
Engage the communities we serve in new and more effective ways, such as neighborhood problem-solving forums, structured individual conversations, youth engagement, crisis response and other community based strategies.
Enhance transparency in everything we do. This means openly posting data quickly and completely as well as continuing video debriefs of officer involved shootings and other critical incidents.
These are our priorities for progress in Phoenix policing.
We are aware that some will say our efforts for improvement have not worked because there are still incidents where Phoenix police officers have not fulfilled their oaths to protect and serve. We will continue to address those situations. But we are determined not to make perfection the enemy of progress.
Let us be clear. We believe in the ability and commitment of the men and women who choose to put their lives on the line to serve Phoenix as police officers and support staff. We see their hard work, in extreme heat, under duress. We support these professionals who are on duty, literally every minute of every day, responding to hundreds of thousands of calls for service each year.
We know that demonstrating that we deserve your trust is the hard work we must continue to undertake.
You have our commitment as your city manager and your police chief to do just that.