When the homeless man was asked by the Phoenix police, the officer grabbed him and kneel his neck, while another officer shocked his Taser. Another unoccupied man said that the officers threw out their things, saying to him, “You guys, garbage, and it’s garbage.” Other people who are experiencing homelessness are regularly cited and arrested by the city officers in the early morning for “not a crime”.
These were among the abuse allegedly The Ministry of Justice last June after almost three years of investigating the city of Phoenix and its police department. The investigation first noted when DOJ found a model of violations against homeless people, including that officers and other urban staff illegally threw their belongings.
In addition, DOJ investigators found that officers disproportionately quoted and arrested people who feel the homelessness. They accounted for 37% of all arrests of Phoenix police from 2016 to 2022, although homeless people make up less than 1% of the population. Investigators said many of these stops, quotes and arrests were unconstitutional.
A wide probe also found that officers used excessive force, discriminated against people, avenged the protesters and violated the rights of people with behavioral disadvantages of health-like problems with those who recorded Doj, recorded in problem law enforcement agencies in other cities.
But federal officials announced on Wednesday that they had refused to force the city and police to address these issues. Doj closed investigations and withdrawal of the conclusions of constitutional violations in the phenomenon and five other jurisdictions, including Trenton, New Jersey. In addition, Justice Department said He rejected the trials in the Biden era against a number of other police departments, including in Louisvili, Kentuck and Minneapolis, where George Floid was killed by police five years ago.
Doj said it demanded that the cities introduce the decrees on agreement that are designed to ensure the adoption of reforms, “imposing years of microiding local police departments by federal courts and expensive independent monitors, and perhaps hundreds of millions of expenses for the fulfillment without a legitimate and actually proper basis for this.”
In a statement by the city of Phoenix stated that “he focused tirelessly on raising policy, training and accountability to ensure better public safety for all who live, works and playing in the phenomenon.” In recent years the city has participated Changes in politics, including staff training and the implementation of cameras that wear the body.
Legal experts have reported propublica that the violation of Doj, detected in the phenoze, should be corrected – although the city authorities will be under less pressure on the action.
“The residents of these communities are a very real shame and service to stop work, stop and reveal the investigations and speak with the results,” said Justin Levit, Professor of Law at Loyola Merimount University and former Assistant Prosecutor General at the Civil Rights Department.
Distracting the report along with last year The Supreme Court’s decision The permission of cities to arrest and bring people for a dream on the street, even if they have nowhere else to go, can improve cities and police departments to marginalize homeless people, said Brooke Hill, senior lawyer of the civil rights of lawyers on the rights, legal group of propaganda activity, which focuses on racial justice. “They will feel that they have a license to make the sweeps and otherwise make life in a public view uncomfortable for insincere people,” he said.
Indeed, just last week Governor California Gavin Newsom called on all local authorities in this state “Use your powers confirmed by the US Supreme Court to resolve camps.
Once DOJ launched an investigation into Phoenix in August 2021, the Enlargement Fund, the Arizona propaganda group and the American Civil Liberty Union in Arizona sued the city And the police department stopped what the lawyers called “unconstitutional raids” on unwavering people. His lawsuit accused the city of not providing housing and instead addressed the camp to clean the sidewalks and other areas. “The city outlined its message to dissatisfied people: attracting sleep and other necessary life activities on the city’s public grounds will lead to detention, arrest, movement and loss of personal consequences of man,” the Fund for Enlargement of Rights and Opportunities, which is claimed in court documents.
Almost a month later the judge released bar By preventing the city to implement a ban on camping against people who cannot find shelter, as well as seize and throw people things. The lawsuit continues.
The Doj report in June 2024 states that even after the ban and the new urban policy, the city authorities continued to arrest people for camping and destroying people without notice and opportunities to return them.
Propublica as part of his investigation In the appeal of the cities of the homeless people, found that Phoenix Rarely the property seized from the camps is preserved. From May 2023 to 2024, the city responded to 4,900 public reports with the camps, according to its records. The city said that workers prepared for evaluation, what items are property and which are garbage found, which can only be stored in the 405 places he visited. Not all these things demanded storage because people may have removed them between the camp and the city’s arrival report. The city kept things 69 times.
In January 2024 the city issued its Own report Awaiting the charges of Doj. The city stated that it did not support the allegations that the police “hindered the possessions of people who feel the homelessness.” Phoenix also stated in the report that although the city and the police department “welcome additional ideas” from Doj, they did not want to subjected the consent decree, and the mandatory plan, in which the monitor is monitored by the implementation of the reforms.
Lawyers and supporters stated that the Doj’s decision had nothing to do with the lawsuits provided by private lawyers, who claim that civil rights violations, including against people who remain homeless. This week, ACLU has also launched seven -year efforts to apply for requests to prosecute police departments.
Elizabeth Veneble, a leading community organizer with the Enlargement Fund, which also helped Doj contact a dissatisfied community in Fenice, said she considered federal conclusions as a victory for unfortunate people. Despite the involvement of the US Prosecutor General Bondi, Venabl said, the report still has weight.
“No matter what Bondi says, people are not going to forget it, especially the people who have learned that they are horrified,” she said.
