(SAVE PHX): There may not be a more corrupt organization in America today than the Department of Justice and their destruction of communities and law enforcement agencies with consent decrees is simply one small piece of a political monster that thrives on eating the misinformed.
Just this week Attorney General Merrick Garland was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to release documents and secrecy is exactly what the DOJ has done in Phoenix. Earlier this year, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke admitted to perjury when she lied to Congress and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta quit the DOJ in January. Gupta has publicly stated that her role was to “reimagine” the police but little did America know that meant higher crime and less police officers.
On Thursday, the DOJ will release an investigation into the Phoenix Police Department. Despite the longest consent decree investigation in history and unprecedented cooperation by the Phoenix Police Department and millions of dollars spent, the agency and city leaders will see the report at the same time the public will see it. This is despite multiple attempts by the city leaders, that approved millions in spending for the investigation, asking to see it.
While the so called report has been a secret, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the games that the DOJ will play. Read our thoughts here and compare it to the propaganda you will see on Thursday.
This is done by design.
Without revealing the investigation to the agency, nothing in the report can be challenged and history tells us that there will be a ton of misrepresentations if not out right lies in the report. Cities from Minneapolis to Louisville have had to challenge multiple items the DOJ has said and lawsuits had to be filed in Louisville after that report was found with multiple flaws and the county attorney and police chief said the report was not based on facts and evidence.
The DOJ will call a press conference and blast the Phoenix Police Department for the world to see but they will not have to support their claims. In fact, the report they release will not even be the report. It will be a summary and will lack any details or methodologies used to come up with their findings. It will be an opinion piece of the worse kind.
The DOJ will use isolated incidents and paint them out of context as why the agency needs federal oversight. In more than one incident in other cities, they used incidents where the officers were fired or disciplined but failed to mention the actions the agency took. In other incidents, the DOJ will paint long standing police practices as evidence of abuse. The LVNR is one such example, where they cite it as being deadly force, despite the 50 year history of the maneuver never killing anyone.
The DOJ will likely say that the Phoenix Police Department is racist by measuring the police activity against the general population versus the criminal element. This has been called “Junk Science” by Dr. Robin Engel of the National Police Institute, and no researcher that wanted to actually get a paper past peer review would dare try this. But the DOJ is about public accusations and out of context statements so they could care less about what actual science is.
Finally, this flawed report will attack Phoenix Police Department Policy but many of the policies they discuss in the report will not be the policies today or their discussion of policy will be factually wrong. The agency has taken great strides in recent years to be one of the best in the country and nothing in the report will tell you that. They will discuss items that are either no longer being practiced or will misrepresent those practices for maximum shock value.
Why do we know all of this?
Because this is what the DOJ has done in every city and more importantly, it is why they have kept everything a secret. If their investigation had merit, they would not have held it away from the city council and attempted to bully them in signing a consent decree without showing them the actual investigation.
Indeed, Thursday will be a bad day for the Phoenix Police Department and their community because the DOJ will release their summary report and say whatever they want without any accountability. But when admitted liar Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General, takes a victory lap, know this.
We will tell you the truth and we will hold the DOJ and their attempt to destroy our fine city accountable. Unlike Louisville, Minneapolis and many other cities, our community will not have to wait months for a rebuttal of this deeply flawed investigation.
We will tell you and we will fight for the safety of this fine city. We will shine a light on this deception and we will make sure that you know the facts and not the typical rhetoric the DOJ uses to divide wedges between law enforcement and the communities they serve.