Treatment of young people: Officers can disrespect them, DOJ report on Phoenix says

Two Phoenix police officers watched as a teenage boy looked inside a truck parked at an auto dealership.

The 15-year-old had peeked inside briefly before leaving to catch a bus.

The officers then followed the Latino teen onto the bus before ordering him to exit.

He got off, following the officers’ instructions. When he was ordered to take off his backpack, the teen asked, "Why?"

That prompted one officer to become curt, telling him, “Because I (expletive) told you to.” The officer then instructed the teen to stand up and place his hands on his head.

While complying, the teen asked if he could call his mom. That’s when the officer escalated the situation.

The officer grabbed the teen, holding him by his neck, and slammed him into a bus stop pole. He was then handcuffed and questioned, without being read his Miranda rights. The officers also searched his backpack without a warrant.

The teen’s encounter was one of a handful of similar instances that the U.S. Justice Department uncovered during its nearly three-year-long investigation into the Phoenix Police Department.

At the launch of the investigation, the Justice Department said it would focus on officers’ use of force and retaliatory activities, as well as discriminatory policing against people of color, disabled individuals and people experiencing homelessness.

The department's finding that officers were mistreating children during encounters was an unexpected one when the report was released Thursday.

Phoenix police were found to systematically use unlawful force, disproportionally target people of color and routinely violate the rights of protesters, unhoused people and those experiencing mental health crises.

City and police officials have largely disputed or downplayed such findings in the report that was released Thursday morning.

The DOJ report raised concerns over the department’s treatment of youth. The report found that officers don’t “take into account the vulnerability of children and their stage of development.”

As one police sergeant told investigators, officers don’t treat youth differently from adults.

Phoenix officers reportedly escalated encounters with children, even during “minor issues.” The officers, the report added, would use combative language and needless force.

Criminal justice: 5 key takeaways from the Justice Department report on policing in Phoenix

In the incident involving the unlawful detention of the Latino teen, officers eventually let him go, but only after telling him that the “entire encounter was his own fault.”

Another teen, a 13-year-old boy with autism, was handcuffed as the officer used a neck restraint, according to the report.

The teen had walked out of school without permission. The officer saw him walking along the road near the school, instructing him to stop. But when the teen kept walking, the offer chased him, grabbed his arms and tackled him.

“With the officer’s knee in his back and hand on his neck, the boy pleaded to be let go,” the report stated.

The autistic teen’s encounter with police was an all too familiar one for other children with whom the Justice Department spoke.

Most of the kids interviewed, the report stated, also complained of officers closing handcuffs “so tightly that they reached the point of pain and injury.”

“For some children, officers put on handcuffs so tightly that their hands went numb and left marks on their wrists for months,” the report stated. “Others said they sustained deep cuts on their wrists and, when they asked officers to loosen the cuffs, the Phoenix Police Department instead tightened them further.”

The report added that officers violated children’s Miranda rights by questioning them without explaining their rights to stay silent or to an attorney.

What to know: Unexpected findings in Justice Department report about Phoenix police

The practice of questioning children in police custody can be “coercive,” the investigation explained, as “children are more likely to believe they have no choice but to answer an officer’s questions, even when that questioning is unlawful.”

Officers were also found to use a demeaning tone when talking to children and teens. The youths interviewed for the investigation said they were traumatized and degraded after their encounters with police.

One recalled an situation in which the officer patted down the teen and said: “If I was your dad, I would have beat the (expletive) out of you.”

Another described the feeling of hate he received from the officer who called the teen and his siblings “gangbangers.”

“Disparaging and disrespectful language from adults in positions of power can have a lasting effect on kids,” the report concluded in its section on police encounters with youth. “It can also contribute to fear and distrust of law enforcement from the next generation of Phoenix residents.”

Denice Garcia is a member of the Cartwright School District’s governing board in Phoenix. Her adult son, 28-year-old James Garcia, was fatally shot by Phoenix officers in July 2020. She and James’ family have filed a wrongful death suit against the city.

Responding to the report Thursday, Garcia said she found the findings alarming but was glad it’s uncovered the department’s practices.

“Instead of providing a service and protecting our community, they’ve become part of the problem. They don’t utilize the resources to help our community, our children,” Garcia said. “Instead, they’re relying on their own levels of entitlement that they have given themselves that is not deserving in that type of profession.”

While praising Cartwright’s school resource officers, calling them “wonderful human beings,” Garcia said her concerns lie with other Phoenix police officers.

Asked as a school board member for her thoughts on the report’s findings related to officers’ mistreatment of children, Garcia said such actions instill fear.

“It has disrupted the relationship that they could have, a positive relationship they could have with Phoenix PD officers,” she said.

Shawn Raymundo covers the West Valley cities of Glendale, Peoria and Surprise. Reach him at [email protected] or follow him on X @ShawnzyTsunami.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Treatment of young people in Phoenix: What the DOJ report says