Ducey s move to sign the bills comes after last year s national reckoning with police brutality, protests in metro Phoenix, and a series of local law enforcement scandals, such as controversial police shootings and Phoenix police officers exchanging coins marked with white supremacist slogans.
Police reform advocates criticized Ducey s decision to sign the bills as out of step with the times and a direct attack on efforts to hold police accountable. These bills are going to gut an already broken system of police accountability in this state, said Jared Keenan, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. Police are rarely held accountable already. This is just going to make it much less likely that they’re going to be held accountable in the future.