Police union leader says activists want to eliminate police departments. Author: Brahm Resnik Updated: 10:36 PM MST May 19, 2021
PHOENIX The Phoenix City Council voted 5-4 Wednesday to create the city s first civilian review board for alleged police misconduct.
Phoenix was the largest city in the country whose police department did not have any civilian oversight, despite decades of calls for civilian review from communities of color.
Here are three takeaways:
What the civilian review office does
The Office of Accountability and Transparency will be based in the city manager s office, separate from the Police Department.
The office will have a budget of $3 million and its own paid staff.
LAUREN GILGER: The Phoenix City Council is scheduled to take action on a new budget later this week. The largest chunk of the general fund more than $786 million is proposed for a department some say doesn’t deserve it. KJZZ’s Christina Estes joins me now to talk about calls to defund the police department. Good morning, Christina.CHRISTINA ESTES: Good morning, Lauren.
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.
New law could keep police officers off Arizonaâs âBrady listâ
Photo via Cronkite News
Police officers accused of misconduct will have a chance to appeal before theyâre put on a âbad copsâ list, under a new state law signed by Gov. Doug Ducey.Â
The bill signed by Ducey requires that a prosecuting agency send a notice to any law enforcement officer at least 10 days before they consider placing them into a rule 15.1 database, also known as a Brady List database.
The Brady List, as itâs commonly referred to, gets its name from a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that a defendantâs due process is violated when prosecutors suppress evidence that is favorable to the defendant.Â