After a 2022 spike in officer-involved shootings, Mesa’s Police Department approached ASU’s Watts College where a team of researchers put together a report that dissected each incident.
ASU researchers created the report, with a group of community volunteers later adding additional feedback. Community members gathered in downtown Mesa on Tuesday night to hear about the findings.
Armed with suggestions for improvements to elements of training and on-scene conduct, Police Chief Ken Cost said they’ve already seen success.
“And so that year we had 17 shootings,” said Cost. “The following year was a reduction and then this year, we’re at five shootings right now, at this time this year. So we don’t want to get in any shootings, so we want to just keep this momentum going.”
Cost said the department followed through with all 66 recommendations it received for changing things about officer training, safety and tactics.
ASU professor Michael Scott worked on the review and has done others like it, usually following specific events. He says this one was “designed not to assign blame to any particular individual, but rather to look for ways in which that shooting could have been avoided.”
Scott says changes could happen faster if reviews like this one were more routine, similar to the National Transportation Safety Board.
“In investigating plane crashes, train crashes, bus crashes — they do it systematically. It's not optional. They do it with all of them, and they share the results with the entire industry, so that we can reduce risk across the whole industry.”
Scott said he hopes the more the community can engage with data like this and give feedback, that more support will build for state lawmakers to put that idea into action.
