After city leaders met privately on Tuesday, Phoenix said its interim police chief will assess reform recommendations from the U.S. Justice Department in a lengthy report released this month.
When revealing their findings, the feds cited the East Coast department that Michael Sullivan used to work for as an example of where real police reform is underway.
Sullivan came to Phoenix about two years ago from Baltimore, where the police department remains under a court-enforceable-reform deal with the feds that is overseen by a monitor.
Sullivan is mentioned 13 times in the feds’ report on Phoenix.
The feds say that Sullivan has already started implementing reforms here, such as new standards for when Phoenix officers can use violence.
The Phoenix report quotes Sullivan as saying, "I saw some uses of force that made me think we need to do something different.”
Sullivan spent his last year in Baltimore as commander of the compliance bureau, working to meet goals detailed in the reform deal there.
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Community members huddled around a small stage set up on the grass at Tucson’s Catalina Park. A sea of thin white candles twinkled in the crowd as attendees hugged each other and cried. -
In the past month, four metro Phoenix police agencies have launched investigations into potential officer misuse of automated license plate readers. And the same number of Valley cities have shut off their systems or canceled contracts. -
Reports the officers filed, their body camera videos, service calls and community interactions are all under audit. So is the South Mountain Precinct and their former squad. -
An ongoing dispute between Border Patrol and the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona continues to escalate. -
Authorities are investigating a deadly shooting at a gay bar in Tucson on Monday as a hate crime. Tucson police allege a man who shot and killed two people and then himself outside Venture-N bar was carrying a list of addresses of several LGBTQ-friendly businesses.
