Tempe Police Department needs top-to-bottom outside assessment

Bill Richardson

Submitted photo/Bill Richardson

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OPINION — Tempe city elected officials are presenting a new police oversight initiative, the Public Safety and Community Oversight Committee.

The panel will be led by newly elected Councilmember Bobby Nichols, who was supported by the Democratic Socialists of America, and includes Mayor Corey Woods and newly elected Councilmember Brooke St. George.

According to the DSA website, they support “defunding the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets or scope of enforcement while cutting budgets annually towards zero,” along with investing in community self-governance, demilitarizing police, ending colonial policing and freedom for incarcerated people.”

Political context matters because the committee’s stated purpose omits the issue of serious felony crime and victims. Tempe’s crime rate is almost twice the average of other East Valley cities, higher than Phoenix’s, yet nothing is mentioned about weak results in catching and prosecuting serious felony offenders or about justice for victims whose crimes remain unsolved.

Nichols criticized Tempe PD after a recent Mill Avenue incident that’s under investigation. He was quoted in a news story saying the officers appeared to use force disproportionately and failed to de-escalate, and that such actions “actively undermine community security.” For a former assistant attorney general, Nichols should understand the importance of avoiding the appearance of prejudging officer misconduct before any investigations are complete.

That leads to the question: Should someone who has already appeared to signal a bias against the police be leading a review of Tempe PD’s inner workings and officer conduct?

Before this panel goes any further, Tempe should commission a top-to-bottom assessment of the police department by an outside, objective organization. That assessment would give the full council, city manager and police chief a credible starting point. Anything less risks further weakening Tempe PD without fixing the serious crime problems residents face.

Bill Richardson is a retired master police officer II and criminal intelligence unit supervisor for the Mesa Police Department, and a former member of the Tempe Police Citizen Review Board and the Family Justice Commission. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.