Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
Courageous Leadership with Dr. Travis Yates Podcast examines what it means to be a Courageous Police Leader. Join us weekly as the concepts of Courageous Leadership are detailed along with interviews with influencers that are committed to leading with courage. You can find out more about Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates at: www.TravisYates.org
Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
Examining DOJ Consent Decrees: The Phoenix Model for Transparency
Are DOJ consent decrees doing more harm than good? Join Dr. Travis Yates as we dissect the controversial impact of these federal interventions on local policing. In this episode, we will take you through the unintended consequences of DOJ consent decrees, such as soaring crime rates, plummeting officer morale, and heavy financial burdens on cities. Using Phoenix as a fresh case study, we examine why local officials are now hesitant to sign these agreements without thoroughly reviewing the investigations. We'll also revisit historical examples like Louisville to understand the long-term repercussions on communities that prematurely accepted these decrees.
Experience a deep discussion on the importance of transparency and evidence-based decision-making in law enforcement. We highlight Phoenix's groundbreaking move to make their investigation documents publicly accessible, setting a new benchmark for openness and accountability. This episode underscores the critical need for transparency and courageous leadership in policing, celebrating the Phoenix Police Department's efforts to maintain public trust. Tune in to explore the pivotal role of scrutinizing DOJ claims and how Phoenix's approach can serve as a valuable lesson for law enforcement nationwide.
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We all know that transparency is the key to accountability and that ultimately leads to courageous leadership, and I often joke in my seminars that we should produce every single body camera video to the public for all to see. But that's not practical and everybody kind of laughs. Until now.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates:Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored you're with me today. It's going to be a solo show. Today Got kind of an important topic to discuss and I've mentioned a time or two on here. I've done an entire podcast on it about the Department of Justice consent decrees. I don't want to spend a lot of time with that background. Go back and listen to those episodes, in particular the one with Bob Scales.
Travis Yates:We also talked to the head of the Albuquerque Police Union and it is absolutely horrendous what our profession has allowed the DLJ to do with consent decrees. Just some quick stats for you. There's a number of consent decrees that exist across the country. It's a huge money grab. Once they go to a city they don't really ever leave and the cities are spending on average about $10 million a year. They're in these things for 20 or 30 years and everything goes wrong in the community and the city. Crime goes up, morale goes down, recruiting goes down. The data is so clear. It's so maddening that nobody's really talking about it. Our organizations don't talk about it. And just to give you a snapshot of what is happening in the top 20 most violent cities in America today, over half are ran by the DOJ under consent decree management and they weren't like that before. So there's a clear delineation.
Travis Yates:And so we talked about in the last year or so the Phoenix Police Department. And this is sort of near and dear to my heart because I've been to Phoenix a lot, I know a lot of those officers and it's a really good department. A lot of big city departments get a bad rap but, man, you talk about a really good, progressive department doing all they can. Listen. Policing is a risk management venture. I mean, you could be the best police department in the country if you're encountering millions and millions of people a year, some violent, lots of calls, lots of people on their worst days. Man, things are going to sometimes happen and it's really unfortunate and tragic. I wish we lived in Disneyland, but we don't. And so Phoenix had kind of been on the national map because they, per capita, had been involved in a lot of officer involved shootings.
Travis Yates:Now the shootings alone aren't the issue. Give us the details of each shooting, because if suspects are pulling guns on you and attacking you, I'm not sure why the number of shootings matter. Of course they did this in Albuquerque. Albuquerque was like that about a decade ago. DOJ came in Now. They have more shootings now than ever, but none of those shootings were unconstitutional when the DOJ came in, so they just kind of used the number and the metric.
Travis Yates:Well, I think this caught the eye of the DOJ and so they had been investigating Phoenix for over three years. I don't want to go back into a lot of the details. I'm going to put a website in the show notes that you can really see the background on this Excellent, excellent website called SavePHXcom, this excellent, excellent, done website called www. SavePHX. com and that was put up to advise the decision makers in Phoenix. Be very cautious, because if you sign off on this consent decree, we have 30 years of historical data to tell you what will happen in your city, and that I think among with a lot of the work by some of the union personnel and some of the politicians there and some of the citizens, I think it caused the politicians to pause. And so what the DOJ does is they come into, they do this investigation and they come into your city and they say, hey, we did an investigation, it's really bad, we're here to fix it, we're from the government, we're here to help. And the city should rapidly say well, can we see the investigation, because obviously that kind of matters and the DOJ won't ever show you the investigation, as we've done in other cities. And so the Phoenix politicians were savvy to go well, can we see the investigation? And the DLJ refused. And so they said well, we can't sign something that we don't see. And I think they probably learned a little bit from Louisville. I'll take you back a little bit. Louisville signed on a consent decree without looking at the investigation and once you sign it you're hooked for life, hundreds of millions of dollars and your city will get worse. And that's not an opinion, that's just what all the data says.
Travis Yates:And then when the chief and the county attorney looked at the investigation, they said well, this isn't even right Like this incident. You didn't even. It's not even right. This is that we fired the officer in this instance. Then the activists got upset and they said well, you're saying all these officers are violating civil rights and violating the laws, and how can we not prosecute? And the DOJ, of course, didn't have an answer. And everyone kind of knew that these reports were like that. If you read, these are all public documents. These consent decree summaries are not really even the investigation. There are little paragraphs here and there of different incidents that don't really tell you a lot about it.
Travis Yates:But the DOJ is claiming this is a pattern and practice of civil rights violations and for 30 years. For the most part every department just goes OK. And it just seems crazy to me, right, like we're a profession of evidence. We're a profession of looking at the evidence and making a determination of what evidence is sound, what evidence is not sound, what do we need to do to mitigate this? And it's just been so destructive, like if the DOJ came to departments and departments improved and cities improved and safety improved, I wouldn't be talking about this, right. But it's just so crazy to me that you have a city with a police chief and a mayor and a city council who's responsible to the public and they just throw their hands in the air and say, okay, federal government, run my city. It's just really, really nauseating, to be honest with you. Well, phoenix, rightfully so, man, I mean I've got a lot of respect for the politicians because it'd been easy to say okay.
Travis Yates:But I think because of the education process that many individuals have given those decision makers, they paused and the DOJ is not used to that. So the DOJ has two options at that point. They can file a federal lawsuit on a pattern and practice investigation and force a city or police department into a consent decree, which I am hoping for because that is where evidence gets seen. People, I have always suspected something weird is going on, like Phoenix Police Department is a prime example. Two million calls a year, many more million citizen contacts. You come in and you look, you pull 10 years of data and documents and millions of pages and videos and then you talk about a few incidents and claim that they need fixing to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. I think it should take evidence to do that right To uproot a department or city or community like that. I think it should take evidence.
Travis Yates:And Louisville publicly came out and said the report was false. So that would give me pause as well and I think it did give Phoenix pause. So the DOJ has two options here. They can file a lawsuit which the DOJ will never be able to go to through a court process, because that's when evidence gets seen, the evidence gets released, things you get to. You know DOJ says one thing, the city can bring in their own experts to say another thing. And when you read these summaries you know there's really not a lot of law enforcement knowledge when they write them and I'm going to show you that here in a minute. And so you know it's I don't know who's doing it, because the DOJ has never had to reveal that, because it's never really gone to court in that process. So they have really three options they can sue the city, they can leave or they can do what they did and they put out a summary report.
Travis Yates:The head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division read that over the Internet for the world to see and it was the most damning thing you have ever seen said about a police department and they really kind of jumped the shark. On average they include about 30 to 40 events in these reports, because a lot of these reports are out there. They're public knowledge. Well, they included well over 120, I believe, in Phoenix and it was some really strange stuff they put in there and you could read it on its face and you could see the holes Right.
Travis Yates:They made a big deal about the number of arrests on the homeless people and how it's. You know, and they shouldn't be prosecuting and arresting homeless people and they leave a whole bunch of information out, like the city wasn't doing that and the business owner sued to force him to actually enforce the law. And the DOJ was citing arrests, when really a lot of those were citations, which technically are arrests, but they obviously didn't delineate that. And then, because they talked about the high percentage, it was in the 30 percentile but they didn't mention the fact that that's one of the highest percentage of 911 calls the police get. So when you read it you sort of see what's being done here. There's a bias and slant, but you really don't see behind the hood, so to speak. You really don't know, because they talk about these, they'll talk about you know they're doing this with use of force and they're not de-escalating and they'll literally list two or three little examples that are a few sentences and that's it, and then you don't really know the details of those. Right, and so that has kind of been where we've been for many years.
Travis Yates:But louisville I I don't know the background of it, but when they got upset by because they'd already signed it, they're done. Their city's going to be destroyed even further. They're going to be one of the highest crime cities in the country. That's not hyperbole, that's what's going to happen. It's happened to every city for 30 years. So I'm sorry, louisville, but you can't rush into these type of decisions, and they did. You can't rush into these type of decisions, and they did. And their activists were upset because they just were, because nobody's happy under these things. So Louisville put out a website, a public website, that talked about the consent decree and these samples that they talked about and they linked up to the actual incident reports and things right. Nobody really said much about that because the consent decree was done. I mean, it doesn't matter, it's out there now, it's okay. So you showed that the summary report was sort of misleading and left out a bunch of context and it was kind of wrong what happened. But you signed it, louisville.
Travis Yates:Well, phoenix did something different. That's what I want to talk to you about today. So, if you're still with me, thank Phoenix, didn't sign it. Now, it's not that they won't. It's not that they're not going to compromise with something. It's not that they're not going to have to go to court or something. The summary report is out there.
Travis Yates:Horrible, horrible things said about the Phoenix Police Department. If you read that report by itself, you would think this is the worst police department in the world. But what Phoenix did last week is they dropped a website from the police department in the world. But what Phoenix did last week is they dropped a website from the police department and I got to tell you right now. I just want to be very clear here. I'm going to give you the website link. I will link it in the show notes it's www. dojrecords. phoenix. gov.
Travis Yates:Very few people are talking about this. I've looked at this a little bit and I'm telling you right now what you have in front of you has the ability and opportunity to unmask what has happened over the last three decades to law enforcement. You to go check it out. It is amazing and literally it's laid out in such a simplistic way where you can click on what the DOJ said and it goes to the DOJ report and it says what they said, and then you can click on the actual incident, actual reports, actual video, actual administrative documents, what the use of force review board said, what the county attorney said, what the use of force reward said, what the county attorney said.
Travis Yates:I've been in law enforcement over 30 years. Folks, I always preach transparency. I've never seen anything like this. The Phoenix Police Department, the men and women there, the leadership there. They ought to be proud of this. I know what some law enforcement may be saying oh, we can't put all this out there. That's old school thinking.
Travis Yates:Folks. You need to understand how good you are. You are in one of the finest professions in this country that very few people have the ability to do or even get a job in this profession. You are under high levels of scrutiny. You deal with some of the worst individuals on this planet. You are literally between life and death, evil and good individuals on this planet. You are literally between life and death, evil and good, and you perform miracles daily. The problem is our leaders aren't real great at discussing that. Right? We don't really talk about that. We talk about the negative, we play into the negative, we let people lie about us and things like that. The power you have is what you do. It's in your body camera footage, it's in your reporting. It's in your body camera footage. It's in your reporting. It's in how you treat people.
Travis Yates:I'm looking through this website, folks and what the DOJ is calling horrible policing. Let me just be frank and I apologize to my late mother and my wife now. What the DOJ is calling horrible. Policing is full of hero shit. I'm telling you right now I actually couldn't be more proud to be from law enforcement and seeing what Phoenix did my brothers and sisters, what they did Is everything great in there? Of course, not. Name me any organization that's had millions of contacts over the last decade that has 100% customer satisfaction rating. Right, stop with that nonsense, quit playing into that. But I'm telling you right now, the things you will see in there will blow you away and I just want to give you one example of I actually am not going to even well. Yeah, I'm just want to give you one example of I actually am not going to even well. Yeah, I'm just going to give you one example. I'm going to kind of leave it at that. I want to kind of leave you with this website to digest. Check it out.
Travis Yates:I think the Phoenix has done a great service to law enforcement as a whole. They've done a great service to their community. Communities deserve to just not be led down one path by an entity that's not from their city. You deserve the truth. I mean, listen, if a police department needs to get better and reform, I'll be the one saying it, but don't tell me, with the track record that the Department of Justice is the one to do that? And if they were the one to do that, where's the record of that? Where's the success stories of that and where's the honesty in what they say? Let me read this to you. This is just from one incident, one incident. I'll actually tell you the incident because the report's lined out by incident number. This is incident 08. Here's the claims that they said Basically, in the summary report they will talk about a claim and the list incidents Right.
Travis Yates:So they claim that Phoenix delays medical aid to incapacitated suspects and uses unreasonable force on wounded people. I'm going to tell you what the example was given to justify that. Now you've got to understand. This is written to take over the Phoenix Police Department to take hundreds of millions of dollars of resources from their community. The ultimate outcome of that has been the outcome in every city you can think of Chicago, baltimore, seattle, oakland Exorbitant crime, more people die. Roland Fryer, a great Harvard professor, wrote a study that said that Not only more people die after consent decrees, more African-Americans die after consent decrees. That's a research-based study, peer-reviewed. Look all that up. Nobody wants to talk about that. Look it all up. Here is the evidence that the DOJ is using. This is just one of many. I'm just going to read you one. I'm not cherry picking, by the way. Go through them yourself. You don't even have to be a law enforcement expert to understand this. So check this out. I'm going to read what the DOJ said. Then I'm going to read what the document said that the Phoenix Police Department released, that the DOJ had access to. You have to understand what's on this website. The DOJ not only had that information but, very likelihood, other information. So it's not like this was hidden from the DOJ. They wrote this narrative based on the documents on this public website. Here's what the DOJ said. Remember they said that Phoenix delays medical aid to incapacitate suspects and they use unreasonable force on wounded people. Here we go In one incident. I'm actually going to read it dramatically. You know that'd be kind of cool. Let's read it dramatically. Here we go In one incident after shooting a man, officers fired multiple rounds from a less lethal projectile launcher and sent a police dog to drag the man back to the officers.
Travis Yates:Video shows the object that had been in the man's hand landed approximately eight feet away from him and he made no significant movement towards it. Yet over nine minutes passed from when officers shot the man to when they moved in to complete the arrest and render aid. At least a dozen officers were on the scene who could have provided lethal cover for other officers to approach and secure the man without further use of force. Instead, they released a dog that bit the man's leg and dragged him back to the waiting officers. The man did not survive the shooting. Okay, that's what they said.
Travis Yates:Now, probably just based on that, if you're savvy, you see holes. I'll tell you quickly the holes In one incident, the shooting of a man. Well, why did this shooting happen? Not mentioned Should tell you something. That gives you a little life lesson. When people leave out details, you should understand they need to know those details.
Travis Yates:Here's another one. Video shows the object that had been in the man's hand. Well, could that be called a gun? Okay, could that be called a gun that he pulled up and tried to shoot officers at? Yeah, that's exactly what it's called, but interesting language there. He made no significant movement toward it. Talking about the gun, he made no significant movement. So they said that the gun was eight feet away, but he made no significant movement. What kind of movement. I mean, how much movement do you have to make to reach a couple of arm lengths away to grab a gun, anyway? So you don't have very much information. It's just sort of odd. So what actually happened?
Travis Yates:That's what I'm getting to in this episode. You need to understand what's going on here. Phoenix has permitted us to understand it because up until now we didn't understand it. We could just read these and kind of go, wow, that sounds kind of bad, okay, right. So check this out here. Here's the evidence. It's on the website. The Maricopa County attorney and the police chief at the time cleared all officers From any policy violations, criminal stuff. They were cleared by everybody. Here we go. Here's the background.
Travis Yates:Remember the DOJ says in one incident let's talk about this one incident the suspect was being followed by best I could determine some street crimes officers, undercover officers, because they were a carload of suspected armed robbers. They observed them committing a robbery with a firearm inside what appeared from the video? Because it was a video of a restaurant. They actually have all the footage from inside the restaurant them pointing guns and robbing the place and, like four people the police observed this they went to stop a car using an interdiction tactic. I believe it was a grappler, pretty cool video that they have on there and it stops the car and when they stopped the car, they believe it's time potentially four or more subjects in the car and when they stop the car, they believe it's time potentially four or more subjects in the car. When they stop the car, a backseat passenger gets out of the car, takes off running with gun in hand, pulls the gun up and the officers shoot him literally within three or four seconds, very, very rapidly. Shoot him literally within three or four seconds, very, very rapidly and he ends up falling. What appears from video, about 20 to 30 feet in front of the car, counter to the side. And so that is.
Travis Yates:Remember the DOJ was upset that the officer just didn't go up and render aid to this armed robbery suspect that just committed an armed robbery and pulled a gun up and tried to shoot cops and then was shot. So here is the setting that the video paints the suspect is on the ground, about, I would say, 20 to 25 feet, maybe yards. It's significantly ahead of the car, off to the right, kind of angled from the car, because think about we take off running, you run from an angle he gets, I don't know, 20, 25 yards away he drops, still moving. By the way, you can clearly see the weapon, just like the DOJ called it an object. You clearly see the gun next to him with his arm stretched out and he's continued to move. Remember the DOJ was upset that we were using less lethal to get him to stop moving. They were also in the reports telling him to crawl back to them and he refused those commands. Well, now you've got a car full of armed robbers still between you and him. Remember the DOJ says well, you just know, cover the car and go up and help him.
Travis Yates:No-transcript. The own FBI studies on action reaction no one. You can't sufficiently cover a car of three people that have committed an armed robbery with suspected weapons inside and not expect to get officers shot or other bad guys shot. Right. And so the officers. The video plays this out. They clear the car first, they blow up the windows, they bring everybody out. They all comply in the car. Amazingly how they don't get shot. They all comply in the car. Takes four or five minutes to do this. This is a large operation. This is not just a couple patrol officers. They knew these guys were up to no good. They had a bunch of resources there. They ought to be applauded for this. They then went to get them out of the car. As you know, you have to clear the car. They go up and clear the car trunk inside. Then, from the moment the car is cleared, within one minute they send a canine up on a leash to drag him further away from the weapon and then they take him into custody.
Travis Yates:Folks, when you watch this video without reading what the deal they said, when you watch this video, it's cool stuff you ever seen tactically on par. Could not have done it better, could not have done. I want to hear one law enforcement expert to look me in the face and tell me that you want to expose yourself to a carload of armed robbers, walk in front of that car and take the time to drag a shooting suspect back to you. It is absolutely textbook and this was used as an example. Now, they couldn't use it as an example in the way I said it. They couldn't have given those details by using it. That's why they leave all these details out.
Travis Yates:I mean when you say in one incident, but then you couch it with what that really happened. Well, they were seen committed an armed robbery. There were multiple people in the car. It is amazing to me what was done here. Now listen, I don't know anybody at the DOJ. I don't know who did this. Now listen, I don't know anybody at the DOJ. I don't know who did this.
Travis Yates:But if you purposely leave those details out, how is that not intent to deceive? And I can't get in their mind. I know this. I've read enough of this website that if one cop did any of that on one case, the DOJ would try to throw him in prison rightfully so for lying. And there are things I've seen that are flat out lies in here. But most things I'm seeing are what I just read to you omissions, vagueness, and you have to ask yourself why, other than you are coming at this from a extreme bias with a conclusion already in your mind. And if the Phoenix Police Department is that bad of a department over 10 years, why is this the incident you're using? An incident where people should get medals. Folks, I'm talking when you watch this incident, go to the website and watch it yourself.
Travis Yates:Incident number eight that's just one of many. I could talk about a lot more. I'm just going to talk about that one. It was textbook, absolute textbook. It's going to be interesting to see what happens.
Travis Yates:I don't think anyone from a decision-making process at Phoenix could, in good conscience, spend another penny on this tragic. I don't think anyone from a decision making process at Phoenix could could, in good conscious, spend another penny on this trash travesty after they see this, this evidence. I mean why this was not provided to the decision makers instead of a vague summary report. You have to, I can't get in their head, but I will say this. You have to. I can't get in their head, but I will say this.
Travis Yates:This has done a great service to the law enforcement profession as a whole, because we know more about DOJ investigations today than we've ever known before, because typically this stuff is done behind closed doors. Settlements are made, consent decrees are signed, and we don't really know much about it after that other than the results of that. And so we all owe Phoenix a debt of gratitude for being transparent. They didn't do anything that should be out of the ordinary folks. They simply gave taxpayers the access to the same documents that any FOIA request would have given them, and they released it to the public for them to see in the auspice of hey, the DOJ was very vague.
Travis Yates:Here we want to show you exactly what happened, and I applaud them greatly. There had to have been a team of numerous people that spent night and day on this. They deserve so much credit. The leadership deserves so much credit. I have extreme gratitude for them. There's a lot to learn from this. Maybe you'll hear some more about it later. I wanted to give that little tidbit to you because I haven't seen anybody talking about it.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening. God bless and just remember lead on and stay courageous. Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. travisyates. org.
