Cop who hounded student protesters had glowing performance reviews

What would lead an off-duty Phoenix cop to show up at a student anti-ICE protest with a gun and attempt to bait kids into assaulting him? In the case of Dusten Mullen — the Phoenix police sergeant who is accused of doing just that earlier this year — the answer won’t be found in his personnel file.

In fact, according to Phoenix Police Department files provided in response to a public records request, Mullen’s supervisors did little but gush over his performance each time he came up for a review. The stark contrast — model employee on paper, masked provocateur when off the clock — raises obvious questions about the efficacy of the department’s evaluation processes.

Mullen is currently on administrative leave while the department investigates his actions. An attorney for Mullen, Steve Serbalik, has challenged the reasons for placing him on leave.

The incident that landed Mullen on leave occurred during a Jan. 30 protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside Hamilton High School in Chandler. According to reports, a student alerted a Chandler police officer to a suspicious man in a mask who was nearby. That man turned out to be Mullen. The Chandler officer confronted Mullen, who was arguing with students and had a holstered handgun and two extra magazines. Mullen allegedly told the Chandler officer: “My plan is legitimately to just let them all assault me and you guys arrest them all, and I’ll keep it on film. I also have other people filming from a distance.”

No such assault occurred, though Chandler police later reported arresting a teen girl who allegedly threw a water bottle at Mullen. In reality, a teen girl reportedly splashed water from a cup onto Mullen, who wanted to press charges. Per Fox 10, county prosecutors declined to charge the girl.

Interestingly, just four days before potentially jeopardizing his career by harassing some kids, Mullen’s supervisors gave him an overwhelmingly positive performance review. In an entry dated Jan. 26, Phoenix police Lt. Robert Knapp of the South Mountain Precinct lavished praise on Mullen for his “great attitude,” his “ability to lead” and his ability to be “fair and balanced in [his] investigative documentation.” Precinct Cmdr. Rick Leyvas added that Mullen was “an experienced, professional, and dedicated leader” and called his work product “exemplary.”

Mullen was given an overall rating of “exceptional” by Knapp and was listed as having met every performance expectation set for him.

For Mullen, who was promoted to sergeant in 2021 after 13 years as an officer, glowing evaluations are an overriding theme of his personnel file. He was listed as having met expectations — and never listed as having not met them — in every single performance review in his file, which also includes several commendations. There is only one disciplinary action listed in his file: a written reprimand for failing to impound drugs and drug paraphernalia after an arrest in 2016. The reprimand notes that Mullen found the items in his police vehicle’s glove box three months later and impounded them then, writing a report to explain his mistake.

That lapse is not referenced in any of his performance evaluations. Year after year, and sometimes multiple times a year, a series of different supervisors gave Mullen kudos for his police work, attitude and professionalism. “Dusten, your work ethic and accomplishments reflect your character, personality and demeanor,” one supervisor wrote in 2012. “You have been and continue to be a valuable asset to our squad and the Phoenix Police Department.” In 2016, another supervisor wrote that “it is apparent that you enjoy your work and providing community outreach to the citizens whom you serve.” In a 2022 evaluation, a supervisor rated Mullen’s performance as “superior.”

Serbalik did not respond to an inquiry from Phoenix New Times about Mullen. New Times also sent questions to the Phoenix Police Department about its employee evaluation system — specifically about its efficacy, if it missed signs of someone about to do something as boneheaded as Mullen allegedly did. The department has not responded.

Frank Milstead, the former director of the Arizona Department of Public Safety and a former Phoenix police commander, noted that the effectiveness of a performance review system depends on how people use it. The Phoenix Police Department uses BlueTeam from the software company Versaterm, which advertises its ability to “identify and address out-of-standard behavior early.” But the system can’t flag behavior it doesn’t know about.

“If somebody is going to do something crazy, you hope that they’re outed through the early warning system,” Milstead told New Times. “Obviously, the system is only as good as the information that it takes in.”

BlueTeam asks supervisors to indicate whether an employee met or did not meet certain goals, but provides no other method of quantifying performance. Milstead said that’s a change from decades ago, when department employees were rated on a 1-to-6 scale, with 1 being exemplary. By flattening the evaluation system, Milstead thinks, it’s easier to miss potentially troubling trends.

Though not familiar with Mullen, Milstead also said it would strike him as odd for any employee’s personnel file to contain no negative or even middling reviews.

“You might get one or two that make you out to walk on water, but somewhere along the line, I would think the true story would catch up to him,” Milstead said. “Supervisors change, leadership changes, oversight changes. To be continuously ‘exceeds standards’ would be unusual to me.”