Phoenix Police Department
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In June 2024, the Department of Justice issued a damning report on the abuses of Phoenix police, laying out in painstaking detail how cops routinely trampled the rights of residents. Some of those abuses involved minors, who were on the receiving end of unnecessary force and aggressive treatment by police.
“(The Phoenix Police Department) does not take into account the vulnerability of children and their stage of development,” the DOJ report read. “As one sergeant explained, ‘We don’t really treat youth any differently than adults.’”
Now, in an announcement that reads like a direct response to the DOJ report, the police department has avowed it will treat youth differently from adults. On Thursday, Phoenix police publicized its new “Youth Interactions” policies, which are meant to guide officers in their encounters with minors.
The department is seeking public input on the new policies, which are not merely updates to previous policies. Phoenix police spokesperson Sgt. Jennifer Zak confirmed to Phoenix New Times that the department “did not previously have a policy specifically for the interactions with our youth, who are an important part of our community.”
“This new policy is all part of the Phoenix Police Department’s commitment to continuous improvement,” she added.
The city is accepting comments on the policy through Nov. 22.
The new policies begin with an assertion that should seem obvious: that “youth are developmentally different from adults” and that police should calibrate their interactions according to those differences. From there, the policies go on to provide guidelines on practices that were specifically called out in the DOJ report.
Answering the DOJ report
One portion of the new policies discusses when and why cops can place handcuffs on minors. The DOJ report noted that Phoenix officers “use excessive force during encounters with kids,” and that “nearly every child we interviewed complained officers closed handcuffs on their wrists so tightly that they reached the point of pain and injury.” In some cases, the cuffs were so tight that kids’ hands went numb and their wrists carried marks for months.
“Others said they sustained deep cuts on their wrists and, when they asked officers to loosen the cuffs, PhxPD instead tightened them further,” the report said.
Seemingly in response, the new youth interaction policies state that “the Department recognizes that detaining or handcuffing youth may cause trauma.” The policies now prohibit cops from handcuffing kids “to intimidate or scare them” or when kids “are not under arrest or detained and/or do not pose a safety risk.” If kids are found to have committed no offense, they are to be uncuffed “immediately.”
The new policies also state that “youth may not understand their rights,” which officers should take into account when interacting with them. The DOJ report found that while police possessed a card to inform children of their Miranda rights before questioning, investigators found multiple instances in which officers failed to provide them before interviews.
The DOJ report also found that police often spoke to minors in a “demeaning way,” outlining several examples. In one instance, one teenager told the DOJ that while performing a patdown, an officer said, “If I was your dad, I would have beat the fuck out of you.”
“Disparaging and disrespectful language from adults in positions of power can have a lasting effect on kids,” the report read. “It can also contribute to fear and distrust of law enforcement from the next generation of Phoenix residents.”
Phoenix police now seem to agree. The new policies instruct officers to “prioritize trust and rapport” when approaching kids, who “may be sensitive to verbal and nonverbal cues and can react differently than adults.” They also warn that “unwarranted criticism can negatively impact the conversation.”
One of the most egregious incidents identified in the DOJ report involved a cop getting unnecessarily aggressive with a 13-year-old autistic boy whom the cop spotted leaving school without permission. “The officer ran after him, grabbing his arms from behind, tackling him, and holding him down,” the report read. When the boy’s mother arrived, the officer “held the boy by his sweatshirt hood as he forced the boy to his feet,” later telling the boy to “shut the fuck up.”
Relatedly, the new policies have a section on “youth with disabilities,” which encourages officers to assess “the youth’s behavior in context, recognizing that disability-related actions may not indicate criminal intent or guilt.”
Department of Justice
Mixed reaction
The new policies pleased Lisa Thurau, who is the executive director of Strategies for Youth. The organization develops standard practices and training on interactions between law enforcement and minors. Thurau did two training sessions for Phoenix police in 2016 about how officers should operate in the presence of children. She sees some of those practices inscribed in the new youth interaction policy.
“We’re hopeful that this will be a big support to police interactions with youth in Phoenix, because some of the reports from investigations indicate that there’s some need to do work in that realm,” Thurau said.
Strategies for Youth plans to provide feedback on the policies in the coming weeks.
However, to Phoenix criminal defense attorney Bret Royle, the new policies read as guidelines that should have been obvious anyway. While Royle gave the policy props for its focus on ensuring youth know their constitutional rights and on appropriate handcuffing procedures, he wonders if the policies will lead to more police in schools and if they’ll actually be implemented in practice.
“There’s nothing in this policy that doesn’t just read to me as though this is just the way that police should be acting anyway,” Royle said, “and has nothing really to do with whether you’re an adult or a juvenile.”