No punishment for Phoenix cops involved in bogus 2020 ‘gang’ arrests

Phoenix Police Chief Matt Giordano announced that there would be no discipline for three former officers for their role in a massive scandal in which they arrested and charged George Floyd protesters with being in a fake gang in 2020.

The officers were accused of colluding with prosecutors and charging 18 protesters with being in a gang that did not exist. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office later dropped the charges and the lead prosecutor on the case, April Sponsel, was suspended from practicing law.

The scandal was exposed by ABC15 in its “Politically Charged” investigative series, which showed how the officers and prosecutors created a bogus gang and lied to a grand jury to secure indictments. Case files used in their reporting showed that Phoenix police Sgt. Doug McBride misled the grand jury.

But McBride and other officers involved in the scandal will now officially skate from any actual consequences. The Pinal County Attorney’s Office conducted a criminal investigation into the scandal and declined to charge anyone involved. And on Friday, Phoenix police announced that no officers will face discipline, despite internal investigations finding that several had violated department policy.

Six officers were investigated in two multi-year administrative investigations by the Phoenix Police Department’s Professional Standards Bureau, the department said. Three of those officers –– McBride and officers Alex Volk and Joseph Crowley –– were found to have violated department policy. The violations included “providing false information and taking actions that jeopardized the status of a criminal or administrative investigation or prosecution,” class 2 and 3 violations that, according to department policy, can result in disciplinary actions ranging from a 40-hour suspension to termination.

However, since those three officers no longer work for the department, no one can be disciplined, Giordano told Phoenix New Times. McBride retired in December, and Volk and Crowley resigned in the years following the incident.

The PSB found that the other three officers — Sgt. James Groat and officers Christopher Turiano and Jeffrey Raymond — did not violate department policy. They all still work for the department. 

Giordano told New Times that when he took over the department in August 2025, he was surprised to learn that the cases were still ongoing. Nonetheless, he stressed that administrative investigations take time.

“I want to make sure the public knows that we weren’t just hiding it in a drawer,” Giordano said. 

Despite the slow process, he thinks the department will grow from the experience. “It was a learning opportunity for us. It was an opportunity for us to identify some weaknesses, some areas where we fell short,” he said. He said the department has created a public safety response team to respond to First Amendment activities, and it’s pushing out more training for officers about how to respond to different situations at protests.

“When they start to take the roadways, criminal damage, breaking things, throwing things in the road, that is when it becomes a little bit different,” Giordano said. “We want to make sure we control and officers understand what our expected responses are to that.”