Why did Phoenix police perp walk a teenage girl on the internet?

The music is intense, the kind of accompaniment usually reserved for dramatized drug busts and shootouts. It thrums as as three Phoenix police officers open a door, enter a room and … arrest a high school girl.

The scene, captured on police body camera footage and posted to social media by the Phoenix Police Department on Oct. 3, depicts the arrest of a Black female student at Sierra Linda High School in southwest Phoenix. The girl, whose name has been redacted from reports because she is a minor, is accused of making a bogus threat to commit a school shooting.

Edited and scored like a hype video, the footage shows cops handcuffing the girl and walking her out of the school. Though the girl's face is blurred, the rest of her appearance is not. The video closes with an animation of prison bars clanging shut as words pop up on the screen.

“There is zero tolerance for school threats,” it reads. “You will be ARRESTED.”

#PHXPD detectives have made an arrest within 24 hours of the incident that left a school on edge.

Detectives worked around the clock to identify, locate, and apprehend the juvenile female who made the threat, which caused a school disruption and wasted valuable resources. pic.twitter.com/6pJZZzYkD2

— Phoenix Police (@PhoenixPolice) October 4, 2024

The day before the arrest, according to a statement from Sgt. Mayra Reeson at the time, someone posted a threat online alongside a photograph of an area that resembled a common space at the school. Reeson added that the school went on lockdown “out of an abundance of caution.” The student was charged with multiple felonies, including making terroristic threats, and allegedly told police that “the threat was meant to be a joke and got out of hand.”

Phoenix New Times also has requested the incident report from the arrest but has yet to receive it. The student has not yet faced discipline from the school, according to Tolleson Union High School District Superintendent Jeremy Calles. Calles added that similar offenses usually trigger a disciplinary hearing, which could result in a long-term suspension or even expulsion.

Since a mass shooting rocked a Georgia school in early September, Sierra Linda is just one of many schools in Arizona and across the country that has dealt with hoax threats. "Unfortunately, that's something that we experience on a regular basis at our schools," Calles said. "It just feels too often ... something needs to be done to help bring social media threats under control."

The trend is certainly concerning, but some find the video posted by Phoenix police alarming for very different reasons. They see a troubled police force using the arrest of an underaged student to burnish its image while it faces intense scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice. They see police deciding to make an example of a minor, saddling her with felony charges and then perp-walking her on the internet.

"I am still shocked at how they put out this media and don't even see the problem with the fact that they cuffed up a child in a classroom," said Lola N’sangou, the executive director of the social justice organization Mass Liberation Arizona.

“This is a kid,” added criminal defense attorney Bret Royle, who is not involved in the case. “She’s innocent until proven guilty.”

‘Would I post this video?’

New Times asked a Phoenix police spokesperson why the department shared the video of the minor’s arrest. In response, public information officer Rob Scherer said in a written statement that the department’s Public Affairs Bureau posted the video and that the “Phoenix Police Department uses multiple platforms to keep the community informed on high-profile incidents, including media advisories and social media.”

Police accountability advocates argue the department could have informed the community without violating the student’s privacy. Though the student’s face was obscured in the video, the rest of her body was not. “I do think there’s enough identifying information that’s not blurred to potentially identify her,” Royle said, which he called “problematic” given everyone in her school likely already knows her identity.

While Calles applauded Phoenix police for quickly identifying the student who made the threat, he initially didn't want to comment on the department's use of her arrest footage. When pressed by New Times about whether the video was appropriate, Calles said it was "painful" and "not an easy thing to watch" but that he "wouldn't say that I feel Phoenix PD is inappropriate.

However, he added, "Would I post that video? I wouldn't." He plans to create his own PSA about school threats, but it "doesn't involve using content like that."

Royle thinks Phoenix police should have taken a similar tack. If the department wanted to inform the community about an important development, Royle said, it could have issued a statement. If it wanted to scare other kids straight, it should have filmed a PSA, not used real arrest footage of a minor who’s yet to be convicted of anything.

“A suspect, someone not guilty, and a juvenile, why should their body camera be part of your PSA?” Royle said. “Hire an actor or just type that.”

The decision to post the video also echoes issues identified by the DOJ in its yearslong investigation of Phoenix police.

In its 126-page report on the department released in June, the DOJ found that Phoenix police both discriminate against people of color and do “not take into account the vulnerability of children and their stage of development.” The report highlights the department’s pattern of “demeaning” treatment of minors, noting that “it can contribute to fear and distrust of law enforcement from the next generation of Phoenix residents.”

N’sangou, who is Black and a mother, agrees.

"It's not lost on me that this is a Black teenager," she said. The department’s decision to “parade her around as though this is some kind of spectacle” makes N'sangou feel “much less safe sending my children to a school where a resource officer would do such a thing or where Phoenix PD would be called in.”

‘Complete and utter overcharge’

The charges the girl now faces also concern Royle and others.

Royle has seen kids as young as 12 booked on the same charges, which he called “a complete and utter overcharge.” And while no one who spoke to New Times suggested that schools or police shouldn’t take threats seriously, they do question what’s accomplished by throwing the book at a minor who made an unserious one.

"Felony charges and convictions are lifelong,” said Isabel Garcia, a community safety strategist for the social justice organization Poder In Action. “The youth are learning. Their brains are still developing. They're going to make mistakes. This was clearly a mistake that this youth made.”

Garcia said arresting and charging a student for a bogus threat won’t prevent future threats. Instead, she believes, “preventative, community-level responses” — such as mental health counseling, guidance from social workers and training on human development — would “actually help to transform harmful behaviors” and help kids “make better choices and learn from their mistakes.”

Phoenix police don’t seem to be learning from theirs. Since the release of the DOJ’s report, the city of Phoenix has struggled to make a convincing case that its police department does not require federal oversight. Publicly shaming a kid online isn’t even the department’s most recent concerning incident, or its most serious.

For the past week, Phoenix police have faced intense scrutiny over the recent publication of damning body-camera footage that shows two cops bum-rushing, beating and arresting a deaf Black man with cerebral palsy. While the department is now investigating the incident, the man they beat is still facing assault charges for allegedly attacking the officers.

That incident occurred in August, and the body-cam footage wasn’t made public until two months later following a public records request. When police arrested the Sierra Linda student, however, the department blasted out the video on its official social media the very same day.

That the department apparently is so proud of it shows just how out of touch they are, N’sangou said.

“The most alarming part is the parading of a young Black child around on video and sending that out to the community in an effort to pander for our support,” she said, “after they’ve already lost it.”