Phoenix’s police chief candidate forum was actually kinda good

Substantive answers. A head-on confrontation with the findings of the Department of Justice report. A full-throated assertion that local police should have no role to play in immigration enforcement.

That was the surprising tenor of Monday’s public forum with the three candidates vying to become the next chief of the Phoenix Police Department. Given how troubled the department has been — and how defensive it and the city have been about its shortcomings — it felt a bit like stepping into an alternate dimension.

It was undoubtedly a shift in tone and substance from the city’s first such forum, with four different candidates, back in March. That forum, which included then-interim Chief Michael Sullivan, was defined by bland, safe questions and blander and safer answers. The energy was low — one candidate even froze up completely and simply stopped talking mid-sentence, leading then-Phoenix City Councilmember Carlos Galindo-Elvira to tell Phoenix New Times that he “wasn’t ready for the big leagues.”

Weeks later, Sullivan resigned and pulled himself from consideration. Instead of moving forward with the three uninspiring candidates that remained, the city started its search from scratch. The bet was that without Sullivan looming as a presumptive favorite, better candidates would apply. Judging by Monday’s second forum, that appears to be the case. And judging by their answers, Sullivan’s absence allowed for more pointed questions and answers about the failings of Phoenix police.

The new candidates for chief are:

• Mirtha Ramos, the former chief of police of the DeKalb County Police Department, which is at the periphery of Atlanta’s urban sprawl. She left office just months ago after she said she was forced out by a new administration.
• Matt Giordano, the only candidate who has worked for Phoenix police and who has recently served as the executive director for the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training board, the only organization in the state with real power to discipline misbehaving law enforcement officers.
• Malik Aziz, who worked for decades at the Dallas Police Department and for the last four years has been the chief of the Prince County Police Department in Maryland.

The three candidates, none of whom were involved in the initial round of interviews, delivered dynamic, thorough and polished answers. The overall mood was confident and progressive. The candidates frequently signaled a need to engage the community in serious conversation to understand their concerns and noted that the department should actually learn from the DOJ report. They pointed out the need to engage carefully with people experiencing mental health crises and advocated for reforming the department’s training.

Unless the city starts the search over for a third time, one of those three will be tasked with moving the department into a new era. A scathing DOJ investigation into the department still looms over Phoenix police, despite Donald Trump’s attempt to memory-hole it. At the same time, the country is grappling with an encroaching police state, specifically when it comes to immigration enforcement.

The future of Phoenix police will rest on one of their shoulders. Here’s what each candidate had to say.

Immigration

In two hours, the candidates covered a range of topics, including their respective experiences, the department’s problems retaining officers, policing the homeless community and officers’ mental health.

And, of course, immigration. With ICE raids roiling the country and the Valley, each candidate said in clear terms that Phoenix police have no place enforcing immigration law. Last week, the department issued a statement saying that it is not involved in immigration enforcement.

“We have no role in immigration from a local law enforcement perspective,” Giordano said.

It’s taken years to rebuild relations with the Latino community since 2010's controversial Senate Bill 1070 gave officers leeway to racially profile residents, Giordano said, adding that there’s more work to be done.

“I was here for SB 1070 — I was a Phoenix police sergeant when that occurred,” Giordano said. “I saw the fear and distrust it created in the neighborhood, and it was upsetting. Any time a member of our community doesn’t feel safe calling 911, we failed. And we failed them.”

Ramos and Aziz agreed. Ramos noted that people who fear calling the police department are at risk of being taken advantage of by criminals.

“We’re going to lose trust in those communities if we do that,” Ramos said, adding that the exception is helping out federal authorities if there is a threat to agents. “What we won’t do and what we shouldn’t do is get in the middle of something that is the responsibility of a federal agency.”

Aziz even made a reference to the man who was wrongfully sent to a crowded El Salvador prison by the Trump administration, only for the U.S. Supreme Court to unanimously order that he be brought back to the United States. Trump resisted doing so for months, finally returning him only to slap him with trumped-up criminal charges.

“I’m from Maryland — the place that has made international news of Kilmar Ábrego García,” Aziz said, explaining that widening the department’s focus to immigration would strain limited resources. “At this point in time, when we’re fighting crime and utilizing officers — and we just spoke about the critical staffing crisis we’re in — we must focus our attention to violent crime.”

The DOJ report

When the Trump administration rescinded the DOJ's 126-page report on the overreaches of Phoenix police, conservatives like Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen applauded the decision as the end of a “witch hunt.” But the report doesn’t seem to be vanishing into thin air.

The police chief candidates referenced the report several times and acknowledged there are serious problems within the department that need reform. Ramos said when she applied and was researching the department, “the first thing that popped up was the DOJ report.” But she wasn’t deterred from applying for the position because of it.

“I was actually kind of excited, because what I saw was a progressive city that was open to doing better — that was able to admit that they maybe could do some things differently and started working on making those changes,” Ramos said in her opening statement.

She also said that Phoenix “is a city where the community is very supportive of the police department,” which is “not something you see quite often.” That’s a rather dubious statement — large swaths of Phoenix take issue with the department for its history of discriminatory policing and use of force. A recent data analysis found that only one other American police department has killed more people since 2013.

After the forum, New Times asked Ramos what she thought of the Tyron McAlpin case, in which two officers savagely beat a deaf, Black man with cerebral palsy who had done nothing wrong. Three officers involved were suspended for 24 hours each, while the city is being sued over the incident. Ramos said she was unfamiliar with the case. A day later, after reading articles about it, she said she could not weigh in on it.

“Unfortunately, I won’t be providing a comment considering I don’t have all of the facts,” she wrote to New Times in an email Tuesday morning.

Still, she and the other candidates all stressed the need for more communication and meetings with members of the community to understand what they could do better. Aziz said that “community outreach comes in many forms,” including “meeting with the elected officials, meeting with department heads and non-governmental organizations who do things often better than what we do.”

The statement was somewhat remarkable — a police chief candidate admitting that the department can learn from NGOs was unlike anything said in the previous forum.

Aziz also highlighted some of the initiatives his department in Maryland has undertaken while he’s been chief, including actually organizing the local Pride event, having officers wear rainbow Pride patches in June, creating a mental health squad for officers and personally handing out ice cream to kids in the immigrant community to promote relations.

“Who doesn’t like ice cream, right?” Aziz asked to muffled laughter from the audience.

“Just for the record, I do like ice cream,” Giordano quipped.

Giordano also told the press after the debate that his work with AZPOST has connected him to law enforcement leaders across the Valley.

“I am connected to every police chief and sheriff in the state,” he said. “They’re already in my cell phone. When they pick up the phone, it’s not, ‘Hey, this is Matt Giordano with Phoenix PD.’ It’s, ‘Hey, this is Matt.’”

The city council reacts

The hiring of Phoenix’s next police chief is completely up to City Manager Jeff Barton — the most powerful man in Phoenix you’ve probably never heard of — and other top unelected city officials. Almost all were in attendance on Monday, including Barton, Assistant City Manager Lori Bays and Deputy City Manager Inger Erickson.

So were four of Phoenix’s nine city council members — Kevin Robinson (who left early), Laura Pastor, Kesha Hodge Washington and newly elected progressive Anna Hernandez. But the councilmembers have no say in selecting the next chief. All the councilmembers except Robinson seemed to agree that this forum was markedly different from the last one.

Hernandez and Pastor told New Times they believed many good candidates passed on applying because they thought Sullivan wanted to keep his job. Hernandez pointed out that there were far fewer people in the audience than at the last forum. Pastor said she recognized a lot of attendees as those involved with local neighborhood watch groups, but that the questions asked during the forum were more reflective of groups that have an eye on the need for reform in the department.

While Hernandez and her chief of staff, Luke Black, said the slate of candidates was far better this time around, they also voiced some skepticism.

“I have a lot of questions about what that community engagement is going to look like. We heard the same answer from all three of them multiple times — it’s about communication and talking to the community,” Black said. “And that sounds good. But I think the community has been very clear about their dissatisfaction with police violence and I don’t know what the new candidates are going to listen to that’s going to be different.”

Hernandez agreed.

“Are they going to be selective about what communities they actually engage with? I’m curious to know more,” she said, adding that she needed “to process all the answers and do some homework on all the candidates.”

In an interview while he was leaving the meeting, Robinson gave vague answers to questions about the forum and Sullivan’s exit. “I thought it went well — I thought the last one went well,” said Robinson, who spent decades as an executive with Phoenix police and also served on the AZPOST board. “It gives people an opportunity to see the candidates up front and personal.” Robinson declined to say what Barton told him about why the search was started anew, noting that “a lot of that was discussed in private and executive session” and wouldn’t be “appropriate to discuss.”

Kesha Hodge Washington declined to tell New Times who her favorite candidate was.

“I can’t tell you that or I’d have to kill you,” Washington said with a laugh. “I’m curious to see the community feedback from it. I think for a role like this, it’s about authenticity and who does the community believe is the most authentic.” She added that she heard several residents chatting about the candidates while leaving the forum.

“Their favorite was Ms. Ramos,” Washington said. “They feel like her commitment to community engagement and building that community trust is what we need most.”

On Tuesday, the candidates were scheduled to meet with Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego — who wasn’t in attendance — and the city council. Ramos and Aziz will then head back home, while Giordano will have a monthly AZPOST meeting on Wednesday.

City spokesperson Ashley Patton told New Times that the city manager plans to announce a decision in July.