Last week, however, the Tolleson Police Department issued a press release to insist that Hendrix did nothing wrong. In the process, the department took shots at district superintendent Jeremy Calles and governing board president Leezah Sun, widening a beef between Tolleson police and the school district that has been bubbling since the punching incident last year.
The incident in question occurred in September when Hendrix was escorting a female student to an administrator’s office after an argument with her ex-boyfriend. After encountering the male student, who has not been publicly identified, Hendrix told the student to stop. A third-party investigation by attorney Deanna Rader found that the student may not have heard Hendrix’s command.
According to security camera footage collected of the incident, Hendrix put his hand on the student’s chest. The student tried to swipe the officer’s arm away. Hendrix put his hands higher on the student’s chest and neck and pushed him several feet toward the courtyard’s outside wall. Then, with the student against the wall, Hendrix punched him in the face and kneed him in the gut, according to a police report.
Rader found that escalation was unnecessary. School district superintendent Jeremy Calles agreed, asking Tolleson police to pull Hendrix from school resource duty. However, the police department declined to do so and later deemed Hendrix’s use of force to be justified. In late June, Calles told Phoenix New Times he found the department’s investigation to be deliberately lax.
After another incident with a student involving Hendrix in February — about which Rader’s report found nothing objectionable — Calles booted Hendrix from his position. Starting this month, the district began using officers from other jurisdictions as school resource officers.
In a July 3 press release that was unattributed to any particular spokesperson, the department said it “respectfully disagree(d) with the conclusions” reached in Rader’s report, which it called “deeply flawed.” Notably, Rader wrote in her report that she had been stonewalled in her investigation by police, who declined to let her speak to Hendrix and another school resource officer.
In its release, Tolleson police noted that the student, who was charged with aggravated assault but later pleaded down to resisting arrest, had left the female student “threatening and violent voicemails” — background that was mentioned several times in Rader’s report. Though the messages occurred days earlier, the department said Hendrix was “entirely justified in stepping” between the students to “ensure her safety.”
However, Rader’s report took no issue with Hendrix stepping between the two students. It took issue with the officer punching and kicking a student after stepping in front of him. The police press release talks around those actions, saying that after the student “struck Officer Hendrix’s hand away, the officer acted appropriately by using force to detain him.”
Tolleson Union High School District Jeremy Calles denied that the investigative report commissioned on the cop who punched a student was retaliatory.
Tolleson Union High School District
Getting personal
Reached by New Times, Calles disagreed with that characterization.“We don’t instruct anyone on our campus, any of our adults, to start striking children as a method to teach them that violence is unacceptable,” he said. “Our district does not allow corporal punishment.”
If Calles has been barbed in his criticism of Tolleson police, the department appears willing to give as good as it gets with school district officials. “From the outset, the district’s investigation has appeared retaliatory,” the department said in its release before engaging in its own act of retaliation by attacking Calles and Sun personally.
The department said that “Calles expressed displeasure following a letter from the Tolleson Police Department highlighting a “near miss” incident involving a student bringing a firearm on campus,” suggesting he was holding a grudge against the department over it. Calles told New Times that the letter, which regarded a September incident, stated that school staff should have called 911 earlier.
As for Sun, who had a short but tumultuous stint in the state legislature, the department pointed out that she is subject to an “active injunction prohibiting harassment” that the department facilitated following a “credible threat made to a city employee.” Sun did not respond to a request for comment about the police press release.
The release also listed a 2022 incident in which “a person affiliated with President Sun’s campaign” — Littleton Elementary School Board member Markus Ceniceros, though Ceniceros was not named in the release — was cited for removing an opposing candidate's campaign signs. Ceniceros told New Times in January that he believed the sign removal citation, which is rarely issued in Arizona, was “politically motivated.”
Tolleson police said those incidents “suggest a pattern of retribution rooted in prior grievances with the City of Tolleson and its Police Department.” But Calles said his actions to kick Hendrix from his post were “absolutely not retaliation” and that he was “disappointed” that police “are trying to divert attention to other things” by attacking him and other district officials.
“It’s not possible to go back in time like that,” he said.
It also may not be possible to mend the police-school district relationship, at least under the current leadership. “Historically, issues involving arrests or law enforcement incidents were handled collaboratively and professionally,” the police release said. “Unfortunately, the current District leadership seems more focused on retaliation than resolution.” It added that it’s “hopeful that future leadership in the district” — apparently not Sun or Calles — will prioritize safety, transparency, and cooperation.”
"We remain confident that with responsible governance, our longstanding partnership can be restored,” the release concluded, “and our School Resource Officers will once again be welcomed on campus.”
