In what will sadly come as no surprise to anyone, an Arizona prosecutor has decided no cops should be punished for partnering up with a different Arizona prosecutor to portray anti-police violence protesters as gang members for the sole purpose of seeking sentencing enhancements.
As millions did all over the nation, Phoenix, Arizona residents hit the streets to protest against police violence and advocate for increased police accountability. Obviously, very few cops were sympathetic with those protests.
But Phoenix police officers (themselves the subject of a recent DOJ investigation) decided it wasn’t enough to toss a few people behind bars on the “contempt of cop” charges that often accompany anti-police protests. They went a step further, colluding with the Maricopa County prosecutor’s office to treat lawful protests as acts of gang violence. The evidence these cops and prosecutors offered to courts was laughable. They insisted the use of the phrase “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards) was nothing more than some sort of gang tag. Using this and other equally-dubious assertions, the Phoenix PD and its buddied-up prosecutors hoped to nail at least a few arrested people with gang-related sentence enhancements — the sort of thing that turns misdemeanors into serious felonies and can add up to a decade to prison sentences.
This included lying to grand jury members about ACAB’s definition for the sole purpose of generating (bogus) gang charges to deploy against arrested protesters.
Q: And are you finding that ACAB is following the exact same type of philosophy of let’s say the Bloods and the Crips?
A: Yes.
Q: And what about even maybe the same philosophy as the Hells Angels?
A: Very similar, yes.
Q: And why would that be similar?
A: I think because the tattoos, the intimidation factor, how they are directing their violent behavior very similar to the Hells Angel organization where they actually organize their violent behavior, and then they carry that out in a very organized fashion. It’s not random with the Hells Angels.
Q: And are you finding that’s exactly what this ACAB group is doing is they are organizing for the intent to create violence?
A: Yes.
This would have been funny if it weren’t actually terrifying. Cops were lying to jurors, with the blessing of Maricopa County prosecutors, in hopes of depriving people of years of their freedom.
An investigation by a local news station (ABC15) brought this all out into the open, exposing the cops and prosecutors involved in this charge, which included April Sponsel, who is married to a state trooper. More investigations should have followed, but Arizona’s law enforcement agencies were universally unwilling to dig into this misconduct by the Phoenix PD and Maricopa County officials. The only investigation performed by the government was handled by someone who no longer worked for any branch of the government, as ABC15 reports.
The criminal investigation was farmed out to retired FBI agent James Egelston because a handful of other Arizona law enforcement agencies refused to investigate the scandal. Egelston’s investigation was submitted to the Pinal County Attorney’s Office because of Maricopa County’s role in falsely charging the protesters.
The end result is a whole lot of nothing. Everyone involved will face zero consequences for their actions because Pinal County prosecutors are equally uninterested in holding cops and prosecutors accountable.
[I]n a declination letter, Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer wrote his office’s incident review board would not bring a case.
“It is the opinion of this Board that none of the (individuals) committed any acts that warrant criminal prosecution,” according to the letter.
Tampering, perjury, filing false reports… none of this is apparently worthy of even the slightest punishment. And that’s even with the US DOJ arriving at the same conclusions about false charges and perjury. Maricopa County has already tacitly agreed with those targeted by this bullshit and handed out a $6 million settlement to arrested protesters. The City of Phoenix, however, still thinks it’s a judicious use of public funds to keep fighting the protesters’ lawsuit, signaling to its crooked cops that it will do whatever it can to keep them from even admitting wrongdoing, much less being punished for it.
Because no one in power wants to make it more difficult for officers and prosecutors to forget their (recent) historical misdeeds, residents of the city and county are doomed to repeat performances from their alleged public servants.
