PHOENIX – The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, the ACLU, and local partners launched the Seven States Safety Campaign today, filing coordinated public records requests to uncover police misconduct in Phoenix, Arizona and six other states where the U.S. Department of Justice under former President Biden found police engaged in unconstitutional and racially discriminatory policing.
The demands are being filed in Arizona, Tennessee, Massachusetts, New York, Mississippi, Minnesota, and Kentucky – states where federal civil rights investigations and reports confirmed widespread patterns of police abuse. The Trump administration has pledged to halt federal oversight and has begun reversing course, including by rescinding near-final agreements in Minneapolis and Louisville and retracting findings in Arizona, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.
“The DOJ’s damning and well-documented findings came from thousands of records, including hours of videos and interviews with personnel at the Phoenix Police Department. Now is not the time to look away,” said Jared Keenan, legal director at the ACLU of Arizona. “Our community demanded accountability long before the federal government stepped in, and today we’re carrying on that fight for justice.”
From 2021 to early 2025, the DOJ launched 12 “pattern or practice” investigations into local police departments. In the seven that are the focus of this campaign, investigators found that police routinely used excessive force, targeted people of color, and violated constitutional rights as a matter of practice. Despite these findings, the seven departments continue to operate without binding consent decrees in place to hold them accountable to address these documented civil rights abuses.
“The DOJ under Biden found police were wantonly assaulting people and that it wasn’t a problem of ‘bad apples’ but of avoidable, department-wide failures,” said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing at the ACLU. “By turning its back on police abuse, Trump’s DOJ is putting communities at risk, and the ACLU is stepping in because people are not safe when police can ignore their civil rights.”
The investigation into the Phoenix Police Department (PPD) took place from 2021 to 2024 and was released on June 13, 2024. The findings include:
- PPD’s excessive use of force, including instances where officers fired their weapons at people who posed no immediate threat.
- PPD and the City of Phoenix’s practice of unlawfully detaining, citing, and arresting people experiencing homelessness and disposing of their belongings.
- Data that indicates racial disparities when enforcing traffic laws, alcohol use and low-level drug offenses, and loitering and trespassing laws.
- Patterns and practices of retaliation, such as excessive use of force and unlawful arrests, against people for exercising First Amendment protected expression.
- Violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) against people with behavioral health disabilities when dispatching calls for assistance and responding to people in crisis.
The DOJ’s investigation into the Phoenix Police Department was spurred by community demands following years of documented misconduct. As the federal government retreats from oversight, communities are once again stepping up to demand transparency and justice, partnering with the ACLU in this campaign.
“The Department of Justice report released in 2024 confirmed what we all knew: Phoenix police routinely violate the rights of the very people they are sworn to protect,” said Ben Laughlin, co-director of Poder in Action. “Despite a long history of perpetrating violence and abuse against our communities, the City of Phoenix has dodged accountability every step of the way. Obtaining public records from the PPD is an essential step towards accountability, for the public to know what the police are doing in the name of 'public safety' and with our tax dollars."