March 4, 2025 • 24 mins
A deep dive into the often-ignored repercussions of federal consent decrees on local law enforcement agencies. We explore the historical context, emerging trends, and an unparalleled response from the Phoenix Police Department to recent DOJ investigations.
• Overview of federal consent decrees and their intent
• Discussion on cities that have undergone consent decrees and their resulting challenges
• Focus on Phoenix Police Department's response and transparency initiative
• Analysis of misleading reports from the DOJ regarding police practices
• Examination of metrics showing the impact of federal oversight on community safety
• Call for accountability and an informed discourse on policing reforms
Article: Phoenix Rising or Falling?
Phoenix PD Website Discussed In Podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates,
where leaders find the insights,advice and encouragement they
need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates (00:11):
Welcome back to the show.
I'm so honored you decided tospend a few minutes with us here
today and today's show is goingto be a little different.
It's been quite a long timesince I've sort of given you an
update of kind of what's gonebehind the scenes and some of
the work that we are doing.
And if you've paid attention tothe show and many of you are,
and I'm so thankful for that Ican tell by the data that we
(00:32):
have regular listeners andyou're sending to other people
and the show has been buildingand building a billion In fact
we're three X of listenerscompared to where we were when
we began just a few years ago,and I'm very thankful for that.
But if you kind of payattention to it, you've seen
that we have spoken aboutfederal consent decrees quite a
bit.
We've interviewed SeanWilloughby with Albuquerque,
(00:54):
who's they're currently under aconsent decree.
We've interviewed DarylKripling with Phoenix, who
endured a investigation by theDOJ and a potential consent
decree.
We interviewed Bob Scales,who's really sort of the master
at the details behind this.
He was involved in Seattle'sconsent decree when it began and
he sort of was behind thescenes as an attorney and saw
(01:15):
what was going on and you'veseen us mention this and I've
written a handful of articles onthis.
If you follow us over there andI hope you do go to
TravisShadesorg, go to articlesyou can subscribe to those
weekly articles.
Something has never set rightwith me on this issue.
Well, first thing that doesn'tset right with me is nobody's
hardly talking about it and it'scertainly strange.
(01:36):
And just to give you a quicksummary, the 1994 crime bill
gave the Attorney General of theUnited States the authority to
investigate local policedepartments for civil rights
violations.
I think that sounds like it'sneeded, right.
We'd want to avoid violatingcivil rights and we need to hold
law enforcement accountable tothat.
But they gave that authority tothe civil rights division of
(01:58):
the DLJ and so for the last 30years they have been going into
police departments, launchinginvestigations and then sort of
forcing day agencies into aconsent decree, which is the
federal government running thepolice department through a
consent decree monitor.
It's a little more complicatedthan that and that's one of the
issues is it takes a long timeto bring people up to speed.
But one of the things that I'venoticed that never sat right
(02:18):
with me is the total destructionthat occurs in cities after
they do this.
I mean, this is a methoddesigned to make police
departments better, and when youlook at the data and the
metrics after the federalgovernment runs a local police
department, things get muchworse.
I mean, I could list off thecities under consent decrees and
you're never going to go onvacation there Chicago, portland
(02:39):
, seattle, new Orleans, go onand on.
But just look at some of themetrics.
This is before and after thefederal government took over and
they're still involved in thesecities.
By the way, new Orleans theircrime rate went up 44%.
Their violent crime rate wentup 97%.
Their budget implode 83%.
Their staffing went down 36%.
Seattle their violent crimerate went up 53%.
(03:02):
Their budget went up 43%.
Their part one crimes went up33%.
Their staffing's down 16%.
Albuquerque their violent crimerate went up 80%.
Their budget went up 38%.
Their staffing is down 11%, andreally every city mirrors this.
Violent crime spikes, budgetsimplode, staffing, staffing gets
(03:25):
reduced, and this is in everycity.
This isn't, this isn't someanomaly, and so it's always been
strange to me that this hasbeen happening for 30 years and
nobody's talking about it.
You won't hear this from majorcity chiefs.
You don't hear this from thefop.
You don't hear this from theicp.
You don't hear some perf.
You don't hear this fromanybody, nobodyacp.
You don't hear this from PERF.
(03:45):
You don't hear this fromanybody.
Nobody's talking about it,which is very disturbing.
In fact, I'm in the leadershipspace.
There's a handful of peoplethat kind of do that in law
enforcement.
They write or they speak orthey teach.
None of them speak about it.
Right, and I guess in a sense Iunderstand that it's not a
controversial topic because whatI'm saying is true.
But people see that as acontroversial topic, and I have
(04:09):
been.
Actually, I was removed from astage in January of last year
because there was a DOJ memberin the room Didn't like what I
said about consent decrees, eventhough it was true.
I was canceled from aconference in Arizona, don't?
They didn't give me the reasonwhy, but it just happened to be
at the same time.
I was speaking about Phoenixconsent decree and a few other
(04:29):
things have happened along theway, and so I guess if you're in
this space and you're trying tobuild a business, you wouldn't
speak about this.
But how do you not if you trulybelieve in leadership?
And so I just thought the truthmatters and so I've been
speaking about it, but there'sso much we don't know.
I mean, I just told you themetrics, right, cities get worse
(04:49):
, and I didn't really know whatwas going on in the city while
the deal came, but I just knowwhat happens after they come,
that things get much worse.
They've spent $250 million, infact.
I did the math the other dayand over the course of 30 years,
local cities have spent over abillion dollars to have federal
(05:10):
oversight and the federalmonitor alone, which is usually
a lawyer that the federal judgeputs over the department.
I mean they're making anywherefrom $400,000 to a million
dollars a year To do what.
I mean the whole thing seemskind of crazy.
By the way, those organizationsI mentioned earlier.
Nothing against them other thanthe fact they're being quiet.
Guess who gives them money aswell?
That's right, the DLJ.
(05:31):
So the whole thing sounds veryodd.
In fact, if you would tell acivilian this, they may not even
believe it.
But Phoenix gave us all a gift,and that's what I wanted to talk
to you about.
The DLJ began investigatingPhoenix well over three years
ago.
In fact, it ended up being thelongest investigation by the DLJ
when it comes to civil rightsviolations and they go to the
(05:53):
city council several months agoand they said we've completed
our investigation, what we foundwas really bad and so we need
you to agree to a consent decree.
Now I have a problem with thatbecause if you found evidence of
civil rights violations and youwant to interject in a local
police department from a federalgovernment standpoint, well, go
to court and prove it in court.
(06:15):
Only one department in 30 yearshas taken the DLJ to court and
they lost the DLJ lost.
So if the evidence is thatstrong, it should be fairly easy
to prove in court.
But the dlj sort of uses themedia and they use this pressure
tactic and they sort of makethese cities believe that if you
just sort of sign off of thisconsent decree that you know
(06:36):
we'll start making yourdepartment better.
And this, this, it's just it's.
It's insane because once thesedepartments sign up with it,
they can't get out of it.
Ask new orleans, ask Seattle,you know, ask all these agencies
that have been consent decreesfor 10, 20, 25 years.
They can't get out of it.
It's just draining their budgetand destroying their cities.
Well, phoenix, I guess they wereaware of the history of this
(06:56):
and the history is what I justtold you, what it does to cities
, and Phoenix, quite frankly,can't really afford to get more
violent crime.
They so they asked the DLJ.
When the DLJ said this hey,before we sign our department
over to the federal governmentwhich is what a consent decree
is we'd like to see yourevidence, we'd like to see your
(07:19):
report.
By the way, you don't know whodoes these reports.
You don't know who investigatedit.
You don't know anything aboutit.
They just they come out withthis vague executive summary.
You can Google consent decreeexecutive summary DLJ executive
summary police department.
You'll Google consent decreeexecutive summary DLJ executive
summary police department.
You'll see these reports andthey're all written very, very
similarly.
They're very, very vague.
Well, they ask a simplequestion Before we sign over on
(07:42):
average, probably $10 million ayear, by the way, phoenix has
already spent $10 million juston the investigation Once they
sign up for consent decree.
On average, for a city thatsize, it's about $10 million a
year, with no end date, so tospeak.
So they asked this common sensequestion we'd like to see the
investigation?
And the DLJ said no, which isvery strange, right?
(08:02):
If they had evidence, why wouldthey not want to show it to the
political leaders in that city,and so there was enough
pressure, I think, on thecouncil, because the citizens
have become aware of kind ofwhat this has done in other
cities where they sort of saidthey kind of hit the brakes,
we're not going to, we're notgoing to simply agree to this.
The DLJ came out with anexecutive summary outlining
(08:23):
their investigation.
Keep in mind, this isn't thedetails of it, it's almost it's
a vague summary.
They listed 134 incidents overthe course of six years where
the Phoenix Police Departmentviolated the rights of citizens,
and that in itself is strange,because the Phoenix Police
Department responds to about twomillion calls a year.
During that time frame theyused force well over 5,000 times
(08:47):
, and so just the few incidentsthey listed is what the DOJ has
to prove in court is a patternand practice civil rights
violations, not a one off, not afew off, but has to be a
pattern and practice which, whenyou sort of do the math in
Phoenix, they literally listedabout point zero, zero, zero,
two, two percent of theiractivity was supposedly civil
(09:08):
rights violations.
So that was awful strange.
But when you read thisexecutive summary report, it
makes the Phoenix PoliceDepartment look like the worst
department in the country, whichis what most of them do, and
it's really designed to putpressure on the city to just
agree with the DLJ.
Well, my suspicions took thebest of me, and so I was paying
attention to this, and the cityof Phoenix did something that
(09:30):
I've never seen anybody do.
In fact, it's what would happenif it went to court is as
phoenix took, and theyidentified 112 of the 134
incidents.
So they they looked at thesevague summaries and they were
able to pinpoint the exactincident and they put a public
website up that listed the whatthe doj said.
(09:52):
And then, right next to that,they put up they didn't have any
editorial or any narrative,they just put up the body camera
footage, the police reports andthe administrative documents
and they put them side by side.
This is a public website.
I'll I'll send the link to you,and they did this for
transparency, to show the public.
But you know it's it's a hugewebsite, lots of data.
(10:14):
Nobody in Phoenix media paidattention to it.
Nobody really has paid muchattention to it, but I saw this
last summer and, heck, I hadsome free time, so I decided you
know what Now?
I've been concerned about thisissue for quite some time.
I can now kind of look behindthe curtain and see whether this
is accurate or not, becausethat's important right.
(10:34):
If you're going to accuseanybody of violating civil
rights violations, you wouldexpect it to be accurate.
And so I spent the summer forthe most part all summer going
through every single incident.
I watched every body camera, Iread every report and I went
through it.
What I found is nothing shortof corruption at the highest
(10:59):
level.
In fact, I almost feel dirtythat I know it because nobody
else is talking about it, it'sjust me out here talking about
it.
It's very disturbing what Ifound, and I'm coming out with a
report in the coming weeks andI wanted you to hear it first
here.
So the report's not out yet.
It's just shy of 300 pages andI can't really cover all of it
(11:20):
here.
It's so disturbing and so wildand crazy, but I'll certainly
pass it along to you when I getit.
I would encourage you to followmy articles TravisYatesorg, go
up to article and then subscribeto that page and you'll get
this on notification.
But I wanted to give you a quicksummary of what I found because
(11:42):
it is extremely disturbing andI certainly hope that you will
send this around to people andmake people aware of it, because
this cannot continue.
What's going on?
First off, you see thedestruction that's made in these
other cities and right now,with President Trump, they've
pulled back these investigations.
But they did that the firstterm during President Trump, and
what happened after that?
They come right back.
(12:03):
Well, that's not going to begood enough for me.
This corruption is so in-depthand so egregious.
This has to go away.
I'm not saying we not holdagencies accountable for civil
rights violations, but in itscurrent form it can't continue
like this.
It is horrific what I found.
I'm going to tell you exactlywhat I found.
(12:24):
I'm going to cut right to it.
I found the DOJ misled or lied97% of the time.
There were only four cases outof 134 where what the DOJ said
actually matched up to thevideos and the reports.
(12:48):
And how did they do this?
I'll give you the details on it.
So an excessive force.
The DOJ listed 36 incidents,thirty six that said they
violated civil rights.
No-transcript.
(13:10):
All of those cases.
They misled and lied Every oneof them.
So, out of the 36, none of themwere accurate, and I'll give
you the examples in a minute.
When the DOJ tried to say thatthe Phoenix Police Department
discriminated when they enforcedthe law, they listed 10
(13:30):
incidents.
This is out of 2 millionarrests.
By the way, nine of the 10 werefactually inaccurate.
When the DOJ said that thePhoenix Police Department
discriminated in response topeople with behavioral health
issues, they listed 10 incidents.
By the way, this is out of64,464 mental health calls and
(13:55):
over 41,000 mental healthtransports.
They listed 10 incidents.
Nine of the 10 were factuallyinaccurate.
The DOJ said that the PhoenixPolice Department did not modify
their practices when theyencountered juveniles.
They listed three incidents.
By the way, the Phoenix PoliceDepartment responded arrested.
(14:17):
They arrested 13,513 juvenilesand they responded to over
80,000 juvenile-related calls.
They listed three incidents.
All of those were factuallyinaccurate.
The DOJ listed 17 incidentsthat said the Phoenix Police
were not held accountable bysupervision or training.
Okay, all six out of the 17,.
(14:42):
Just one was accurate.
And when I say not accurate,they did things.
I'll give you an example ofthis.
So if you wanted to say apolice department was violating
people's constitutional rights,the way you do that is, you
(15:04):
don't give the details.
So they either omittedinformation, they misled with
wrong context, or they deceived,or the DOJ even added
information that wasn't evenpresent, or they misapplied case
law and then many of theirconclusions they form with
(15:25):
hindsight bias.
There was a specific incidentwhere there was a guy on the top
of stairs with a knifethreatening officers.
The officer spent, I believe,about 15 minutes trying to plead
with the guy to drop the knifeand finally the guy comes
walking down the stairs towardshim with the knife up in
aggressive fashion.
They end up having to kill theguy.
Well, in the DOJ report theysaid the guy meant them no harm
(15:49):
and the knife was always down tohis side.
I mean, just when you watch thevideo you don't even know that
you're doing watching the samething.
And that was just one of somany.
In fact, I filmed three or fourvideos on my YouTube channel.
Once you can go totravisyatesorg, hit the YouTube
channel and if you can't getthat, you can go to YouTube and
type in Travis Yates CourageousLeadership, travis Yates DLJ.
(16:10):
You'll get them and I show youthe videos and I tell you what
they said.
It's nothing short of insanityand I think I now know why the
DLJ does everything they can tonot go to court, because in
court this would be laughed at.
It would it would completely belaughed at.
(16:32):
And, by the way, I'm going tosay how egregious this is.
The DOJ is a law enforcementagency.
They lied I don't want to saylie, it's a tough term because
sometimes things were out ofcontext.
They added information, but youknow, essentially it's a lie by
not giving the accurate details.
97% of the things they saidwere not accurate.
(16:52):
What do you think would happento a police department or a
police officer if they did thatin their report?
They'd be in prison right nowprobably Right.
And what I found amazing when Iwent through all these reports
and videos is the Phoenix PoliceDepartment were amazingly
accurate.
They were accurate in so muchdetail to what the actual video
(17:15):
showed.
Meanwhile, the agencyinvestigating them were the
exact opposite.
It's hard to put in words whatI found.
It's hard to sort of tell youhow bad this was.
I'm bringing this to youbecause I'm hoping that you have
some familiarity with this andmy concern is is if this was
(17:38):
like this in Phoenix, because weonly know this because the
Phoenix Police Departmentpublished this website what has
occurred in other cities whenthey didn't do this?
Now, by the way, we have someanecdotal evidence.
The ex-Louisville police chiefon the stand was asked about the
dlj summary and she said thatthey found multiple things that
(18:00):
were not accurate and that'scome across in louisville in the
court proceedings, again whenthe dlj refused to answer any
questions.
And so if this happened inphoenix, how many places has it
happened in?
And I gotta got to tell you,man, the damage this has done,
and I didn't mention thisearlier.
Out of the 15 most violentcities right now in America,
(18:24):
nine of them are ran by the DLJNew Orleans, baltimore,
philadelphia, birmingham,washington DC, milwaukee,
detroit, indianapolis,louisville all ran by the DLJ
under consent decrees.
So they are destroying thesafety of communities and, by
the way, it's not just me.
Roland Fryer, harvard professorresearcher, did a peer-reviewed
research on this and he showedthat there were 900 additional
(18:47):
murders in America based onafter the fact, because consent
decrees happen in cities.
No one's talking about this, noone's saying anything about this
.
I don't think that's goodenough, right?
I don't think it's good enough.
And so we're going to be doingmore on this.
If the report doesn't get theattention it should get, we're
(19:11):
probably going to do adocumentary.
We're going to take this to thehighest levels we can in this
country to get them to look atthis.
It is atrocious.
So I would ask you if youlisten, if you made it this far.
This is probably the other partof the problem, right?
Is this issue could be boringto so many people, I mean, and
we hear about corruption all thetime and it just almost goes
through one ear out the other.
(19:31):
But this is extremelydisturbing and I'm going to ask
you, if you know anybody thatneeds to hear this, to send this
to them.
You can reach out to me andI'll send you a bunch of links,
a bunch of articles.
We've done a lot on it, butit's going to kind of culminate
with this report.
We're going to talk about thisspecifically in Phoenix and we
(19:58):
need to shine a light on this.
Wrong is wrong, whether you'rethe local police department or
the Department of Justice.
Wrong is wrong.
It's wrong to put out publiclyfor the world to see that our
department is doing all thesethings.
And then you're not evenaccurate in what you're saying.
I mean, they have destroyed thereputation of the Phoenix
Police Department by lies and,by the way, it's not me.
(20:23):
I would challenge you to go tothis website.
I'll have it in the show notes.
Pick any incident you want,read what the DLJ said and go
and watch the video.
It would not even take anyonewith law enforcement experience
to see what I'm seeing.
A first year criminal justicestudent would have come to the
same conclusions.
In fact, when I, when I startedlooking at this, I sort of
(20:45):
thought, man, I'm probably goingto go out and get some other
experts to look at this Use offorce experts, things like that.
But it was so basic what theydid.
It was such a fabrication.
It was pretty easy.
I'll give you one quickfabrication.
They made a big deal in thereport that the Phoenix Police
Department was picking on thesehomeless people.
Now Phoenix, like most bigcities, have a homeless issue.
(21:06):
Businesses call in and so theymake arrests on public drugs,
they make arrests on trespassing, things like that, and so they
made a big deal that thesehomeless people were being
targeted by the policedepartment.
They kind of left out the factthat it was citizens calling the
police department, you know,for quality of life issues, and
the police department was takingaction.
(21:37):
No-transcript.
Well, the DOJ doesn't get topick and choose which laws are
constitutional, unconstitutional.
That would be courts, and thecourts have already decided all
the way to the supreme courtthat local, local ordinances can
enforce laws like trespassingand public intoxication, and if
(21:59):
those affect homeless people ata much higher rate, then that's.
That's not an issueconstitutionally.
This has been ruled all the wayto Supreme Court, and so they
based their entire premise onthis section that the local laws
were unconstitutional.
And they aren'tunconstitutional.
And if you were just a passivereader, you would go oh, that's
(22:20):
just awful, that's just awful.
It just doesn't take a rocketscience to see what happened
here, and so we'll be doing moreon this.
Man, if you made it this far, Iappreciate it, and I just had
to get this out there.
I want to get this out to youbecause you've been with us and
I want you.
You've heard this first.
We'll be doing that.
We'll be putting the report out.
(22:40):
Uh, we'll be doing articles onit, pieces of that, that, and
it's done.
I'm not doing it to embarrassanybody.
I'm doing it because thiscannot continue.
I don't care whether you're ABC, police Department or DLJ.
You should not be permitted tomisrepresent facts the way they
were, and there needs to beaccountability at some level
(23:05):
when it comes to that.
So thank you for listening.
I look forward to getting thereport to you.
I look forward to speaking moreabout this.
I would love to talk aboutother issues, quite frankly, but
this is a big issue and it'samazing to me how other
so-called leaders aren't sayinga word.
I don't understand that right,right is right, wrong is wrong,
(23:28):
and when it comes to courageousleadership, you say what's right
, regardless if it's popular,regardless if you think people
won't like it, you just have to.
How else are we going to changethings for the better in this
country and in our community?
So thank you for listening.
I appreciate you, and justremember, lead on and stay
courageous.
Thank you for listening.
I appreciate you.
Just remember, lead on and staycourageous.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Thank you for listening to Courageous
Leadership with Travis Yates.
We invite you to join othercourageous leaders at www.
travisyatesorg.
Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates,
where leaders find the insights,advice and encouragement they
need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates (00:11):
Welcome back to the show.
I'm so honored you decided tospend a few minutes with us here
today and today's show is goingto be a little different.
It's been quite a long timesince I've sort of given you an
update of kind of what's gonebehind the scenes and some of
the work that we are doing.
And if you've paid attention tothe show and many of you are,
and I'm so thankful for that Ican tell by the data that we
(00:32):
have regular listeners andyou're sending to other people
and the show has been buildingand building a billion In fact
we're three X of listenerscompared to where we were when
we began just a few years ago,and I'm very thankful for that.
But if you kind of payattention to it, you've seen
that we have spoken aboutfederal consent decrees quite a
bit.
We've interviewed SeanWilloughby with Albuquerque,
(00:54):
who's they're currently under aconsent decree.
We've interviewed DarylKripling with Phoenix, who
endured a investigation by theDOJ and a potential consent
decree.
We interviewed Bob Scales,who's really sort of the master
at the details behind this.
He was involved in Seattle'sconsent decree when it began and
he sort of was behind thescenes as an attorney and saw
(01:15):
what was going on and you'veseen us mention this and I've
written a handful of articles onthis.
If you follow us over there andI hope you do go to
TravisShadesorg, go to articlesyou can subscribe to those
weekly articles.
Something has never set rightwith me on this issue.
Well, first thing that doesn'tset right with me is nobody's
hardly talking about it and it'scertainly strange.
(01:36):
And just to give you a quicksummary, the 1994 crime bill
gave the Attorney General of theUnited States the authority to
investigate local policedepartments for civil rights
violations.
I think that sounds like it'sneeded, right.
We'd want to avoid violatingcivil rights and we need to hold
law enforcement accountable tothat.
But they gave that authority tothe civil rights division of
(01:58):
the DLJ and so for the last 30years they have been going into
police departments, launchinginvestigations and then sort of
forcing day agencies into aconsent decree, which is the
federal government running thepolice department through a
consent decree monitor.
It's a little more complicatedthan that and that's one of the
issues is it takes a long timeto bring people up to speed.
But one of the things that I'venoticed that never sat right
(02:18):
with me is the total destructionthat occurs in cities after
they do this.
I mean, this is a methoddesigned to make police
departments better, and when youlook at the data and the
metrics after the federalgovernment runs a local police
department, things get muchworse.
I mean, I could list off thecities under consent decrees and
you're never going to go onvacation there Chicago, portland
(02:39):
, seattle, new Orleans, go onand on.
But just look at some of themetrics.
This is before and after thefederal government took over and
they're still involved in thesecities.
By the way, new Orleans theircrime rate went up 44%.
Their violent crime rate wentup 97%.
Their budget implode 83%.
Their staffing went down 36%.
Seattle their violent crimerate went up 53%.
(03:02):
Their budget went up 43%.
Their part one crimes went up33%.
Their staffing's down 16%.
Albuquerque their violent crimerate went up 80%.
Their budget went up 38%.
Their staffing is down 11%, andreally every city mirrors this.
Violent crime spikes, budgetsimplode, staffing, staffing gets
(03:25):
reduced, and this is in everycity.
This isn't, this isn't someanomaly, and so it's always been
strange to me that this hasbeen happening for 30 years and
nobody's talking about it.
You won't hear this from majorcity chiefs.
You don't hear this from thefop.
You don't hear this from theicp.
You don't hear some perf.
You don't hear this fromanybody, nobodyacp.
You don't hear this from PERF.
(03:45):
You don't hear this fromanybody.
Nobody's talking about it,which is very disturbing.
In fact, I'm in the leadershipspace.
There's a handful of peoplethat kind of do that in law
enforcement.
They write or they speak orthey teach.
None of them speak about it.
Right, and I guess in a sense Iunderstand that it's not a
controversial topic because whatI'm saying is true.
But people see that as acontroversial topic, and I have
(04:09):
been.
Actually, I was removed from astage in January of last year
because there was a DOJ memberin the room Didn't like what I
said about consent decrees, eventhough it was true.
I was canceled from aconference in Arizona, don't?
They didn't give me the reasonwhy, but it just happened to be
at the same time.
I was speaking about Phoenixconsent decree and a few other
(04:29):
things have happened along theway, and so I guess if you're in
this space and you're trying tobuild a business, you wouldn't
speak about this.
But how do you not if you trulybelieve in leadership?
And so I just thought the truthmatters and so I've been
speaking about it, but there'sso much we don't know.
I mean, I just told you themetrics, right, cities get worse
(04:49):
, and I didn't really know whatwas going on in the city while
the deal came, but I just knowwhat happens after they come,
that things get much worse.
They've spent $250 million, infact.
I did the math the other dayand over the course of 30 years,
local cities have spent over abillion dollars to have federal
(05:10):
oversight and the federalmonitor alone, which is usually
a lawyer that the federal judgeputs over the department.
I mean they're making anywherefrom $400,000 to a million
dollars a year To do what.
I mean the whole thing seemskind of crazy.
By the way, those organizationsI mentioned earlier.
Nothing against them other thanthe fact they're being quiet.
Guess who gives them money aswell?
That's right, the DLJ.
(05:31):
So the whole thing sounds veryodd.
In fact, if you would tell acivilian this, they may not even
believe it.
But Phoenix gave us all a gift,and that's what I wanted to talk
to you about.
The DLJ began investigatingPhoenix well over three years
ago.
In fact, it ended up being thelongest investigation by the DLJ
when it comes to civil rightsviolations and they go to the
(05:53):
city council several months agoand they said we've completed
our investigation, what we foundwas really bad and so we need
you to agree to a consent decree.
Now I have a problem with thatbecause if you found evidence of
civil rights violations and youwant to interject in a local
police department from a federalgovernment standpoint, well, go
to court and prove it in court.
(06:15):
Only one department in 30 yearshas taken the DLJ to court and
they lost the DLJ lost.
So if the evidence is thatstrong, it should be fairly easy
to prove in court.
But the dlj sort of uses themedia and they use this pressure
tactic and they sort of makethese cities believe that if you
just sort of sign off of thisconsent decree that you know
(06:36):
we'll start making yourdepartment better.
And this, this, it's just it's.
It's insane because once thesedepartments sign up with it,
they can't get out of it.
Ask new orleans, ask Seattle,you know, ask all these agencies
that have been consent decreesfor 10, 20, 25 years.
They can't get out of it.
It's just draining their budgetand destroying their cities.
Well, phoenix, I guess they wereaware of the history of this
(06:56):
and the history is what I justtold you, what it does to cities
, and Phoenix, quite frankly,can't really afford to get more
violent crime.
They so they asked the DLJ.
When the DLJ said this hey,before we sign our department
over to the federal governmentwhich is what a consent decree
is we'd like to see yourevidence, we'd like to see your
(07:19):
report.
By the way, you don't know whodoes these reports.
You don't know who investigatedit.
You don't know anything aboutit.
They just they come out withthis vague executive summary.
You can Google consent decreeexecutive summary DLJ executive
summary police department.
You'll Google consent decreeexecutive summary DLJ executive
summary police department.
You'll see these reports andthey're all written very, very
similarly.
They're very, very vague.
Well, they ask a simplequestion Before we sign over on
(07:42):
average, probably $10 million ayear, by the way, phoenix has
already spent $10 million juston the investigation Once they
sign up for consent decree.
On average, for a city thatsize, it's about $10 million a
year, with no end date, so tospeak.
So they asked this common sensequestion we'd like to see the
investigation?
And the DLJ said no, which isvery strange, right?
(08:02):
If they had evidence, why wouldthey not want to show it to the
political leaders in that city,and so there was enough
pressure, I think, on thecouncil, because the citizens
have become aware of kind ofwhat this has done in other
cities where they sort of saidthey kind of hit the brakes,
we're not going to, we're notgoing to simply agree to this.
The DLJ came out with anexecutive summary outlining
(08:23):
their investigation.
Keep in mind, this isn't thedetails of it, it's almost it's
a vague summary.
They listed 134 incidents overthe course of six years where
the Phoenix Police Departmentviolated the rights of citizens,
and that in itself is strange,because the Phoenix Police
Department responds to about twomillion calls a year.
During that time frame theyused force well over 5,000 times
(08:47):
, and so just the few incidentsthey listed is what the DOJ has
to prove in court is a patternand practice civil rights
violations, not a one off, not afew off, but has to be a
pattern and practice which, whenyou sort of do the math in
Phoenix, they literally listedabout point zero, zero, zero,
two, two percent of theiractivity was supposedly civil
(09:08):
rights violations.
So that was awful strange.
But when you read thisexecutive summary report, it
makes the Phoenix PoliceDepartment look like the worst
department in the country, whichis what most of them do, and
it's really designed to putpressure on the city to just
agree with the DLJ.
Well, my suspicions took thebest of me, and so I was paying
attention to this, and the cityof Phoenix did something that
(09:30):
I've never seen anybody do.
In fact, it's what would happenif it went to court is as
phoenix took, and theyidentified 112 of the 134
incidents.
So they they looked at thesevague summaries and they were
able to pinpoint the exactincident and they put a public
website up that listed the whatthe doj said.
(09:52):
And then, right next to that,they put up they didn't have any
editorial or any narrative,they just put up the body camera
footage, the police reports andthe administrative documents
and they put them side by side.
This is a public website.
I'll I'll send the link to you,and they did this for
transparency, to show the public.
But you know it's it's a hugewebsite, lots of data.
(10:14):
Nobody in Phoenix media paidattention to it.
Nobody really has paid muchattention to it, but I saw this
last summer and, heck, I hadsome free time, so I decided you
know what Now?
I've been concerned about thisissue for quite some time.
I can now kind of look behindthe curtain and see whether this
is accurate or not, becausethat's important right.
(10:34):
If you're going to accuseanybody of violating civil
rights violations, you wouldexpect it to be accurate.
And so I spent the summer forthe most part all summer going
through every single incident.
I watched every body camera, Iread every report and I went
through it.
What I found is nothing shortof corruption at the highest
(10:59):
level.
In fact, I almost feel dirtythat I know it because nobody
else is talking about it, it'sjust me out here talking about
it.
It's very disturbing what Ifound, and I'm coming out with a
report in the coming weeks andI wanted you to hear it first
here.
So the report's not out yet.
It's just shy of 300 pages andI can't really cover all of it
(11:20):
here.
It's so disturbing and so wildand crazy, but I'll certainly
pass it along to you when I getit.
I would encourage you to followmy articles TravisYatesorg, go
up to article and then subscribeto that page and you'll get
this on notification.
But I wanted to give you a quicksummary of what I found because
(11:42):
it is extremely disturbing andI certainly hope that you will
send this around to people andmake people aware of it, because
this cannot continue.
What's going on?
First off, you see thedestruction that's made in these
other cities and right now,with President Trump, they've
pulled back these investigations.
But they did that the firstterm during President Trump, and
what happened after that?
They come right back.
(12:03):
Well, that's not going to begood enough for me.
This corruption is so in-depthand so egregious.
This has to go away.
I'm not saying we not holdagencies accountable for civil
rights violations, but in itscurrent form it can't continue
like this.
It is horrific what I found.
I'm going to tell you exactlywhat I found.
(12:24):
I'm going to cut right to it.
I found the DOJ misled or lied97% of the time.
There were only four cases outof 134 where what the DOJ said
actually matched up to thevideos and the reports.
(12:48):
And how did they do this?
I'll give you the details on it.
So an excessive force.
The DOJ listed 36 incidents,thirty six that said they
violated civil rights.
No-transcript.
(13:10):
All of those cases.
They misled and lied Every oneof them.
So, out of the 36, none of themwere accurate, and I'll give
you the examples in a minute.
When the DOJ tried to say thatthe Phoenix Police Department
discriminated when they enforcedthe law, they listed 10
(13:30):
incidents.
This is out of 2 millionarrests.
By the way, nine of the 10 werefactually inaccurate.
When the DOJ said that thePhoenix Police Department
discriminated in response topeople with behavioral health
issues, they listed 10 incidents.
By the way, this is out of64,464 mental health calls and
(13:55):
over 41,000 mental healthtransports.
They listed 10 incidents.
Nine of the 10 were factuallyinaccurate.
The DOJ said that the PhoenixPolice Department did not modify
their practices when theyencountered juveniles.
They listed three incidents.
By the way, the Phoenix PoliceDepartment responded arrested.
(14:17):
They arrested 13,513 juvenilesand they responded to over
80,000 juvenile-related calls.
They listed three incidents.
All of those were factuallyinaccurate.
The DOJ listed 17 incidentsthat said the Phoenix Police
were not held accountable bysupervision or training.
Okay, all six out of the 17,.
(14:42):
Just one was accurate.
And when I say not accurate,they did things.
I'll give you an example ofthis.
So if you wanted to say apolice department was violating
people's constitutional rights,the way you do that is, you
(15:04):
don't give the details.
So they either omittedinformation, they misled with
wrong context, or they deceived,or the DOJ even added
information that wasn't evenpresent, or they misapplied case
law and then many of theirconclusions they form with
(15:25):
hindsight bias.
There was a specific incidentwhere there was a guy on the top
of stairs with a knifethreatening officers.
The officer spent, I believe,about 15 minutes trying to plead
with the guy to drop the knifeand finally the guy comes
walking down the stairs towardshim with the knife up in
aggressive fashion.
They end up having to kill theguy.
Well, in the DOJ report theysaid the guy meant them no harm
(15:49):
and the knife was always down tohis side.
I mean, just when you watch thevideo you don't even know that
you're doing watching the samething.
And that was just one of somany.
In fact, I filmed three or fourvideos on my YouTube channel.
Once you can go totravisyatesorg, hit the YouTube
channel and if you can't getthat, you can go to YouTube and
type in Travis Yates CourageousLeadership, travis Yates DLJ.
(16:10):
You'll get them and I show youthe videos and I tell you what
they said.
It's nothing short of insanityand I think I now know why the
DLJ does everything they can tonot go to court, because in
court this would be laughed at.
It would it would completely belaughed at.
(16:32):
And, by the way, I'm going tosay how egregious this is.
The DOJ is a law enforcementagency.
They lied I don't want to saylie, it's a tough term because
sometimes things were out ofcontext.
They added information, but youknow, essentially it's a lie by
not giving the accurate details.
97% of the things they saidwere not accurate.
(16:52):
What do you think would happento a police department or a
police officer if they did thatin their report?
They'd be in prison right nowprobably Right.
And what I found amazing when Iwent through all these reports
and videos is the Phoenix PoliceDepartment were amazingly
accurate.
They were accurate in so muchdetail to what the actual video
(17:15):
showed.
Meanwhile, the agencyinvestigating them were the
exact opposite.
It's hard to put in words whatI found.
It's hard to sort of tell youhow bad this was.
I'm bringing this to youbecause I'm hoping that you have
some familiarity with this andmy concern is is if this was
(17:38):
like this in Phoenix, because weonly know this because the
Phoenix Police Departmentpublished this website what has
occurred in other cities whenthey didn't do this?
Now, by the way, we have someanecdotal evidence.
The ex-Louisville police chiefon the stand was asked about the
dlj summary and she said thatthey found multiple things that
(18:00):
were not accurate and that'scome across in louisville in the
court proceedings, again whenthe dlj refused to answer any
questions.
And so if this happened inphoenix, how many places has it
happened in?
And I gotta got to tell you,man, the damage this has done,
and I didn't mention thisearlier.
Out of the 15 most violentcities right now in America,
(18:24):
nine of them are ran by the DLJNew Orleans, baltimore,
philadelphia, birmingham,washington DC, milwaukee,
detroit, indianapolis,louisville all ran by the DLJ
under consent decrees.
So they are destroying thesafety of communities and, by
the way, it's not just me.
Roland Fryer, harvard professorresearcher, did a peer-reviewed
research on this and he showedthat there were 900 additional
(18:47):
murders in America based onafter the fact, because consent
decrees happen in cities.
No one's talking about this, noone's saying anything about this
.
I don't think that's goodenough, right?
I don't think it's good enough.
And so we're going to be doingmore on this.
If the report doesn't get theattention it should get, we're
(19:11):
probably going to do adocumentary.
We're going to take this to thehighest levels we can in this
country to get them to look atthis.
It is atrocious.
So I would ask you if youlisten, if you made it this far.
This is probably the other partof the problem, right?
Is this issue could be boringto so many people, I mean, and
we hear about corruption all thetime and it just almost goes
through one ear out the other.
(19:31):
But this is extremelydisturbing and I'm going to ask
you, if you know anybody thatneeds to hear this, to send this
to them.
You can reach out to me andI'll send you a bunch of links,
a bunch of articles.
We've done a lot on it, butit's going to kind of culminate
with this report.
We're going to talk about thisspecifically in Phoenix and we
(19:58):
need to shine a light on this.
Wrong is wrong, whether you'rethe local police department or
the Department of Justice.
Wrong is wrong.
It's wrong to put out publiclyfor the world to see that our
department is doing all thesethings.
And then you're not evenaccurate in what you're saying.
I mean, they have destroyed thereputation of the Phoenix
Police Department by lies and,by the way, it's not me.
(20:23):
I would challenge you to go tothis website.
I'll have it in the show notes.
Pick any incident you want,read what the DLJ said and go
and watch the video.
It would not even take anyonewith law enforcement experience
to see what I'm seeing.
A first year criminal justicestudent would have come to the
same conclusions.
In fact, when I, when I startedlooking at this, I sort of
(20:45):
thought, man, I'm probably goingto go out and get some other
experts to look at this Use offorce experts, things like that.
But it was so basic what theydid.
It was such a fabrication.
It was pretty easy.
I'll give you one quickfabrication.
They made a big deal in thereport that the Phoenix Police
Department was picking on thesehomeless people.
Now Phoenix, like most bigcities, have a homeless issue.
(21:06):
Businesses call in and so theymake arrests on public drugs,
they make arrests on trespassing, things like that, and so they
made a big deal that thesehomeless people were being
targeted by the policedepartment.
They kind of left out the factthat it was citizens calling the
police department, you know,for quality of life issues, and
the police department was takingaction.
(21:37):
No-transcript.
Well, the DOJ doesn't get topick and choose which laws are
constitutional, unconstitutional.
That would be courts, and thecourts have already decided all
the way to the supreme courtthat local, local ordinances can
enforce laws like trespassingand public intoxication, and if
(21:59):
those affect homeless people ata much higher rate, then that's.
That's not an issueconstitutionally.
This has been ruled all the wayto Supreme Court, and so they
based their entire premise onthis section that the local laws
were unconstitutional.
And they aren'tunconstitutional.
And if you were just a passivereader, you would go oh, that's
(22:20):
just awful, that's just awful.
It just doesn't take a rocketscience to see what happened
here, and so we'll be doing moreon this.
Man, if you made it this far, Iappreciate it, and I just had
to get this out there.
I want to get this out to youbecause you've been with us and
I want you.
You've heard this first.
We'll be doing that.
We'll be putting the report out.
(22:40):
Uh, we'll be doing articles onit, pieces of that, that, and
it's done.
I'm not doing it to embarrassanybody.
I'm doing it because thiscannot continue.
I don't care whether you're ABC, police Department or DLJ.
You should not be permitted tomisrepresent facts the way they
were, and there needs to beaccountability at some level
(23:05):
when it comes to that.
So thank you for listening.
I look forward to getting thereport to you.
I look forward to speaking moreabout this.
I would love to talk aboutother issues, quite frankly, but
this is a big issue and it'samazing to me how other
so-called leaders aren't sayinga word.
I don't understand that right,right is right, wrong is wrong,
(23:28):
and when it comes to courageousleadership, you say what's right
, regardless if it's popular,regardless if you think people
won't like it, you just have to.
How else are we going to changethings for the better in this
country and in our community?
So thank you for listening.
I appreciate you, and justremember, lead on and stay
courageous.
Thank you for listening.
I appreciate you.
Just remember, lead on and staycourageous.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Thank you for listening to Courageous
Leadership with Travis Yates.
We invite you to join othercourageous leaders at www.
travisyatesorg.
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