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Xavier Frost, deputy director for labor relations in the city's human resources department, said he couldn't recall it being discussed during negotiations this year for the latest police contract. Rushin said he can't say when police union contracts began to allow purging. But the practice has become entrenched in Phoenix and other police departments throughout the country. The number includes sergeants and lieutenants who supervise officers and investigate allegations of misconduct lodged against them. Of the Phoenix Police Department's nearly 3,000 sworn employees, 525 have purged disciplinary records, according to The Republic investigation. "Even if they don't want to publicly say, 'Hey, this makes it harder for people to terminate us or discipline us,' that's what it does," said Stephen Rushin, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago, who analyzed labor contracts between police unions and cities nationwide for a 2017 study. It allows patterns of misbehavior to go undetected, and officers to remain employed, win promotions and potentially dodge harsher discipline in subsequent internal investigations.Ī months-long Arizona Republic investigation for the first time reveals that the policy has allowed hundreds of officers over the span of five years to erase more than 600 acts of wrongdoing - from minor mistakes such as failing to complete reports, to major offenses like the use of excessive force. The contract also prohibits misconduct detailed in the purged records from being considered in future disciplinary investigations or performance evaluations.Įxperts say the practice has a cascading impact on police oversight, shielding misbehaving officers from public scrutiny and depriving supervisors of information about officers' conduct. The practice, which the Department refers to as "purging," has been standard for more than two decades under the police union's contract, but the public has been unaware of it. That's because Roberts, Webb and Beeks, like hundreds of other Phoenix police officers in recent years, were allowed to erase records of their misconduct from files kept by the Police Department. Officer Joshua Wayne Beeks was suspended for 15 days when the Department discovered he was involved in three unauthorized high-speed pursuits in a single year that killed two people.īut there's little indication in Phoenix Police Department personnel and internal investigations records that those officers were ever disciplined. Dalin Webb received a written reprimand for his 2013 arrest on domestic violence charges in which he reportedly shoved his wife and choked his teenage son.
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Phoenix Police Sgt. Philip Roberts was suspended from the force for 30 days after an internal investigation concluded he failed to properly manage a 2015 incident where officers shot and killed a mentally ill man.
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Rogers was charged with aggravated assault. The story had also incorrectly described the criminal case against Officer Michael Rogers for his role in a motorcycle crash. Their discipline was reduced through settlements with the city. Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of the story mischaracterized the Civil Service Review Board appeals of Sgt.