County Attorney Rachel Mitchell sides with police union in DOJ report opposition

The Arizona Police Association, an umbrella organization representing police officers across the state, held a news conference with the Maricopa County attorney on Tuesday to urge Phoenix not to enter into the consent decree with the Department of Justice.

The Justice Department released a report in June finding the Phoenix Police Department engaged in numerous legal and constitutional violations.

The association echoed claims Phoenix's police union, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, has made about the report, calling it "a farce."

Justin Harris, president of the association, opened the news conference by rejecting a recent editorial piece in The Arizona Republic that supported a consent decree in Phoenix, calling the agreements "expensive."

"They destroy cities. And they do it under the auspice of wanting to help," Harris said.

He claimed that the Justice Department's investigation was an attempt by people without hands-on knowledge of police work to federalize the Police Department.

"A lot of these folks under the Department of Justice aren't police officers. They've never been in law enforcement. They're academics that study things in college and believe that these theories are good. And they have no idea what ... they're doing," Harris said.

Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell also spoke against the Justice Department's report and the consent decree. Mitchell has been endorsed by the association and the Phoenix police union in the county attorney's race. Her primary opponent, Gina Godbehere, is presenting herself as more conservative than Mitchell .

"Everyone needs to recognize that the carpetbaggers from the Department of Justice are not the solution," she said.

Mitchell compared a potential consent decree to existing court oversight of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which came about when a racial profiling lawsuit led to the appointment of an external monitor who reports to a federal judge. That oversight has been costly to taxpayers, she said.

Both Harris and Mitchell condemned the Justice Department for not releasing the data backing up each finding in its report and asked the city to hold the department accountable in any way it could.

"I'm calling them to fight this wherever they need to fight it to kick the DOJ back to Washington," Harris said.

The Justice Department declined to comment Tuesday.

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Signs: Long before DOJ findings of excessive force and bias, alarm raised about Phoenix police