“I Don’t Recall” | How Phoenix VA Police Buries Misconduct—and Dodges Accountability

DATELINE | WHAT VA OVERSIGHT SHOULD KNOW: Phoenix Veterans Affairs Police are in active lawsuits, fact-findings, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) investigations, and Harassment Prevention Program (HPP) cases. The department kept an official with substantiated racial and sexual harassment in command-level leadership and compromised itself. During these matters, one phrase keeps popping up: "I don’t recall." That answer is coming from people trusted with arrest power and use of force.

• Is that the kind of answer the public should accept from anyone given that level of public trust?

THE OFFICIAL POLICY APPEARS TO BE: SILENCE, OMISSION, AND DENIAL

There is an old bureaucratic superstition: if you leave the line blank, the problem never happened.

If You Don’t Answer, Maybe Nobody Cares

• "No comment." 
• "I don’t recall."  
• "I don’t know." 
• "I don’t remember that."  
• "I refuse to answer."  
• "I’m not at liberty to say."  
• "There’s a pending investigation, so I can’t answer." 
• (Blank)

(See the active federal litigation in Ramirez v. Phoenix Veterans Affairs Police Department et al., No. 2:25-cv-00959 (D. Ariz.), where numerous of these responses appear in sworn affidavits, depositions, and testimonies.) 

If this is how questions get answered in active federal litigation, EEO investigations, and internal affairs investigations - what happens when the question is force against a Veteran?

A Blank Line Is the Strategy

That is not toughness. That is a strategy. Stay quiet. Stay seated. Hope the public moves on.

The Rules Return When Management Wants Them

In an Equal Employment Opportunity or Office of Resolution Management (ORM) interview, those lines often go nowhere. Those offices are not a criminal court. A convenient memory gap rarely becomes perjury, a false-statement charge, or a willful-omission case — unless management already wants the officer.

Then the rules suddenly reappear. A GS-6 police officer can get the full inventory: false statements, lack of candor, failure to cooperate. The protected official gets the blank. The targeted officer gets the book.

THESE ARE NOT MALL COPS — THEY ARE "FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS"

This is a federal police force on a Veterans hospital campus. Officers can detain. They can arrest. Their word is supposed to mean something under oath.

They Carry Statutory Power

The public is asked to accept their reports, their testimony, their version of what happened in a hallway, a lobby, a parking lot, a holding area.

• So the phrase matters.

What The Phrase Sounds Like When Force Is Used

If the culture is "I don’t recall" when the question is misconduct, what is the phrase when the question is force?

What happens if they shoot someone? 

• "I don’t recall."

What happens if they shoot a Veteran?  

• "I don’t know."

What happens if a VA employee who is a husband or wife is injured by that force?

• "I don’t remember."

This is a police force on a Veterans hospital campus. The department already kept an official with substantiated racial and sexual harassment in command-level leadership. If the official answer to misconduct is "I don’t recall," the public is being asked to trust that same voice after a use of force.

The Joke Writes Itself. The Consequence Does Not.

A department that practices amnesia on misconduct should not expect trust when the subject is injury.

NOW ADD THE CAMERAS: PHYSICAL SECURITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Now imagine the same command that cannot remember its own misconduct still has reach into the machines that remember for everyone else.

The People With Findings Still Sit Near The Recordings

• Body-worn cameras.  
• Building cameras.  
• Interview recordings.  
• Microsoft Teams meetings.
• PTZ | CCTV footage
• Physical Security Operations

What Could Go Wrong

What could go wrong when command-level officials with substantiated sexual harassment and racial harassment findings have influence over the equipment that is supposed to document the truth?

• Footage can be late.  
• Footage can be incomplete.  
• Footage can be “unavailable.”  

A clip can exist in memory and vanish from the file.

Trust Collapses Before The File Does

If the people with the findings also have reach into the recordings, the official story gets easier to manage and harder to trust.

“I DON’T RECALL” IS NOT A FINDING — IT’S AN EVASION OF ACCOUNTABILITY.

A police department does not get to keep arrest power and then retire into amnesia when the questions get close.

Blank Answers Do Not Clear The Record

• I don’t recall is not evidence.  
• I don’t know is not oversight.  
• A "blank" is not innocence.

The Posture Is The Point

It is a posture. And in a compromised shop, it is a useful posture: stay quiet, stay seated, stay in command, and wait for the public to get bored.

Phoenix VA Police have already collected the kind of findings most departments would treat as disqualifying. The leadership problem did not disappear because someone shrugged on a Teams call. The cameras did not become more trustworthy because the phrase was polite.

THE ONLY QUESTION LEFT

Veterans are told this force exists to protect them.

The Pattern Does Not Require A Good Memory

• Then the department keeps a substantiated harasser in command.  
• Then complaints come back in-house.  
• Then the answers come back empty.

What Happened Here?

So the public is left with the same line the officials appear to practice:

• Q: What happened here?
• A: "I don’t recall."

That is not a defense. That is the story.

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Concerned Citizens AZ Investigative Team – When the Official Answer Is a Blank, We Keep the Record Anyway.

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READER NOTICE

Concerned Citizens Media encourages readers to independently verify the information contained in this publication, including through public records, official sources, or AI-assisted research tools. For additional information or clarification, readers are encouraged to contact appropriate Department of Veterans Affairs officials or their local VA facility directly.

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DISCLAIMER

Any attempt to retaliate against current or former VA employees, officers, contractors, or witnesses for engaging in protected whistleblower or EEO activity related to the matters discussed herein may constitute a violation of federal law, including 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8)–(9), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and applicable VA anti‑retaliation policies. Documentation, reporting, or public discussion of substantiated misconduct, harassment, discrimination, or policy violations is protected activity.