📢 SUMMARY📢
This article exposes how the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona (USAO-D.AZ) repeatedly fails to detect and stop unlawful case handling that begins with the Phoenix Veterans Affairs (VA) Police. If you value justice, you’ll want to know why the people entrusted to enforce the law are looking the other way.
🚨BACKGROUND: HOW THE U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE (D.AZ) AND PHOENIX VA POLICE AND GOT HERE🚨
The Phoenix VA Police Department has become a breeding ground for due process violations and procedural shortcuts that would never be tolerated in any professional law enforcement agency. Despite clear violations of federal law, internal VA directives, and constitutional standards, USAO for the District of Arizona continues to process cases that originate from these flawed practices. This article examines how this has become an institutional problem, the dangers it poses to civil liberties, and why this pattern invites serious scrutiny—with the kind of directness that refuses to tiptoe around the truth.
📜THE PROBLEM: ARREST FIRST, IGNORE FOLLOWING PROCEDURES📜
VA Directive 0730, the VA Police's national Bible and its associated handbook are clear: once an arrest is made, the subject must be taken without unnecessary delay before a U.S. Magistrate Judge or placed in a detention center with the intent of appearing before a judicial officer. As the directive itself makes explicit:
"(a) An arrestee will be transported without unnecessary delay to a detention facility or to the appropriate judicial authority (U.S. Magistrate, local Magistrate, or local Judge) for an initial appearance, in accordance with law and established instructions."
That’s not optional. That’s the rule. Yet Phoenix VA Police 🚔 have decided they know better. Instead of presenting arrestees promptly before a magistrate, officers unilaterally arrest, handcuff, transport, detain, and then retroactively issue a Central Violations Bureau (CVB) citation as if no custodial arrest occurred. This practice deceives the system and avoids immediate judicial oversight by improperly treating a custodial arrest as a non-custodial citing-and-release.
⚠️WHY THIS IS A CIVIL RIGHTS DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN⚠️
If you want a recipe for disaster, this is it. This practice exposes the Department of Veterans Affairs—and by extension, the federal government—to enormous liability:
- Bivens Claims: 🏛️ These illegal detentions and searches under color of law provide a textbook basis for civil rights lawsuits. Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971).
- Giglio/Brady Issues: 📂 Every such case becomes contaminated evidence, triggering mandatory disclosure obligations that can destroy the credibility of both the agency and the prosecuting office. Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963); Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972).
- Tort Liability: 💰 When the agency’s own internal directives are knowingly violated, plaintiffs have an easier pathway to damages.
🤔 WHY IS THE U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICE ALLOWING THIS?🤔
The most charitable explanation is ignorance. Ignorance might explain your first mistake—but it sure doesn’t excuse making it over and over again. By the time the citations reach the U.S. District Court, the custodial violations are invisible. The CVB paperwork masks the misconduct. After officers issue a citation, those citations sit in a box for weeks at the agency waiting for review, contrary to CVB standards that encourage submission the same day and no later than a week. Only after mailing (and in some cases electronically transmitted) do they get processed into the Central Violations Bureau system. The CVB then compiles lists of offenders across jurisdictions and sends them to the U.S. Clerk for the District of Arizona, which are in turn provided to the Assistant U.S. Attorneys (AUSAs).
At that stage, the AUSAs typically have no access to detailed police reports and rely on the lists without knowing the underlying custodial facts. Unless the arresting officer or a Liaison Officer - representing the agency - explains the background, they assume the federal agency has lawfully handled the matter in full compliance with the law and the Constitution. That blind trust is misplaced. By consistently accepting these contaminated cases without auditing their origins, the USAO becomes complicit.
If the USAO were fully aware of the unlawful procedures behind these cases, it is almost certain they would decline prosecution. These are not minor technical errors—they are constitutional violations.
📦THE CVB TIMELINE PROBLEM📦
The CVB Law Enforcement Agency Manual specifies that violation notices should be forwarded to the CVB within a week, and preferably the same day. As the manual explicitly states:
"Agencies should send violation notices to the CVB within a week of issuance. If practical, violation notices should be forwarded to the CVB the same day the violation notices are issued." See "CVB Law Enforcement Agency Manual" at 17 (Mar. 2024).
Phoenix VA Police frequently violate this guidance, leaving violation notices in internal boxes for weeks or even a month before mailing. This delay adds another layer of obscurity that hides custodial arrests and due process violations from the courts and the prosecutors.
📝A SHIFT IN COURT PROCEDURE: GENERAL ORDER 25-05📝
In a non-surprising move, after political pressure from advocacy efforts and public exposure of these practices, the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona updated its procedures in March 2025. Specifically, General Order 19-14 (See here) was replaced by General Order 25-05 (See here) on March 7, 2025.
This update came months after widespread attention was drawn to the unlawful use of (what leadership thinks is) “cite-and-release” practices by Phoenix VA Police. Unlike the vague and poorly worded provisions of General Order 19-14, the new General Order 25-05 now clearly distinguishes between:
- (1) a non-custodial citation that can be resolved through collateral forfeiture,
and
- (2) an actual arrest, which requires the individual to be taken before a U.S. Magistrate Judge without unnecessary delay as mandated by Rule 5 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
The timing raises the question: Is it merely a coincidence that this clarification occurred in direct response to advocacy highlighting these unlawful practices of the Phoenix VA Police? Or is it an implicit acknowledgment that these exposures forced the Court to correct an unclear procedural framework?
Further, the Local Rule LRCrim 32.2.1 (D. Ariz.) (See here) explicitly requires U.S. Marshals to be notified by all federal agencies and jailers when a federal prisoner is taken into custody, ensuring that Pretrial Services, the Clerk of Court, and the U.S. Attorney are made aware of the arrest. See D. Ariz. LRCrim 32.2.1, at 182 (2025). This safeguard is routinely ignored by Phoenix VA Police when these arrests are disguised as citations.
👀 A DIRECT NOTE TO READERS: SPECIALLY – PHOENIX VA POLICE OFFICERS👀
For those of you reading this—and I know many of you Phoenix VA Police Officers are reading this article closely—listen carefully. These practices are not just technical violations; they directly impact your own credibility and put you and your colleagues at risk of personal liability. If you truly want to protect yourselves, here’s a tip:
- challenge your managers to put their policies in writing and, better yet, go get a written legal opinion from your own lawyers—the Office of General Counsel—rather than relying on back-room interpretations.
If they really believe what they’re telling you, they should have no problem getting it in writing from thier Office of General Counsel, right? And by the way, why is it so hard for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to give clear guidance—especially when it’s right there on their website in General Order 25?
Demand that clarity! Hold your leadership accountable before they hang you out to dry!
These warnings are for you as much as they are for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the courts.
💥 THE BIGGER PICTURE: A CULTURE OF LAWLESSNESS AT PHOENIX VA💥
This is not an isolated problem. Phoenix VA has a documented history of corruption, managerial misconduct, and retaliatory behavior against whistleblowers. Instead of seeking guidance from legal counsel, Phoenix VA Police management continues to act unilaterally, interpreting laws incorrectly and endangering the rights of veterans and civilians alike.
The result is a perfect storm: bad policy, bad practice, and a lack of oversight—all of which funnel tainted cases into the federal judicial system.
For years, we’ve known about the VA. Heck, the 2014 scandal made national headlines. However, this little tiny police department that very few people know of, or even know exists, is allowed to run in such a corrupt manner, and nobody’s paying attention to it. This is just a reflection of the culture that has always been there.
A Call for Accountability
🛑 It is time for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to demand accountability:
- Audit all Phoenix VA cases processed through CVB to determine how many involved custodial detention disguised as citations.
- Require immediate compliance with VA Directive 0730 and the Due Process Act of 2020, and federal rules of criminal procedure 5 and 4, but most of all - due process clauses under the 5th Amendment.
- Train federal prosecutors to identify these red flags so that tainted cases are rejected before they infect the courts.
The rights of veterans, employees, and the public depend on it. Blind justice is not an excuse for willful blindness.
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