Mayor Gallego, Vice Mayor Ansari, Council Members, City Manager Barton,

         We the voters request that the city members do their due diligence and vote NO on the DOJ consent decree.

The DOJ is currently under investigation for a pattern or practice of systemic racism, abuse of power, weaponization, fraud, and corruption so they are not in any position to tell Phoenix police what to do. It is federal overreach violating the 10th Amendment, to usurp local jurisdiction in order to install a federal official and his for-profit monitor. 

Biden issued the " Executive Order on Reforming Our Incarceration System to Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities", this for-profit status should extend to unelected DOJ monitors who continuously move the goalposts in order to extend their lucrative contracts. Not only do they waste and divert local taxpayer money from other city services and programs, but they are also out of touch with the local community. The current monitor in Maricopa hasn't even set foot there in years.

The DOJ has a history of bogus investigations wasting tax dollars and making communities less safe. The bogus investigations are more like an advertisement from a private for-profit company using manipulated statistics in a marketing pitch to sell its consulting products than actual credible research methodologies and reality.  They smear local police departments to convince you to buy their malarkey. In addition, these consent decrees cost taxpayers millions of dollars which will go to private attorneys or appointed designees for many years. We should be skeptical of anyone who is encouraging a consent decree and the financial benefit they may receive. It’s estimated that the cost of this investigation could exceed $300 million. Look at what has happened with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

 If you look at studies, you can see that any city that has gone under a DOJ consent decree has increased crime rates and an average of 900 extra murders per year. Experienced officers unable to police properly under these consent decrees quit, retire, or transfer causing staffing shortages and lower hiring standards. And, there is no way for a local community to remedy it since the DOJ, monitor and judge are unaccountable to anyone and do not care about their impact on the community to even listen to their concerns. Cities have been stuck in these unconstitutional consent decrees for over a decade. This is another example of anti-democratic for-profit DOJ corruption that Biden's decree was aimed to eliminate.

Reject the DOJ consent decree. There are alternatives for reform and accountability that involve openness and transparency that include local community engagement in the reform process. The 10th Amendment guarantees this to our local community.

  Why would you even bother to be a council member if you are just going to hand the power away to a federal institution and an unelected for-profit monitor to make decisions for you about the city? This is not what democracy looks like. Just say no to a DOJ consent decree.