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by Nicole Santa Cruz

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When a homeless man questioned the Phoenix police’s authority to stop him in February 2020, an officer grabbed him and knelt on his neck while another officer shocked him with a Taser. Another unhoused man said officers threw away his belongings, telling him, “You guys are trash and this is trash.” Other people experiencing homelessness were regularly cited and arrested by the city’s officers during early morning hours for “conduct that is plainly not a crime.”

Those were among the abuses alleged by the Department of Justice last June, following a nearly three-year investigation into the city of Phoenix and its police department. The investigation marked the first time the DOJ had found a pattern of violations against homeless people, including that officers and other city employees illegally threw away their belongings.

In addition, DOJ investigators found that officers disproportionately cited and arrested people experiencing homelessness. They comprised 37% of all Phoenix Police Department arrests from 2016 to 2022, though homeless people account for less than 1% of the population. Investigators said many of those stops, citations and arrests were unconstitutional.

The wide-ranging probe also found officers used excessive force, discriminated against people of color, retaliated against protesters and violated the rights of people with behavioral health disabilities — similar issues to those the DOJ has documented in troubled law enforcement agencies in other cities.

But federal officials announced Wednesday that they had abandoned efforts to compel the city and police to address those issues. The DOJ closed its investigations and retracted findings of constitutional violations in Phoenix and five other jurisdictions, including Trenton, New Jersey. Beyond that, the Department of Justice said it was dismissing Biden-era lawsuits against several other police departments, including in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed by police five years ago.

The DOJ said requiring the cities to enter consent decrees, which are intended to ensure reforms are enacted, would have “imposed years of micromanagement of local police departments by federal courts and expensive independent monitors, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of compliance costs, without a legally or factually adequate basis for doing so.”

The city of Phoenix said in a statement that it has “tirelessly focused on enhancing policy, training and accountability measures to ensure the best public safety for everyone who lives, works and plays in Phoenix.” In recent years, the city has enacted policy changes including employee training and the implementation of body-worn cameras.

Legal experts told ProPublica the wrongdoing the DOJ uncovered in Phoenix should be corrected — even though city officials will be under less pressure to act.

“It is a very real shame and a disservice to the residents of these communities to end the work, to stand down and unwind the investigations and to purport to retract the findings,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

The report’s retraction, along with last year’s Supreme Court decision allowing cities to arrest and cite people for sleeping outside even when they have nowhere else to go, could further embolden cities and police departments to marginalize homeless people, said Brook Hill, senior counsel with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a legal advocacy group that focuses on racial justice issues. “They will feel like they have a license to do the sweeps and to otherwise make life in public view uncomfortable for unhoused people,” he said.

Indeed, just last week California Gov. Gavin Newsom urged all local governments in that state to “use their authority affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court” to address encampments.

After the DOJ began the Phoenix investigation in August 2021, Fund for Empowerment, an Arizona advocacy group for homeless people, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona sued the city and police department to stop what attorneys called “unconstitutional raids” on unsheltered people. Its lawsuit accused the city of failing to provide housing and instead turning to encampment removals to clear sidewalks and other areas. “The City has made its message to unhoused individuals clear: engaging in sleep and other essential life activities on the city’s public grounds will lead to detention, arrest, displacement, and the loss of the individual’s personal effects,” the Fund for Empowerment alleged in court documents.

Nearly a month later, a judge issued an injunction preventing the city from enforcing its camping ban against people who can’t find shelter, as well as from seizing and throwing away people’s belongings. The lawsuit is ongoing.

The DOJ’s June 2024 report stated that even after the injunction and new city policies were in place, city officials continued to arrest people for camping and to destroy people’s belongings without notice or the opportunity to reclaim them.

ProPublica, as part of its investigation into cities’ handling of homeless people’s possessions, found that Phoenix rarely stored property seized from encampments. From May 2023 to 2024, the city responded to 4,900 reports from the public involving encampments, according to its records. The city said workers, trained to assess which items are property and which are trash, found items that could be stored at only 405 of the locations it visited. Not all of those belongings required storage because people may have removed them between a report of an encampment and the city’s arrival. The city stored belongings 69 times.

In January 2024, the city issued its own report in anticipation of the DOJ’s allegations. The city said it found nothing to support accusations that police “interfered with the possessions of people experiencing homelessness.” Phoenix officials also said in the report that although the city and police department “welcome additional insights” from the DOJ, they were unwilling to be subjected to a consent decree, a binding plan in which an appointed monitor oversees implementation of reforms.

Attorneys and advocates said that the DOJ’s decision has no bearing on lawsuits filed by private attorneys alleging civil rights violations, including against people who are homeless. The ACLU this week also launched a seven-state effort to file records requests to hold police departments accountable, it said.

Elizabeth Venable, lead community organizer with the Fund for Empowerment, who also helped the DOJ connect with the unhoused community in Phoenix, said she viewed the federal findings as a victory for unhoused people. Despite the retraction by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Venable said, the report still has weight.

“No matter what Pam Bondi says, people are not going to forget it, especially people who learned about something that they were horrified by,” she said.

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Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

This week we examine how leaks are fueling reporting in spite of crackdowns on whistleblowers and journalists. And Rümeysa Öztürk may be out of jail but her ordeal isn’t over. It’s now the 59th day that she’s facing deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like. More press freedom news below.

Recent leaks show why source protection matters

Our Freedom of Information Act request for an intelligence community memo and the reporting that’s followed have turned into “exhibit A” on why leaks to the press serve the public interest.

Journalists have written about how the memo belies the Trump administration’s own rationale for mass deporting Venezuelans, and we’ve explained how it confirms that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s basis for repealing her predecessor’s safeguards against subpoenaing journalists was bunk. 

But even more revelations have followed. This week the Times reported that Director of National Intelligence official Joe Kent pressured intelligence agencies to rewrite their assessment on the Venezuelan government’s control of gang members to support Trump’s position and then supported the release of the rewritten memo because he didn’t understand what it actually said. We also learned that there is a major rift between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the intelligence community. 

Read on our website. For more on leak investigations, catch us live on May 28 at 11 a.m. PT / 2 p.m. ET with Telos.news founder Ryan Lizza and Pulitzer Prize winner James Risen.

Don’t empower Trump to define terrorism

Rümeysa Öztürk never supported terrorism. That’s not even debatable now. 

But lack of evidence isn’t stopping the Trump administration’s efforts to deport her and others. So when Congress contemplates further empowering the same administration to arbitrarily deem its opponents’ conduct “support of terrorism,” alarm bells should sound.

Well, ring-a-ling. Last year’s “nonprofit killer” bill, which would allow the administration to deem rights organizations and nonprofit news outlets terrorist supporters and revoke their tax-exempt status, is making a comeback. Read more here.

An open letter to leaders of American institutions

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) was proud to join a letter led by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University urging leaders of civic and other major institutions to defend free speech amid the Trump administration’s multifront assault on First Amendment freedoms.

As the letter says, “If our democracy is to survive, the freedoms of speech and the press need a vigorous, determined defense.” Read the whole thing.

US press freedom groups launch Journalist Assistance Network

Five major U.S.-based press freedom organizations (including FPF) announced the launch of a network to provide legal and safety resources and training to journalists and newsrooms in the United States. Read more about it here.

What we’re reading

Coalition to Columbia, Barnard: ‘Do better’ for student journalists (Student Press Law Center). We joined a coalition demanding Columbia stop investigating student journalists and respect students’ free press rights.

Paramount could violate anti-bribery law if it pays to settle Trump’s ‘60 Minutes’ lawsuit, senators claim (Variety). Don’t just take our word for it. Settling with Trump puts Paramount executives at risk of significant liability. It also puts CBS at risk of further shakedowns. 

Why does GOP budget bill focus on punishing people who leak tax returns? (The Intercept). “Lawmakers and judges should focus on stopping tax evasion by the rich and powerful, not on disproportionate punishments for whistleblowers,” explained FPF Advocacy Director Seth Stern.

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to keep DOGE records secret (Politico). Seems like it’d be more “efficient” to comply with basic transparency requests than waste government resources to keep your work secret.

Judge orders U.S. to keep custody of migrants amid claims they were sent to South Sudan (The New York Times). The Trump administration says “that’s classified” any time it doesn’t want to answer difficult questions to the courts or to the public.

Disclose the Trump crypto dinner guests (The Wall Street Journal).  So much for the “most transparent administration in history.”

FCC Chairman Carr seeks to designate NBC equal time issue for hearing (The Desk). Another week, another sham investigation by Brendan Carr in the news. 

Indiana hides executions. Firing squads would be more honest. (IndyStar). “Indiana killed Ritchie under a veil of secrecy, with no media present . ... We don't know if Ritchie suffered."

New Montana law blocks the state from buying private data to skirt the Fourth Amendment (Reason). Montana is leading the way. Other states and the federal government should follow.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) has informed Paramount Global executives that it plans to file a lawsuit if Paramount settles with President Donald Trump over his court case against CBS News.

News reports indicate Paramount Global is prepared to settle Trump’s frivolous and unconstitutional complaint against its subsidiary, CBS News, over its editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. United States senators and others have said the purpose of settling may be to bribe the president to clear the path for Paramount to finalize a merger with Skydance Media.

We’ve written previously about how Trump’s complaint against CBS is a clear First Amendment violation and threatens the basic press freedom rights of other news outlets.

So today, FPF sent a letter to Paramount Chair Shari Redstone to put her and other Paramount executives on notice that it plans to file a shareholder’s derivative lawsuit should Paramount settle with Trump, and to demand that Paramount preserve all records that may be relevant to its claims. FPF is a Paramount Global shareholder.

A derivative lawsuit is a procedure that allows shareholders of a company to recover damages incurred due to impropriety by executives and directors. Any damages award would go to Paramount, not FPF.

Paramount executives have reportedly feared liability for settling, and this week, U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren opened an investigation of whether settling would violate bribery laws and asking whether Paramount had evaluated the risk of derivative liability.

FPF Director of Advocacy Seth Stern said:

“Corporations that own news outlets should not be in the business of settling baseless lawsuits that clearly violate the First Amendment and put other media outlets at risk. A settlement of Trump’s meritless lawsuit may well be a thinly veiled effort to launder bribes through the court system. Not only would it tank CBS’s reputation but, as three U.S. senators recently explained, it could put Paramount executives at risk of breaking the law.

“Our mission as a press freedom organization is to defend the rights of journalists and the public, not the financial interests of corporate higher-ups who turn their backs on them. When you run a news organization, you have the responsibility to protect First Amendment rights, not abandon them to line your own pockets.

“We hope Paramount will reconsider the dangerous path it appears to be contemplating but, if not, we are prepared to pursue our rights as shareholders. And we hope other Paramount shareholders will join us.”

John Cusack, an FPF founding board member, activist and actor, added, “I’m proud that Freedom of the Press Foundation is doing what CBS’s corporate owners won’t — standing up for press freedom and against authoritarian shakedowns. People who aren’t willing to defend the First Amendment should not be in the news business.”

You can read FPF’s letter here.

Please contact us if you would like further comment.

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