Imagine, for a moment, this scenario of federal overreach: Urged on by Me Too activists, the U.S. Department of Justice accuses Phoenix Fire Department paramedics of civil rights violations by giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After a wide-ranging investigation, the DOJ also sues Phoenix firefighters for discriminating against pyromaniacs.
Preposterous, right? But considering how much a DOJ investigation into the Phoenix Police Department could ultimately cost the city, it might seem like the fire department is getting punished. And public safety will likely get worse – not better.
It’s alarming: The Phoenix firefighters’ union says they can’t respond quickly enough to fire alarms, and the millions of dollars drained from the city to satisfy a federal police overseer could make things worse. The National Fire Protection Agency recommends a five-minute response time for departments, but with the Valley’s explosive growth, our average response time is now more than nine minutes.
Six new fire stations are scheduled to be added to the city over the next five years. But even more personnel, stations and apparatus will be needed to perform the basic municipal function of keeping residents safe.
That’s why Phoenix Fire Local 493 president Bryan Willingham signed a letter – on police union letterhead, no less – addressed to Mayor Kate Gallego saying Phoenix should tell the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division that “there will not be a consent decree agreement with the City of Phoenix.” Translation: Fire and police will not agree to an oversight plan with the federal government, which happens in 61 percent of federal “pattern or practice” investigations, according to a Harvard report.
In the case of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, the legal and compliance costs of a 2007 DOJ racial profiling lawsuit launched under Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who left office in 2016) are projected to reach $273 million by this summer. A similar bill could await the City of Phoenix.
It’s one reason that Arpaio’s successor, former Sheriff Paul Penzone, decided to end his law enforcement career and hopes Phoenix doesn’t willingly enter into an agreement with the DOJ. He implored Mike Broomhead on KTAR to “show me a formula anywhere in the nation where the Department of Justice came in to oversee a police agency and, at the conclusion, the cost to the community was to the benefit of the long-term sustainability. There’s just not a model.”
Because DOJ investigations and decrees so remarkably change the way police do their job, the Harvard report concluded the DOJ “policing the police” in Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Ferguson, Missouri and Riverside, California, caused “statistically significant increases in both homicide and total crime… almost 34,000 excess felonies” and hundreds of lost lives.
If the DOJ gets its way here, I wonder if we can also blame them for the smoke inhalation, heart attack and car crash deaths that’ll happen because the fire department can’t get there in time to save them.
Jim Sharpe is the host of Arizona’s Morning News on KTAR-FM 92.3 (weekdays 5-9 a.m.). Visit ktar.com to find more information about his on-air work.
