(C) Arizona Mirror
This story was originally published by Arizona Mirror and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



How Phoenix officials abandoned their community in favor of police and ICE [1]

['Ellie Samsal', 'Ray A. Ybarra Maldonado', 'Julie Erfle', 'Jerod Macdonald-Evoy', 'Gloria Rebecca Gomez', 'Emily Holshouser', 'More From Author', 'July', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class']

Date: 2025-07-16

On June 18, I was one of about 150 other members of the Phoenix community who gathered at Phoenix City Hall to watch as the city council made their decision on the Resolution for Thriving Communities, a community-led petition which aimed to reduce low-level stops by Phoenix Police Department and demanded transparency in their interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The aim of the resolution was to significantly reduce racial profiling by one of the most violent, racist police forces in the nation — and to keep people out of the hands of ICE, who lie in wait at 4th Avenue Jail to abduct those Phoenix PD brings in.

There was reason to hope that Mayor Kate Gallego and the city council would support the resolution. After all, Gallego had already promised, “without equivocation,” to prevent Phoenix PD aiding Trump’s deportations, and one of the resolution’s points had been recommended by her own Review and Implementation Committee in 2020.

But then the vote came, and the resolution was crushed in an 8-1 vote to deny it. Furthermore, members of the council continually asserted that there wasn’t any collaboration at all, belittling the testifiers whose stories of kidnapped loved ones had just proved that such collaboration was rampant.

With the denial of this petition, it’s become clear that Gallego and the majority of city council — despite their many promises and various committees — have absolutely no intention of holding Phoenix PD accountable for the terror they’ve inflicted upon the people of Phoenix. In fact, they continue to reward them, recently voting to approve a ridiculous $1.2 billion budget to the department. In the wake of President Donald Trump dismissing the federal inquiry into Phoenix Police by the Department of Justice, Phoenix City Council claimed that they were confident they could reform Phoenix PD themselves . But they have said the same for the last 15 years –and still the department gets more money every year, amid ever-decreasing accountability .

The one vote in favor of the resolution came from newly-elected District 7 Councilmember Anna Hernandez, who was elected to the council in November after defeating her well-funded, mayor-backed opponent through a grassroots campaign. In addition to being a vocal supporter of the resolution, she was the only council member to vote against the increase in Phoenix PD’s budget, advocating for that money to instead be put toward mental health services and other public needs.

Here in Phoenix, thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest ICE and protect our communities from being torn apart. Across the country, protesters have numbered in the millions. It’s clear that ordinary people are horrified by ICE’s campaign of terror and eager for elected officials to do something about it. In fact, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won a shocking victory in his long-shot campaign to be mayor of the country’s largest city — in part because he made no secret of his willingness to stand up to ICE and the deportation machine.

In this political moment, our communities are looking for genuine leadership. If the people of Phoenix see Hernandez continue to stand toe-to-toe with Phoenix PD while the rest of the council avoids a real solution, then it’ll only be a matter of time before the people of Phoenix decide they’ve had enough with them.

So, while the Resolution for Thriving Communities may not have passed, it has succeeded in showing the people of Phoenix which members of the council are telling the truth when they say they’re committed to fighting against President Trump’s immigration policies and Phoenix PD’s grotesque history of human rights abuses. Phoenix is a city deeply scarred by police violence and state terror, but Councilwoman Hernandez is showing us that another world is possible. Building a healthy world where everyone can thrive — regardless of their race, class, or gender — starts with electing more leaders like her.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://azmirror.com/2025/07/16/how-phoenix-officials-abandoned-their-community-in-favor-of-police-and-ice/

Published and (C) by Arizona Mirror
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/azmirror/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.